Course Descriptions

This course focuses on critical and analytical review of the management theories over the years from pre-Scientific Management era, to the present day. Students are encouraged to compare and contrast management theories and to examine them critically in light of their environmental context.

In this course students will learn statistical concepts used in business research situations. It is well known that any academic career involves research based on data analysis or empirical work. In today’s knowledge society there are huge amount of data and available information that can be used as part of the research process. But it is crucial to use data intelligently and correctly and extract from them significant information. During this course student will examine the most important and fundamental statistical techniques and tools that are required to support the research process. Topics include descriptive statistics and numerical measures, statistical inferences, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, regression models, and forecasting models.

The course focuses on understanding, implementing and critically evaluating the marketing concepts. The objective is to provide comprehensive explanation of the marketing concepts including target marketing, segmentation, positioning, and the marketing strategy encapsulating product, promotion place, and price strategies, and implement them in the UAE context. The core focus of the course is to develop students’ skills in critically evaluate the existing literature, identify gaps and develop conceptual framework.

The purpose of this course is to provide doctoral students with an understanding about the conceptual foundations of qualitative research methods in business studies. In this course students will be prepared in obtaining the skills, techniques and knowledge necessary to undertake an independent research in qualitative business research.

This course will cover the fundamental concepts and theories of quantitative research methods as applicable to the investigation of organizational phenomena. The students will critically evaluate the various models, designs, principles and statistical skills necessary to independently perform an empirical study. Upon completion of the course, students will gain critical skills relevant to research methodologies applied in business administration research as well as being able to differentiate between a variety of models and statistical methods used in business studies.

In this course provides deeper insights in macroeconomic theories and how to apply it in current macroeconomic problems in the UAE or GCC countries. The main topics covered in this course include income determination, determination of employment and price; fiscal and monetary policies; various theories of business cycles and economic growth. At the end of this course, students should have more understanding of macroeconomic theories and how macroeconomists address the country’s economic issues from a policy perspective.

This course prepares students to gain advanced quantitative skills necessary to analyze research data. It helps students grasp a multitude statistical models that are tailored to answer particular research question. After introducing these advanced techniques such as 2SLS, time series analysis, panel data analysis, forecasting and programing models, the course will focus to provide the students with the ability to evaluate recent empirical studies and develop practical skills which are necessary to perform independent research using statistical packages such as STATA and Smartplus.

The course provides a comprehensive introduction to empirical finance and financial markets landscape, instruments, structure, and valuation. The essential topics of the course include portfolio selection, equilibrium asset pricing, stock valuation, arbitrage pricing, fixed-income securities, derivatives, and foundations of behavioral finance. The classes will cover the central themes of modern finance including individual investment decisions under uncertainty. Upon completion of this course, students should have a clear understanding of the major concepts in finance and financial economics. The relevant tools for problem-solving will be developed and practiced in the homework assignments. All the models considered have immediate applications for real-world finance and investment decisions. The course will focus on empirical evidence and research applications and could be utilized and extended in future studies.

The main purpose of this course is to help students gain knowledge in the theoretical and substantive areas of operations and supply chain management in order to develop mastery of rigorous methods of reasoning and experimentation, to understand and evaluate the scientific literature related to its research project, and to contribute to the advancement of theoretical and applied knowledge. In sum, this course provides an introduction to the key conceptual skills and methods of supply chain management which involves the application of frameworks and mathematical modelling tools to supply chain management problems.

In this course students will learn the core elements of Business Strategy with the underlying theoretical rigor of economic theories. Competition lies at the heart of business, and doctoral students after studying this course will have the knowledge to undertake research in areas related to businesses conducted locally, regionally or globally. A selection of key areas on which students could focus their research themes for doctoral thesis could be: entry and exit strategies in a variety of markets, sources and strategies to cope with competitors, sources of competitive advantages and their sustainability, links between the strategy and structure of firms, and conducting industry analysis. This Course will also expose students to the elements of game theory principles of modern global business.

This seminar focuses on major theoretical models in discrete-time Asset Pricing. While some mathematical derivations are necessary, the emphasis will be on understanding the intuition underlying the model, and what it means for asset pricing in reality. Each session is meant to introduce students to some classic and current pieces on the topic, and to point out some additional research in the MENA region that would be valuable to students with a greater interest in topic.

The field of market microstructure is concerned with how markets operate and how transaction dynamics influence security price behavior. Market microstructure has quickly rapidly as an important subfield of finance. The studies in this are concentrate on the relationships between liquidity, volatility, market design, price discovery, and ultimately also social welfare. Different models in market microstructure offer a framework for the investigations of trading volume and price momentums. The course covers the canonical models in the field of microstructure and how they can be adjusted to investigate the effects of recent changes in market structures and trading technologies (e.g., high frequency trading). They students will also learn various relevant econometric models and how they can be applied in practice.

This course is designed to help students to critically review a wide variety of current research in finance. The course takes an attempt to find answers to questions such as: What is the anatomy of a scholarly contribution and how does one conduct research in the field of Finance? What are some of the challenges of conducting research in the field of finance?  Each session is meant to introduce you to some classic and current pieces on the topic, and to point out some additional research in MENA region that would be valuable to students with a greater interest in the topic.

This course will provide a theoretical and empirical treatment of major topics in corporate finance including capital structure, IPO (SEO), market timing, payout policy, internal capital market, CEO compensation and the market for corporate control. The purpose of the course is to acquaint students with critical issues in corporate finance and help students developing their own research topics in this particular field of finance.