The curriculum is specifically designed for mid-career professionals looking to define new outcomes. Over 19 months divided into 6 terms, you will complete 18 courses, including:
- 10 core courses that cover all of the functional areas of business
- 4 leadership courses focused on personal skill development
- 4 elective courses that enable you to sharpen and/or broaden your functional knowledge
During an optional seventh term, concentrations and a certificate in Health Sector Management are also available to customize your experience and to help you gain knowledge for practical application.
For more detailed curriculum information, explore the tabs below:
Below are descriptions of the courses you will take throughout the program. Please note that the actual course sequence is subject to change from one academic year to the next.
- Term I Courses
Anir Bhattacharyya '13 divulges the advantages of being an Executive MBA and the three things he learned about teamwork, leadership and professional development. Read More.
Leadership, Ethics, and Organizations (LEO) — The goal of this course is to prepare students to be effective leaders and managers, regardless of their career path, and to be a good analyst of how best to organize people. This is accomplished by focusing on the factors that contribute to an organization's performance, designing and managing strong systems and effective leadership—to meet current challenges.
Global Markets and Institutions (GMI) — This course reviews basic ideas in macroeconomics and links them to institutional arrangements. You'll address such issues as commerce involving goods, financial flows, services, and how the same problem in trade and commerce is dealt with differently around the world. The course will increase your understanding of macroeconomics and give you the tools to analyze the structure and performance of specific national economies and global relationships. You will also analyze governmental policies affecting economic performance to increase your understanding of the role of formal and informal institutions in facilitating business transactions.
Integrative Leadership Experience I (ILE I) — This course consists of outside-the-classroom team and individual activities designed to strengthen your leadership skills. The activities complement the principles and frameworks taught in the Leadership, Ethics, and Organizations course and focus on team building, including a day at the Triangle Training Center. The expectation is that you learn more about your teammates and identify your own strengths and weaknesses as an effective team member and leader. We place a strong emphasis on leading through collaboration—one of the distinctive values in The Duke MBA culture.
- Term II Courses
Probability and Statistics — Examines structures for managerial decision making under conditions of partial information and uncertainty. After developing a foundation in probability theory, the course extends this foundation to a set of methodologies for the analysis of decision problems. Included are topics in probability, statistical inference, and regression analysis.
Financial Accounting — Introduces the types of information requirements imposed on the firm by agencies in its environment and develops an understanding of the activities of the firm within the framework of a financial accounting system designed to satisfy these information requirements. Emphasis is given to the study of financial accounting, reporting, and measurement problems from a theoretical and an applied basis, using cases and topical problems in financial accounting as a foundation for the learning experience.
Managerial Economics — This course considers how the actions of business firms, consumers, and the government—operating within a price system in a decentralized market economy—answer such basic resource allocation questions as what will be produced, how it will be produced, who will consume what is produced, and what resources to divert from present consumption to increase future consumption. The impact of various types of market structures (such as perfect competition, monopoly, and oligopoly) on economic efficiency will be discussed.
- Term III Courses
Integrative Leadership Experience II (ILE II) — The primary objective of the second ILE course is to provide experiential and classroom-based personal development opportunities in teamwork and leadership.
Decision Models — Enhances the students' ability to address complex management problems through the use of formal modeling and quantitative analysis techniques. Special emphasis is placed on decision making under conditions of uncertainty and constrained resources. Analytical techniques include decision analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, and optimization.
Marketing Management — Provides an overview of the role of marketing in organizations by acquainting students with the fundamental issues and decisions involved in planning and managing marketing activities in order to create value for customers. Attention is given to topics such as product policy, pricing, advertising and communications, marketing research, and channels of distribution. Major emphasis is placed on understanding the underlying forces that influence marketing decisions, including customer behavior, competitive marketing activity, and organizational considerations.
Managerial Accounting — Emphasizes the use of accounting information for internal purposes as opposed to the external disclosure focus of the financial accounting course. The design of management accounting systems for planning and controlling operations, and for motivating personnel is covered. The course integrates accounting with ideas from microeconomics, data analysis, finance, and operations management.
- Term IV Courses
Global Financial Management — Provides an overview of corporate finance, financial markets, portfolio diversification, and asset pricing in a global setting. Since firms must understand financial instruments and how the market views them before making decisions about which ones to use, fundamental issues and models of risk, expected return, and asset pricing are presented. Learning modules require students to examine and value bonds, stocks, derivative contracts, and capital budgeting techniques. Futures and options markets are introduced. Major corporate finance issues of debt and dividend policies are examined.
Operations Management — Covers issues in the design, planning, and control of the processes by which goods are manufactured and services are delivered. Specific topics include the analysis of production processes, the impact of variability on process performance, inventory management, lean productions, total quality management, process improvement, comparison of manufacturing and service process management, and the strategic role of operations in the firm.
Foundations of Strategy — Takes on the general manager's challenge to make sound strategic decisions under difficult conditions. Students are guided toward their own individual approaches to solving current business problems under uncertain, ambiguous, and dynamic conditions. Case analyses and guest speakers help put theory into practice, and to test solutions. Students evaluate markets and strategies, functional area integration, leadership, and implementation. Other topics include local rivalry, alliance management, capabilities, venturing, technology and market evolution, and real options.
- Term V Courses
Leadership and Development — This course addresses leadership as a topic separate from management. Effective leadership involves setting a tone, a focus, and a direction for an organization, its members, and other stakeholders. In contrast, effective management involves executing against the direction and tone set by leadership. To be effective in most business positions, we need a mixture of leadership and management, and the exact mix depends upon the situation, the role and the person. This course provides not only knowledge about leadership and its effects, but also opportunities for reflection, study, debate, and practice that provide a context within which you will learn about leadership and begin to become a more effective leader.