Ellis University Home | About Ellis | Request Information

Print This Page

MBA in General Business Studies

To earn a MBA in General Business Studies, you'll need to complete 12 courses:

• 9 courses from the Core Curriculum
• 3 electives

Total Credits: 36

The Ellis MBA core curriculum prepares you with the skills and knowledge you need for managing individuals and running organizations. While undertaking one of Ellis University's online MBA programs, you'll learn how to design, evaluate, and improve the processes and procedures that compose businesses. You'll also learn how to put together sound business tactics and strategies that are grounded in solid economic principles.

In addition to the core courses, you'll have the opportunity to explore advanced concepts through your elective courses. Choose three courses from any of the MBA specializations. You can take courses from a single specialization or select courses according to your interests.

Whether you're searching for a distance learning MBA program, or just prefer the flexibility of online learning, Ellis MBA programs give you everything you want from a respected, online MBA school. For more information on the MBA Program, see Frequently Asked Questions.

Ellis MBA Core Curriculum

For both MBA program options, students complete nine core courses (27 credits) that explore fundamental business concepts essential for every manager.

The Ellis MBA core curriculum grounds students in business language and skills for managing individuals and organizations. Students learn how to design, evaluate, and improve the processes and procedures that constitute a business. Students also learn how to formulate sound business tactics and strategies that are grounded in solid economic principles. The core also provides a basis from which students can explore more advanced concepts through elective courses:

• MBA 500 Managing Organizations

  This course focuses on problem solving techniques that take into consideration all aspects of the organization: the people, informal organization, work, formal organization, and external culture. Students are introduced to a process to identify management problems through root-cause analysis, diagnose the causes of the problems, recommend solutions, and plan implementation (3 credits).
  

• MBA 501 Managerial Marketing

  This course focuses on analyzing the marketing environment, including customers and competition, as well as how the marketing efforts align with the strategic goals of the company. As part of the MBA curriculum, students learn to determine which customers should be targeted in the marketing effort, choose which products the company should offer, establish how and when customers will be informed about the product, determine the best pricing strategy for a product and decide the best way to get the product to market (3 credits).

• MBA 502 Economics for Managers

  Major topics in this MBA curriculum course include profit-maximization for a competitive firm, economic allocation of costs, price discrimination and other pricing strategies, pricing with market power, and an introduction to game theory (3 credits).
  

• MBA 503 Accounting for Managers

  This course focuses on how managers use corporate accounting information for making business decisions. Major topics include the use of financial statements and accounting information to determine profitability and financial performance, risk, differences in structure and business models, and the relationship of cash flow statements to the balance sheet and income statements, and the use of ratios to assess the quality of a company's accounting information, and the use of internal operating metrics (3 credits).
  

• MBA 504 Managerial Corporate Finance

  This course introduces the fundamental financial concepts managers use to make crucial corporate investment decisions. Students in the MBA curriculum will also encounter important concepts such as free cash flow and the cost of capital. Students will learn to use techniques such as net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), capital budgeting, and regression output to distinguish between systematic and unsystematic risk (3 credits).
  

• MBA 505 Operations Management

  Major topics include engineering business processes, choosing the right architecture for production systems, capacity sizing and timing, lead time management, and supply chain management (3 credits).
  

• MBA 506 Managerial Decision Models

  Many decision situations such as optimization and risk lend themselves to quantitative modeling. The first major topic is optimization using linear programming, non-linear programming and integer programming with the Excel add-in Solver. The other major topic is Monte Carlo simulation using the Excel add-in Crystal Ball to analyze decisions involving uncertainty and risk (3 credits).
  

• MBA 507 Global Environment of Business

  This course introduces the student to an integrated framework for global management. This framework focuses on the relationships between organizational structure, environment (market and non-market), and strategy-the Organization-Environment-Strategy ("OES") triangle. This approach offers managers a systematic way of thinking about basic global strategy decisions and key tradeoffs (3 credits).
  

• MBA 508 Managerial Strategy

  Part of the MBA curriculum, this course includes industry analysis, six forces analysis, identifying competitive advantages, and strategy evaluation (3 credits).