148 courses with the subject MGMT, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
MGMT 0001Principles of Management
Organizations emerge because individuals can't (or don't want to) accomplish their goals alone. Management is the art and science of helping individuals achieve their goals together. Managers in an organization determine where their organization is going and how it gets there. More formally, managers formulate strategies and implement those strategies. This 0.5 credit unit course provides a framework for understanding the opportunities and challenges involved in formulating and implementing strategies. We examine multiple aspects of how managers address their environments, strategy, structure, culture, tasks, people, and outputs, and how managerial decisions made in these various domains interrelate. The course will help you begin to understand and analyze how managers can formulate and implement strategies effectively. Please note that this 0.5 CU course does not fulfil the Wharton MGMT 1010 requirement 0.5 Course Units
Principles of Entrepreneurial Management is designed to provide students with an undergraduate-level entrepreneurship and innovation curriculum to prepare them for real-world entrepreneurial ventures. This course provides a foundational understanding of entrepreneurship, exploring the essential skills, mindset, and knowledge needed to start and grow a successful business. Topics includes idea generation, business planning, financing, marketing, and management. Learning activities include a mix of readings, discussions, and analysis of case studies on entrepreneurial decision-making. As an undergraduate-level class, I am expecting this to be a discussion-based class. That means that students will read and master core concepts on their own, so that we can devote most of our class time to discussion, synthesis, and applications/ case studies that shed light on the problems, prospects and practical applications of entrepreneurship and venture creation. Please note that this 0.5 CU course does not fulfil the Wharton MGMT 1010 requirement 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 0003AI, Technology, and the Future of Business
One of the first high-school-level courses of its kind, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Business is designed to introduce students to the science and application of artificial intelligence to emergent enterprises in the AI space. This course draws on readings and theories from technology strategy, entrepreneurship, and innovation management to help students understand the practical and societal implications of AI and digitalization beyond the technology industry. Through readings, case studies, and guest lectures, students will learn about how AI and technological developments drive entrepreneurial business strategies, innovate existing business models, and catalyze new entrepreneurial ventures. The course will also provide a general overview of different AI methods and processes and guide students toward additional opportunities for method development. Learning Objectives: •Understand the strategic importance of technology management and AI in business. •Analyze the impact of technological innovations on business models and strategies. •Develop skills for creating and managing technology- driven business ventures. •Evaluate the ethical and societal implications of AI and emerging technologies. •Apply strategic frameworks to real- world technology and entrepreneurship challenges. Please note that this 0.5 CU course does not fulfil the Wharton MGMT 1010 requirement 0.5 Course Units
From the immigrant shirtwaist sewers' strike of 1909 to the 2021 union declaration by engineers Google, MGMT004 examines imbalances of power in the workplace and responses to perceived abuses of employer power. We investigate, via an exploration of government regulations and an examination of movements like #MeToo, how government and firm- level human capital policies shape workforce inequalities of race and gender. Throughout the course, we compare the United States with other countries to assess how national institutions influence both productivity and profitability (for firms) and fairness and stability (for workers). Fall, Spring, and Summer Terms 0.5 Course Units
We all spend much of our lives in organizations. Most of us are born in organizations, educated in organizations, and work in organizations. Organizations emerge because individuals can't (or don't want to) accomplish their goals alone. Management is the art and science of helping individuals achieve their goals together. Managers in an organization determine where their organization is going and how it gets there. More formally, managers formulate strategies and implement those strategies. This course provides a framework for understanding the opportunities and challenges involved in formulating and implementing strategies by taking a "system" view of organizations,which means that we examine multiple aspects of how managers address their environments, strategy, structure, culture, tasks, people, and outputs, and how managerial decisions made in these various domains interrelate. The course will help you to understand and analyze how managers can formulate and implement strategies effectively. It will be particularly valuable if you are interested in management consulting, investment analysis, or entrepreneurship - but it will help you to better understand and be a more effective contributor to any organizations you join, whether they are large, established firms or startups. This course must be taken for a grade.
Courses offered of various topics and points of focus, ranging across multiple concentrations of Management, (i.e., Entrepreneurial, Strategy, Organizational Effectiveness, etc.).
This is an advanced course in competitive strategy. The course will apply the tools of industrial organization economics and game theory to examine the strategic decisions that managers make. We will examine those decisions concerning pricing, capacity investment, advertising, new product introductions, and research and development. Emphasis will be placed on the strategic interaction among rival sellers. In particular we will look at the various methods of entry deterrence and strategic commitment. The course will attempt to integrate traditional economic models with case study materials. In addition to prerequisites, some knowledge of microeconomics is suggested. The course will be discussion oriented and based largely on case materials and mini- lectures.
or MGMT 2670 Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation Select three course units from the set of approved courses 3 listed below: Select a minimum of one course unit from Entrepreneurial Activity Within Organizations:
The objective of this course is to study the process of entrepreneurship through the acquisition of existing operating businesses. We will study this process through a series of lectures, assigned readings, case studies, and a final project which will follow the acquisition process. Freshmen require instructor's permission. 0.5 Course Units
The course is designed to meet the needs of future managers, entrepreneurs, consultants and investors who must analyze and develop business strategies in technology-based industries. The emphasis is on learning conceptual models and frameworks to help navigate the complexity and dynamism in such industries. This is not a course in new product development or in using information technology to improve business processes and offerings. We will take a perspective of both established and emerging firms competing through technological innovations, and study the key strategic drivers of value creation and appropriation in the context of business ecosystems. There is definitely an overlap in content with other courses in intermediate microeconomics, or managerial economics. Nevertheless, the treatment is sufficiently distinctive to make it complementary to those other treatments for a student who is particularly interested in economic change, or is otherwise interested in acquiring a broader view of economics. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
MGMT 2240Leading Across Cultural and Relational Differences
Leading Across Cultural and Relational Differences is an undergraduate elective course available to Wharton students that integrates organizational behavior and management theories, focusing on how leaders can build better workplace cultures and organizations. This course builds on the foundational teamwork and leadership skills developed in MGMT 1010: Intro to Management and complements
MGMT 2280Navigating Difficult Conversations which focuses on
handling high-stakes conversations, MGMT 2380: Organizational Behavior which focuses on individual, interpersonal, and group effectiveness at work, MGMT 2390: Leading and Managing Teams which focuses on leading, managing, and functioning in task-performing teams, MGMT 2480: How to Be the Boss, which focuses on the role of the supervisor and the tasks associated with that role, and MGMT 2720: Power and Politics in Organizations, which focuses on understanding and developing political skills within organizations. By taking Leading Across Cultural and Relational Differences, students will gain the skills, knowledge, and strategies needed to lead with empathy, authenticity, and inclusivity. The course prepares aspiring leaders to leverage the power of different perspectives and positions them as change agents capable of leading in dynamic and diverse environments. Classes will be experiential and discussion-based, providing a hands-on learning experience. Readings, self-reflection, guest lectures, case studies, and a final individual or team project will also be emphasized. Thus, by the end of this course, you should be able to: 1. Evaluate the aspects of your identity and personal experiences that shape how you interact and engage with others and lead in organizations 2. Propose ways to enhance your effectiveness as a leader in diverse environments 3. Propose ways to enhance learning and effectiveness and in an organization that is wrestling with leading across cultural and relational differences
This advanced course on entrepreneurship focuses on taking your venture from a good idea to a fundable business. Participants need to come to the class with a validated idea that they are committed to pursuing commercially. The course is entirely oriented toward applying concepts and frameworks to advance your venture and provides practical guidance for testing the product or service, forming the entity, establishing partnerships, and engaging with investors. Students must have successfully completed MGMT 2300 before enrolling (or obtain the permission of the instructor). Format: Highly interactive Requirements: Class participation, interim assignments. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 8310 0.5-1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
Designed for students with a serious interest in entrepreneurship and being entrepreneurial, this course is based around action. Building on the skills of Management 2300, every class session is built around an experience where you have to put learning into practice, including the multiple simulations and by using AI. The goal is to constantly challenge you to deal with entrepreneurial or innovative experiences, as you learn to navigate complex and changing environments on the fly, applying what you learned to a variety of scenarios. This class is built to be challenging and will require a desire to deal with ambiguous and shifting circumstances, where the meaning is not always clear upfront. MGMT 2300 is recommended but not required. 0.5 Course Units
The course is designed to meet the needs of the future managers, entrepreneurs, consultants and investors who must analyze and develop business strategies in technology-based industries. The emphasis is on learning conceptual models and frameworks to help navigate the complexity and dynamism in such industries. This is not a course in new product development or in using information technology to improve business processes and offerings. We will take a perspective of both established and emerging firms competing through technological innovations, and study the key strategic drivers of value creation and appropriation in the context of business ecosystems. In addition to prerequisites, this course is exclusively reserved for Management and Technology students.
Learn to build, structure, and run teams for the full range of work they do – from decision-making to coordination to creating creative synergy and efficiencies. Through a series of dynamic immersions in trading floors, factories, military conflicts, natural disasters, and fabrication mock-ups, you will develop a visceral and memorable understanding of what teams need to thrive and how to avoid the predictable forces that derail them. This course is built to change how you engage and lead teams for the rest of your academic and professional career. 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 2410Leading for Impact: Tackling the Biggest Societal Challenges
Inequality. Poverty. Racism. Climate change. COVID. Violence. Crime. And so much more. The list of societal challenges in the United States and around the globe is daunting. Like many other students, you may hope to make a positive difference in the world. But, where and how? This course is designed to help you begin to answer this question. We will meet with for-profit and nonprofit leaders working to make a difference, drawing lessons from their successes, failures, evolution, and resilience. We will read and discuss rigorous social science research that ensures that we move from hunches to facts, from simplistic and ineffective solutions to systems knowledge. We will investigate impact measurement strategies, asking “What is feasible and beneficial to monitor and measure, and why?” And, we will take a deep dive into two of the complex societal challenges facing the US States today: (1) barriers to college access, completion, and post-college employment; and (2) barriers to employment following incarceration. 1 Course Unit
MGMT 2430Work and Technology: Choices and Outcomes
That technology affects work is a commonplace - but we accept technology’s impact too readily as inevitable and unchangeable. This 0.5 CU course challenges the mindset of technological determinism and explores what choice points are available to managers implementing new technologies as well as the engineers who design them. • Module 1: “Technology and Its Impact on Jobs and Skills” considers which technologies deserve the characterization of “revolutionary” due to their capacity to change entire organizations – and even societies — vs. those that only substitute narrowly for past technologies. We’ll examine past anxieties related to automation and evaluate the extent to which the “worst-case” scenarios about employment loss have or have not come to pass – and evaluate claims of “this time it’s different”. • Module 2: “Intelligent Technologies: How Will They Affect Work and Organizations?” explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing core “managing people” activities (e.g., hiring and performance appraisal) – plus shifting the locus of management away from human bosses and into algorithms. We’ll examine controversies around “gig work”, i.e., the positives of worker schedule flexibility vs. the negatives of algorithmic control. We’ll also consider the metaverse and its potential for unleashing human creativity and fostering richer and more nuanced virtual communication - as well as providing organizations with new ways to monitor and control. • Module 3: “Technology and Policy” examines three policy issues. First, how can we inject more ethical criteria into the development of artificial intelligence and algorithms affecting work? Second, what are the pros and cons of “universal basic income”, whose premise is that technological change will soon lead to an unprecedented amount of job elimination? Third, how does “technology make us dumber”? How can we avoid the obsolescence of critical human skills? Take this course to be ready to manage the strategic and analytic issues involving the design and implementation of technology at work - and for a preview of your own future work life. Requirements include: class participation; in-class quizzes; interviewing someone you know to ask how technology has affected their work life; and the “In Hindsight” group assignment looking back on past scares about a particular technology’s impact on work - and what actually happened.
Despite the press accounts about the "gig" economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates that about 92 percent of the people working in the US are employees who are supervised by someone. That figure has remained roughly the same for decades. The term "supervisor" is sometimes used for the first-level of supervision in an organization, but in fact that role - and indeed the title ? goes all the way up to the very top of any employer organization. Even CEO's are the supervisor of their direct reports. When people talk about their "boss," they almost always are referring to the person who supervises them. Stepping into a supervisor position is challenging, exceptionally so the first time. Thattime comes relatively soon for Wharton grads. Undergrads pursuing consulting jobs typically find themselves supervising new hires by their third year, those working for corporations find themselves in those roles even sooner. Roughly three-quarters of our MBA students report that they had been required to supervise subordinates after college and before arriving here. In this class, we examine the role of the supervisor and the unique tasks associated with performing that role. We pay special attention to the unique challenges of taking on that role for the first time. Not Offered Every Year 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
MGMT 2640Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Management
This course focuses on venture capital management issues in the context of a high-growth potential start-up company. The course is motivated by rapid increases in both the supply of and demand for private equity over the past two decades. The topic is addressed from two distinct perspectives: issues that relate to the demand for private equity and venture capital (the entrepreneur's perspective) on the one hand, and issues that relate to the supply of capital (the investor's perspective) on the other. As well, we will address management issues that relate to how the VC and the entrepreneur work together once an investment has been made, compensation issues, and governance issues in the privately held venture capital backed company. Format: Case/discussion format, supplemented by lectures and guest speakers.
MGMT 2670Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation
Building a new firm around technology innovation can mean different choices and challenges for entrepreneurs. The goals and outcomes of technology entrepreneurship vary as much as the innovations that inspire them. MGMT 267 will take you through the questions that entrepreneurs should address as they go from a technology innovation idea to founding and funding a tech startup. The course will appeal to individuals who have a desire to become technology entrepreneurs at some stage of their career, as well as others interested in the startup ecosystem such as investors, early employees, other professional service providers, etc. Through a combination of individual and team work, you will examine what is different when technology is at the core of an entrepreneurial opportunity and how to move a technology-based venture forward. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
While we often debate capitalism as a system, the nature of capitalist economies differ from country to country and rarely match up to the ideal. Why do these differences arise? Is there a pure form of capitalism? What is the nature of capitalism in advanced and emerging economies? e Why are capitalist economies often embedded in other social systems? Why do some economies grow faster than others? How do international institutions and interdependencies affect national capitalist institutions? How are the strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs) influenced by their country of origin? And how is the nature of capitalism changing today? This course provides insight into these questions as it explores the nature of capitalism around the world, with specific reference to Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, China, Hungary, Nigeria, South Africa, Singapore, Israel, Argentina, and the advanced OECD countries. Students will leave this class with understanding key differences in how capitalist economies are organized and competition over the future of the world economy. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 8750 1 Course Unit
Digital businesses enable users to communicate, interact, share, and engage in transactions. They enable individuals to shop, work, play, and learn, and they offer companies new ways of organizing their value chains, reaching customers, collecting and analyzing information, and creating value. This half-semester, 0.5-cu class deals with the international expansion of businesses through the use of digital technologies. The focus is on the tension between the eminent scalability facilitated by digital technologies and the ruggedness of the international landscape, shaped as it is by demographics, consumer preferences, culture, regulatory structures, and network effects operating at the local, national, regional, and global levels. The class covers both companies launched as digital businesses and traditional companies undergoing a digital transformation. Topics include industry dynamics, the impact of network effects, the sequence of foreign market entry, regulatory risk, strategic interaction, and global versus local strategies for both new digital businesses and established firms undergoing digital transformation. While there are no specific requirements, knowledge of the fundamental concepts of competitive strategy and global strategy is essential to follow this class. Students will learn through interactive class discussions, team-based exercises, and self-made short videos to pitch novel new ideas about digital businesses. 0.5-1 Course Unit
This course examines the art and science of negotiation, with additional emphasis on conflict resolution. Students will engage in a number of simulated negotiations ranging from simple one-issue transactions to multi-party joint ventures. Through these exercises and associated readings, students explore the basic theoretical models of bargaining and have an opportunity to test and improve their negotiation skills.
This course is designed to teach negotiation principles and to enable students to develop their negotiation skills. This course assumes familiarity with the basic negotiation concepts covered in the prerequisite for this course: Negotiations. In this course, we extend the study and practice of negotiations and we develop a deeper understanding for how specific aspects of the negotiation process (e.g., emotions, deadlines, trust violations) impact outcomes. Through course lectures, readings, and case exercises, students will develop a rich framework for thinking about the negotiation process and acquire tools for guiding the negotiation process.
This course examines the use of data to understand and improve how people are managed in organizations. People really are organizations' most important asset, providing the critical link in converting strategy and capital into value. Yet throughout most of our history, most organizations have relied on long-standing traditions, hear-say, political expedience, prejudice and gut instinct to make decisions about how those people should be managed. Recent years have seen a growing movement to bring more science to how we manage people. In some cases, that means ensuring that whatever practices and approaches we adopt are backed up by solid evidence as to their effectiveness. Often, organizations will seek to go further, analyzing their own data to identify problems and learn what is working and what is not in their own context. This course applies the insights of the people analytics movement to help students become better managers and more critical analysts within their organizations. The course aims to develop students in three specific ways. First, it will provide students with an up-to-the-minute grounding in current evidence about managing people, providing a knowledge base that can ensure that their future management is guided by best practices. Second, we will develop the skills and understanding necessary to be thoughtful, critical consumers of evidence on people management, allowing them to make the most of the analysis available to them as they make people decisions. Third, we will provide guidance and practice in conducting people analytics, preparing students to gather data of their own, and making them more skilled analysts. We will pursue these goals through a mixture of lecture, case discussion, and hands on exploration of a variety of data sets.
Senior Capstone One course with attribute WUCP required (https://catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/ wucp/) Please visit https://undergrad-inside.wharton.upenn.edu/ senior-capstone (https://undergrad- inside.wharton.upenn.edu/senior-capstone/) for more information.
Do you want to make a real difference in the lives of a student? Do you want to set kids on a path to becoming financially literate? Do you want to learn leadership skills in the classroom? Here at the Financial Literacy Community Project (FLCP) we are able to create an experience that achieves all three. We partner with various public schools around the West Philadelphia area and teach concepts integral to financial literacy. We teach a wide range of grades from middle school to high school, and work with students to help them learn how to be financially responsible. In addition to teaching in neighboring high schools, we also have group class meetings run by Professor Keith Weigelt on Mondays from 7:00 PM-8:30 PM. We learn about the disparity of wealth and how to best address it while also learning teaching techniques, classroom strategies, and overall basic financial literacy. A basic understanding of personal financial literacy is required. This is an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course. 1 Course Unit
Entrepreneurial ventures have a unique role to play in addressing major challenges like climate change because their ability to attract capital and rapidly scale creates the potential for impact at a scale that cannot be easily matched by governments and non-profit sector organizations. This class offers students the chance to contribute directly to such efforts by working on focused projects with real early-stage startups. To this end, the class brings together three distinct communities: Startup founders; students, and; professional mentors (senior industry, investing, and content area specialists) to collaborate in ways that have the potential to advance real change. NOTE: The lab in Fall 2026 will focus on ventures that are working in various industries, but with a shared focus on developing innovative approaches to address climate change and environmental sustainability. You do not need to have a background in climate or sustainability, just an interest in learning in these domains. Projects will be defined by the startup founder(s) in collaboration with the course instructor. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 8880 AND MGMT 3010 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
People are the most valuable asset of any business, but they are also the most unpredictable, and the most difficult, asset to manage. And although managing people well is critical to the health of any organization, most managers don't get the training they need to make good management decisions. Now, award-winning authors and renowned management Professors Mike Useem and Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School have designed this course to introduce you to the key elements of managing people. Based on their popular course at Wharton, this course will teach you how to motivate individual performance and design reward systems, how to design jobs and organize work for high performance, how to make good and timely management decisions, and how to design and change the your organization's architecture. By the end of this course, you'll have developed the skills you need to start motivating, organizing, and rewarding people in your organization so that you can thrive as a business and as a social organization. This course can also only be applied towards unrestricted electives at the undergraduate level. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 7980 0.25 Course Units
This course seeks to address a gap at the core of contemporary entrepreneurship: despite a growing desire to pursue prosocial goals and affect positive change in the world, most founders have little understanding of how to measure, manage, and scale their impact. This creates the risk that financial goals will play an outsized role in decision- making, particularly as the venture scales, leading founders to drift away from social impact aims - or to pursue goals that fail to deliver on their intended impacts. MGMT 401 fulfils the Wharton capstone requirement with a hands-on approach to addressing these issues. Students will work hand-in-hand with the founding teams of pre-selected startups from the Wharton venture community to develop a strategy for measuring social impact, and ensuring fidelity to social goals as the venture goes to market and begins to scale. Projects will be group-based, and will ask students to integrate learnings on social enterprise, impact measurement, and impact investing, with prior coursework on entrepreneurship, social impact, business ethics, leadership, team dynamics, and venture finance. Students will leave the class with a deeper appreciation of the potential for business to be a force for good in the world, and the difficulties that this can pose during the founding and growth stages of a new business. The class will be of value to students who are interested in creating socially impactful businesses, as well as to those who want to work in the ecosystem that supports such ventures (e.g., consulting, or impact investing). 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 4020 builds on the foundation established by the pre-requisites in the Leadership Journey. As seniors, you will draw on the self-awareness you acquired in WH1010, the speaking skills you practiced in WH2010, and the teamwork and interpersonal skills you honed in MGMT3010. Moreover, MGMT 4020 serves as a capstone course by giving you the opportunity to work with a robust nonprofit and in order to frame the problems and address the challenges your host organization faces; in the process, you will use your creative and critical thinking skills, apply what you have learned, and reflect on your growth and development through iterative feedback and constructive coaching. As a highly experiential course, MGMT 4020 is relatively unstructured, giving you ample opportunity to demonstrate leadership by providing direction and teamwork by pulling together to deliver results for your host. MGMT 4020 will enable you to draw on your Wharton undergraduate education and apply what you have learned in a way that promises to provide real impact for your host organization and a meaningful and memorable experience for you. It is only open to Wharton seniors. In short, MGMT 4020 gives Wharton seniors the opportunity to: - Engage in a service learning and experiential course - Demonstrate leadership and work as a team on a real, host engagement - Think creatively, critically, and practically for the benefit of your host - Refine your interpersonal communication and presentation skills - Heighten your self-awareness through feedback and reflection.
MGMT 6240Leading Across Cultural and Relational Differences
Leading Across Cultural and Relational Differences is an MBA elective course available to Wharton students that integrates organizational behavior and management theories, focusing on how leaders can build better workplace cultures and organizations. This course builds on the foundational teamwork and leadership skills developed in MGMT 6100: Foundations of Teamwork and Leadership and complements MGMT 6710: Executive Leadership, which emphasizes leading teams effectively, and MGMT 7720: Power and Politics in Organizations, which focuses on understanding and developing political skills within organizations. By taking Leading Across Cultural and Relational Differences, students will gain the skills, knowledge, and strategies needed to lead with empathy, authenticity, and inclusivity. The course prepares aspiring leaders to leverage the power of different perspectives and positions them as change agents capable of leading in dynamic and diverse environments. Classes will be experiential and discussion-based, providing a hands-on learning experience. Readings, self-reflection, guest lectures, case studies, and a final individual or tea project will also be emphasized. Thus, by the end of this course, you should be able to: 1. Evaluate the aspects of your identity and personal experiences that shape how you interact and engage with others and lead in organizations 2. Propose ways to enhance your effectiveness as a leader in diverse environments 3. Propose ways to enhance learning and effectiveness and in an organization that is wrestling with leading across cultural and relational differences Not Offered Every Year 0.5 Course Units
The Global Immersion Program is a pass/fail, 0.5 credit course that is designed to provide students with an in-depth exposure to international business practices and first-hand insights into a foreign culture. In past years, programs were offered in India, the Middle East, China, South America, Southeast, Asia, and Africa. The program offers students the opportunity to learn about a foreign business environment by way of academic lectures and a multi-week study tour, allowing students to visit with corporate and government officials, network with alumni, and take cultural excursions.
The course is built around lectures reviewing multiple empirical studies, class discussion,and a few cases. Depending on the instructor, grading is determined by some combination of short written assignments, tests, class participation and a final project (see each instructor's syllabus for details).
This course examines the art and science of negotiation, with additional emphasis on conflict resolution. Students will engage in a number of simulated negotiations ranging from simple one-issue transactions to multi-party joint ventures. Through these exercises and associated readings, students explore the basic theoretical models of bargaining and have an opportunity to test and improve their negotiation skills. Cross- listed with MGMT 6910/OIDD 6910/LGST 8060. Format: Lecture, class discussion, simulation/role play, and video demonstrations. Materials: Textbook and course pack.
This is a course the builds on the basic Negotiation course. In this course, we explore a wide range of negotiation topics from crisis and hostage negotiations, to the role of emotions including anxiety, envy and anger in negotiations, to backlash effects for women in negotiations, and the role of alcohol in negotiations. We will survey many aspects of current negotiation research, discuss historic negotiation cases, and students will participate in role-play exercises. Many of the role play exercises wil involve multi-party negotiations and afford opportunities to hone skills in team-based negotiations.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the negotiation landscape. From AI-assisted preparation and analytics to negotiating directly with algorithmic counterparts, negotiators increasingly interact with intelligent systems rather than solely with other humans. This course examines how AI is reshaping negotiation planning, process, and outcomes. Students will learn when and how AI meaningfully improves negotiation outcomes, when it undermines them, and how to integrate AI responsibly and strategically into real-world negotiations.
This course is concerned with strategy issues at the business unit level. Its focus is on the question of how firms can create and sustain a competitive advantage. A central part of the course deals with concepts that have been developed around the notions of complementarities and fit. Other topics covered in the course include the creation of competitive advantage through commitment, competitor analysis, different organizational responses to environmental changes, modularity, and increasing returns. An important feature of the course is a term- length project in which groups of students work on firm analyses that require the application of the course concepts. 0.5 Course Units University of Pennsylvania Catalog 2227
MGMT 7150Political Environment of the Multinational Firm
All successful firms go global. This course provides a broad introduction to international business. You will learn about who loses and who gains from trade, what are the effects of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, the World Trade Organization (WTO), regional trading blocs, and NAFTA. The course then turns to the international financial architecture, focusing on exchange rate risk. We then move to multinational firm strategies, including a discussion of the reasons for why firms choose to do business globally through trade or FDI, international tax strategy, joint ventures, technology transfer, different ways to be a multinational firm, and ethical dilemmas. The class is a mix of lectures and cases that allow students to synthesize the extensive materials on multinational management, international institutions, economic policies, and politics with a goal towards formulating multinational firm strategy. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
MGMT 7170Deals: The Economic Structure of Transactions
This course focuses on the role of professionals, including lawyers of all types (corporate, tax, securities, etc.), direct private equity investor corporate business development officers, and investment bankers, in creating value through transaction engineering. The overall goal of the course is to explore how private parties could order their commercial interactions, to develop a theory of how they ought to do this, and to gain a thorough understanding of how business deals are actually done. The course is offered in springtime terms only. The long first half of the course is devoted to analyzing impediments to transacting, including asymmetric information, exogenous risk and uncertainty, difficulties intrinsic to contracting over time, enforceability, and various forms of strategic behavior, all with a view to understanding the logic of the variety of techniques used to ameliorate them and more broadly to create distributable value through transaction structuring. These Part I classes are accompanied by exercises of various sorts. In the second part of the course, student teams apply the conceptual tools and techniques developed in the first half to analyzing the fine detail of a series of recently completed and interestingly complex transactions. Each team is given access to the original documents implementing their deal. A week of class time is devoted to each transaction. In the first (Monday) session, the student teams present their deal to the class, laying out strategic motivations, analyzing key structuring moves, and exploring the advantages and disadvantages of proceeding in the way the participants did. In the second, on the Wednesday, one or (usually) more of the professionals who worked on it will present the deal from the participant perspective, address the always interesting process questions, and take questions from the class. The requirements for the class are regular attendance, active participation in class discussions, a series of homework assignments and a short individual paper in Part I, the group presentation project and a group memorandum from each deal team on what there was to be learned from the Wednesday presentation their week in Part II, and a six-hour take-home exam. 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
MGMT 7210Corporate Development: Mergers and Acquisitions
This interactive, applied, and case-based course explores the various modes of corporate development available to managers to drive firm growth and change, including alliances, outsourcing, corporate venturing, and particularly mergers and acquisitions. The objectives are three-fold: (1) to arm the student with a set of tools to facilitate the selection of the appropriate growth strategy in a given situation; (2) to provide insights as to how to manage partnerships like alliances, outsourcing, and corporate venturing; and, (3) to develop a comprehensive framework for executing M&As, from initiation to implementation. The emphasis is on strategic and operational aspects of these transactions, rather than financial considerations. Please note that you must fulfill the prerequisites in order to enroll in this class.
MGMT 7230Strategy and Environmental Sustainability
Environmental sustainability issues are one of the defining problems of our time. While governments and NGOs will have to play important roles, without active involvement of businesses it will be impossible to make sufficient progress on these issues. Globalization and Digitization have been two major disruptive developments that organizations have faced (and are still facing). ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) issues are the latest large-scale development that will shape companies’ futures. This course will focus on the “E” of ESG. As with any large change, environmental sustainability poses significant business challenges but also tremendous opportunities. We will study these issues both from the perspective of incumbent firms that have to adapt their business practices and from firms (incumbents and new start-ups) that will take advantage of the new opportunities that are being created. 0.5-1 Course Unit
MGMT 7280Navigating Difficult Conversations in Business and Beyond
Learn the skills to navigate difficult conversations that arise in personal and professional settings. Whether it’s resolving team conflicts, giving constructive feedback, repairing a rift at work or at home, or addressing tough organizational challenges, this course equips you with the tools to communicate effectively and build stronger relationships. You’ll explore key concepts, strategies, and research on managing emotional triggers and handling high-stakes conversations. Through readings, discussions, and role-playing exercises, you’ll gain confidence in identifying what makes conversations succeed or fail, preparing for tough talks, and improving your ability to foster positive outcomes in work, relationships, and communities. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 2280 0.5 Course Units
The course is designed to meet the needs of future managers, entrepreneurs, consultants and investors who must analyze and develop business strategies in technology-based industries. The emphasis is on learning conceptual models and frameworks to help navigate the complexity and dynamism in such industries. This is not a course in new product development or in using information technology to improve business processes and offerings. We will take a perspective of both established and emerging firms competing through technological innovations, and study the key strategic drivers of value creation and appropriation in the context of business ecosystems. The course uses a combination of cases, simulation and readings. The cases are drawn primarily from technology-based industries. Note, however, that the case discussions are mainly based on strategic (not technical) issues. Hence, a technical background is not required for fruitful participation. 0.5-1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 2229
MGMT 7430Work and Technology: Choices and Outcomes
This course is situated at the intersection of technological and social/ human issues involving work. The first module “Technology and Its Impact on Jobs and Skills” considers the types of technologies whose impact concerns us and probes which deserve the characterization of “revolutionary”. We’ll examine past anxieties related to automation and evaluate the extent to which the “worst-case” scenarios about, for example, employment loss have or have not come to pass. In the process, we’ll sharpen our lens for which technological changes have effects on entire organizations rather than simply individual jobs. The second module “Intelligent Technologies: How Will They Affect Work and Organizations?” explores how these technologies are changing the structure, performance, and experience of work amid changes in how organizations are managing people. We consider how these technologies provide managers new ways to enact control and to induce commitment – and how workers (both employees and contractors) react. In the third module “Technology and Policy” we will examine the ethics of algorithms and artificial intelligence, proposals for a “universal basic income” (UBI) premised on the idea that technological change will lead to an unprecedented amount of job displacement, and the premise that “technology makes us dumber” by taking tasks away that have helped humans maintain a certain level of competence. Take this course to be ready to manage the strategic and analytic issues involving the design and implementation of technology at work - and if you want a glimpse into the future of your own work life. Students will be evaluated on class participation, in-class quizzes, written work and a group assignment. 0.5 Course Units
Researchers and practitioners alike are fascinated by the organizations, people, culture and practices of the tech sector. This course provides a broad survey of these issues through four days on and near campus at Wharton | San Francisco. Our program features a wide set of prominent Wharton alumni who will offer perspectives on entrepreneurship, tech investment, and innovation in the region through panels and workshops, plus a field visit. This course takes an integrative approach, anchored by interactions with practitioners throughout our time in SF. Students engage with ideas both as individuals and through a Team Project aligned to a specific firm. Through this process, students gain an appreciation for the complexity of determining whether an insight, strategy, or lesson would generalize to a different case. 0.5 Course Units
"If you want to test a (person's) character, give (him/her) power." These famous words articulate one of the many tensions of exercising power. Regardless of whether you have an appetite for power or disdain it, power and politics are likely to play an important role in your career. The purpose of this course is to introduce you to concepts that are useful for understanding, analyzing, and developing your political skill. But beyond discovering ways to extend your own power in organizations, we will also uncover lessons about ways in which power and politics can blind you, and how to navigate situations in which you are up against powerful people. Using a range of scholarly articles, cases, exercises, assessments and simulations, we will extract a variety of lessons relevant to your role in organizations. Topics include diagnosing power in organizations, building coalitions, change management, understanding networks, coping with intolerable bosses and incivility, and downsizing. Students will be expected to engage in field research for their coursework and final paper, and the course requires that students submit assignments for almost every class session. Thematically, this course highlights how your relationships with organizational stakeholders and an understanding of the organizational context are crucial to successfully navigating the political terrain of oganizations. Organizations are inherently political arenas that require social astuteness, and an understanding of the "rules of the game." This course is designed for students aiming to develop their leadership, general management and career skills through a better understanding of power and politics, and relates to other courses on these topics in the Management department. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
Much more is known about strategy formulation than its implementation, yet valid, sensible strategies often fail because of problems on the implementation side. This course provides you with tools to turn good strategy into successful reality. It covers the choices, structure, and conditions that enable the successful attainment of strategic objectives. Students learn from rigorous academic research on successful implementation, as well as a series of seasoned business leaders who will visit to share their own experience from the front lines. 0.5-1 Course Unit
The growing field of impact investing, which now encompasses over $1.5 trillion USD in assets under management worldwide, relies on impact measurement to assess the social and environmental effects of investments. This course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of impact measurement frameworks, tools, and implementation strategies, as well as an understanding of how impact measurement fits within the broader context of impact investing strategy and processes. Through a combination of conceptual frameworks, case discussions, and hands-on exercises, students will develop the skills needed to design and implement effective impact measurement systems. 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 7850Geo-Economics: Strategies for an Era of Great Power Rivalry
and Political Polarization Corporate and financial leaders, as well as governments, must navigate complex economic and geopolitical dynamics in an interconnected and increasingly volatile global landscape. This course explores some of the key strategic issues impacting business operations and investment strategies in the context of reverse-globalization, protectionism, inflation deficits and debt, and geopolitical competition. Also Offered As: BEPP 7850 0.5 Course Units
Digital businesses enable users to communicate, interact, share, and engage in transactions. They enable individuals to shop, work, play, and learn, and they offer companies new ways of organizing their value chains, reaching customers, collecting and analyzing information, and creating value. This half-semester, 0.5-cu class deals with the international expansion of businesses through the use of digital technologies. The focus is on the tension between the eminent scalability facilitated by digital technologies and the ruggedness of the international landscape, shaped as it is by demographics, consumer preferences, culture, regulatory structures, and network effects operating at the local, national, regional, and global levels. The class covers both companies launched as digital businesses and traditional companies undergoing a digital transformation. Topics include industry dynamics, the impact of network effects, the sequence of foreign market entry, regulatory risk, strategic interaction, and global versus local strategies for both new digital businesses and established firms undergoing digital transformation. While there are no specific requirements, knowledge of the fundamental concepts of competitive strategy and global strategy is essential to follow this class. Students will learn through interactive clas discussions, team-based exercises, and self-made short videos to pitch novel new ideas about digital businesses. 0.5-1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 2231
This course primarily relies on case studies to explore China’s market environment, the expanding global footprint of Chinese enterprises, and China’s economic relations with the world. Students will not only acquire contextual intelligence related to China’s domestic market, but also a series of frameworks for thinking about competition within it and with , Chinese businesses at home and abroad. We consider questions such as what, if anything, distinguishes the Chinese market? How do Chinese firms innovate? How does China’s political system influence market strategy? How do private firms thrive in China, including foreign-owned businesses? We will also discuss the growing use of economic statecraft, its impact on global competition, and U.S.-China economic relations, especially. Against this backdrop, students will not only explore leading ideas in strategic management, organizational behavior, and global competition, but also deepen their understanding of the geopolitics that influence international business decision-making today. Students with a general interest in doing business in emerging markets, the impact of national innovation systems, managing government-business relations, and the rise of emerging market multinationals will benefit from exposure to the issues and case studies presented in this class. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 2880 1 Course Unit
This course examines the use of data to improve how people are managed within organizations. Recent years have seen a growing movement to bring more science to how we manage people. In some cases, that means ensuring that whatever practices and approaches we adopt are backed up by solid evidence as to their effectiveness. Often, organizations will seek to go further, analyzing their own data to identify problems and learn what is working and what is not in their own context. This course applies the insights of the people analytics movement to help students become better managers and more critical analysts within their organizations. The course aims to develop students in three specific ways. First, it provides students with an up-to-the-minute grounding in current evidence about managing people, providing a knowledge base that can ensure that their future management is guided by best practices. Second, it develops the skills and understanding necessary to be thoughtful, critical consumers of evidence on people management, allowing them to make the most of the analysis available to them as they make people decisions. Third, it provides guidance and practice in conducting people analytics, preparing students to gather data of their own, and making them more skilled analysts. The course addresses these topics through a mixture of lecture, case discussion, and hands on exploration of a variety of data sets. Also Offered As: OIDD 7930 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 7940Understanding Careers and Executive Labor Markets
This course examines the structure of executive careers in order to help understand how those careers can be managed most effectively. By drawing on extensive economic, sociological and psychological research on careers, we will examine such questions as when executives should move on to the next job or evenchange fields altogether, and what are effective means of finding jobs, achieving promotions, managing networks, and achieving work-life balance. The first few sessions of the course explore the basic building blocks of the career, outlining our knowledge on the different orientations that individuals take to their careers, how approaches to the career change as people get older, and how different kinds of job moves within and across firms advance careers. The second part of the course explores in more detail the social resources that affect careers, notably social networks and relationships with mentors. The third section of the course then examines a number of the most important and difficult issues affecting modern careers, including making successful transitions, the effects of gender on careers, work life balance, and international careers. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
People are the most valuable asset of any business, but they are also the most unpredictable, and the most difficult, asset to manage. And although managing people well is critical to the health of any organization, most managers don't get the training they need to make good management decisions. Now, award-winning authors and renowned management Professors Mike Useem and Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School have designed this course to introduce you to the key elements of managing people. Based on their popular course at Wharton, this course will teach you how to motivate individual performance and design reward systems, how to design jobs and organize work for high performance, how to make good and timely management decisions, and how to design and change the your organization's architecture. By the end of this course, you'll have developed the skills you need to start motivating, organizing, and rewarding people in your organization so that you can thrive as a business and as a social organization. This course can also only be applied towards unrestricted electives at the undergraduate level. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 3980 0.25 Course Units
Courses offered of various topics and points of focus, ranging across multiple concentrations of Management, (i.e., Entrepreneurial, Strategy, Organizational Business, etc.). Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 1980 0.25-1 Course Unit
Designed for students with a serious interest in entrepreneurship, this course will provide you with an advanced theoretical foundation and a set of practical tools for the management of startups and entrepreneurial teams in fast-changing and innovative environments. Building on the skills of MGMT 801, every class session is built around an experience where you have to put learning into practice, including the award-winning Looking Glass entrepreneurial simulation, role-playing exercises, and a variety of other games and simulations. The goal is to constantly challenge you to deal with entrepreneurial or innovative experiences, as you learn to navigate complex and changing environments on the fly, applying what you learned to a variety of scenarios. MGMT 802 is built to be challenging and will require a desire to deal with ambiguous and shifting circumstances. It is recommended students take MGMT 801 before enrolling in this course. Format: Lectures, discussion, interim reports, class participation, readings report, and presentations, and an innovation assessment in PowerPoint format. 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 8040Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Management
This elective half-semester course focuses on venture capital management issues in the context of the typical high-growth potential early stage start-up company. The course is fundamentally pragmatic in its outlook. It will cover seven principal areas relevant to the privatel held high-growth start-up which include: commentary on the venture capital industry generally, as well as a discussion of the typical venture fund structure and related venture capital objectives and investment strategies; common organizational issues encountered in the formation of a venture backed start-up, including issues relating to initial capitalization, intellectual property and early stage equity arrangements; valuation methodologies that form the basis of the negotiation between the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist in anticipation of a venture investment; the challenges of fundraising, financing strategies and the importance of the business plan and the typical dynamics that play out between VC and entrepreneur. It is recommended students take MGMT 801 before enrolling in this course. typical investment terms found in the term sheet and the dynamics of negotiation between the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist; compensation practices in a venture capital backed company; and corporate governance in the context of a privately- held, venture capital-backed start-up company and the typical dynamics that play out between VC and entrepreneur in an insider-led, "down round" financing. 0.5 Course Units University of Pennsylvania Catalog 2233
y MGMT 811 focuses on the theoretical, strategic, analytics, and practical issues of acquiring a business. Topics include: locating a business, due diligence, reviewing and analyzing data, valuation, raising capital/ financing the deal, search funds, structuring the acquisition, letters of intent, contracts/asset purchase agreements, integrating the target, acquisition growth strategies, and transitioning/exiting the acquisition. Format: The class consists of lectures, in-class discussions of cases, assigned readings, homework problems, case studies, and a group or individual project. It is recommended students take MGMT 801 before enrolling in this course. 0.5 Course Units
This is a course on creating a business to attack a social problem and thereby accomplish both social impact and financial sustainability. For this course, social entrepreneurship is defined as entrepreneurship used to profitably confront social problems. This definition therefore views social entrepreneurship as a distinct alternative to public sector initiatives. The basic thesis is that many social problems, if looked at through an entrepreneurial lens, create opportunity for someone to launch a venture that generates profits by alleviating that social problem. This sets in motion a virtuous cycle - the entrepreneur is incented to generate more profits and in so doing, the more the profits made, the more the problem is alleviated. Even if it is not possible to eventually create a profit-making enterprise, the process of striving to do so can lead to a resource-lean not-for-profit entity. Creating a profitable social entrepreneurship venture is by no means a simple challenge. Cross-listed with MGMT 212.
MGMT 8130Vibefounding: Launching a Business with AI
Vibefounding is an immersive, hands on course in which students create AI enabled startups. The opening sessions teach foundational prompt engineering and agentic workflows across multiple AI providers. By the fourth session, the focus shifts to entrepreneurial practice—idea generation, customer discovery, prototyping and business modelling— where AI is used to accelerate the traditional startup timeline. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
The objective of this course is to study the path to entrepreneurship through the acquisition of an existing operating business using the Search Fund private equity model. We will study the process through a series of lectures, guest presentations, assigned readings, case studies, and a final project. 0.5 Course Units
This course examines various business disciplines as they apply to the sports industry. The course provides the student with an overview of the business of the intercollegiate, Olympic and professional sports enterprises. In addition, the course investigates the business related issues encountered by managers of sports organizations and covers how business principles can be applied to effectively address these issues.
MGMT 8160Building Human Assets in Entrepreneurial Ventures
The success of entrepreneurial endeavors depends, even more so than in larger more bureaucratic organizations, on the ability to locate and manage talent effectively. Specifically, on the need to find the right people and keep them engaged in working on the organization's goals. We focus in this course on leading, building, and maintaining human assets in start-up and small, growing operations. The course is designed with several key components, these are: conceptual and practical readings relevant to the topic; case studies illustratng key concepts and issues; lecture on practical application and examples; and lastly every class will also feature a presentation by and conversation with an outside expert whose work is relevant to guiding or advising start-ups and fast- growing small firms. We will focus on the following objectives: identifying the talent needed to initiate and sustain an entrepreneurial endeavor; structuring human resource policies and corporate culture to prepare for and facilitate firm growth; assessing the human aspects of valuing entrepreneurial companies; and responding to conflict and organizational threats within nascent firms. This course will apply recent research from strategic human resource management, personnel economics and organizational behavior to the practical issues of building and managing human assets in new ventures. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
This advanced course on entrepreneurship focuses on taking your venture from a good idea to a fundable business. Participants need to come to the class with a validated idea that they are committed to pursuing commercially. The course is entirely oriented toward applying concepts and frameworks to advance your venture and provides practical guidance for testing the product or service, forming the entity, establishing partnerships, and engaging with investors. Students must have successfully completed MGMT 801 before enrolling (or obtain the permission of the instructor). Format: Highly interactive Requirements: Class participation, interim assignments. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 2310 0.5-1 Course Unit
The purpose of this course is to provide senior managers, executives, consultants, investors, and entrepreneurs with a toolkit to understand how to formulate successful strategies in highly uncertain and dynamic environments. Firms in dynamic environments face substantial technological change, rapidly evolving competitive threats, and uncertainty around customer needs and demands. This course provides a set of frameworks and theories which provide clarity and perspective to otherwise difficult and complex business decisions. The course will address critical questions for managers of all types of firms facing complex and dynamic environments, such as: • How do I understand if I am at risk of being disrupted, and what can I do about it? • How can I create a successful strategy in new markets? • What do my customers actually want? • What does a good business model look like? • How might new technologies impact my business and business model? • How should I think about growth and profitability when building a new business? We begin the course by diving head-first into one of the most widely discussed yet widely misunderstood business theories of the past 30 years – disruptive innovation. We will examine the two dominant types of disruption—low-end disruption and new market disruption— and seek to understand the unique characteristics and conditions which give rise to each. We will then explore a variety of perspectives related t disruptive innovation—what type of strategy to apply when approaching new markets, how to make profitability vs. growth trade-offs, how to think about the nature of an industry’s technology evolution, and how to consider specific demand-side factors which impact which products gain traction in both new and existing markets.
The purpose of this course is to equip students with the skills needed to serve as effective management consultants within the nonprofit sector, with a particular focus on addressing strategic challenges faced by local organizations. Working in teams, students will develop and refine project scopes, define deliverables, and execute real-world consulting engagements. In addition, students will collaborate across teams, sharing insights and resources to support one another’s projects. Beyond the consulting practicum, the course will provide students with a deep understanding of key nonprofit dynamics, including fundraising, board development, branding, and risk management. Additionally, students will explore the critical differences between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, preparing them for leadership roles both as consultants and potential board members. 0.5 Course Units
While we often debate capitalism as a system, the nature of capitalist economies differ from country to country and rarely match up to the ideal. Why do these differences arise? Is there a pure form of capitalism? What is the nature of capitalism in advanced and emerging economies? Why are capitalist economies often embedded in other social systems? Why do some economies grow faster than others? How do international institutions and interdependencies affect national capitalist institutions? How are the strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs) influenced by their country of origin? And how is the nature of capitalism changing today? This course provides insight into these questions as it explores the nature of capitalism around the world, with specific reference to Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, China, Hungary, Nigeria, South Africa, Singapore, Israel, Argentina, and the advanced OECD countries. Students will leave this class with understanding key differences in how capitalist economies are organized and competition over the future of the world economy. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 2750 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
Entrepreneurial ventures have a unique role to play in addressing major challenges like climate change because their ability to attract capital and rapidly scale creates the potential for impact at a scale that cannot be easily matched by governments and non-profit sector organizations. This class offers students the chance to contribute directly to such efforts by working on focused projects with real early-stage startups. To this end, the class brings together three distinct communities: Startup founders; students, and; professional mentors (senior industry, investing, and content area specialists) to collaborate in ways that have the potential to advance real change. NOTE: The lab in Fall 2026 will focus on ventures that are working in various industries, but with a shared focus on developing innovative approaches to address climate change and environmental sustainability. You do not need to have a background in climate or sustainability, just an interest in learning in these domains. Projects will be defined by the startup founder(s) in collaboration with the course instructor. Mutually Exclusive: MGMT 3880 0.5 Course Units
Course offered for advanced study projects for group projects and activities. Course is comprised of various topics and points of focus, ranging across multiple concentrations of Management, (i.e., Entrepreneurial, Strategy, Organizational Business, etc.).
MGMT 8910Advanced Study Project - Strategic Management
This 1.0-credit experiential learning course matches small teams of MBA students with innovative technologies developed by Penn researchers. Students will engage directly with inventors to understand the science behind early-stage innovations and explore their potential for commercialization. Through a combination of instructor-led discussions on commercialization frameworks and independent team research, students will gain hands-on experience at the intersection of strategy, innovation, corporate venturing, and entrepreneurship. Projects for this class have been sourced from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, School of Arts and Sciences, Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry, and the Stuart Weitzman School of Design. In some cases, established corporations may also be involved, providing additional industry context and pathways to impact. Students must apply to be considered for the course. The course is open to second-semester and second-year MBA students; Wharton Executive MBA (WEMBA) students may also be considered. Ideal candidates have experience or a strong interest in commercialization, innovation, or entrepreneurship.
MGMT 8920Advanced Study Project - Collaborative Innovation Program
Business success is increasingly driven by a firm's ability to create and capture value through innovation. Thus, the processes used by firms to develop innovations, the choices they make regarding how to commercialize their innovations, the changes they make to their business models to adapt to the dynamic environment, and the strategies they use to position and build a dominate competitive position are important issues facing firms. In MGMT. 892, you will learn to address these issues through an action learning approach. MGMT. 892 is a 1.0-credit course conducted in the spirit of an independent study. By working on consulting projects for leading global companies, you will develop and then apply your knowledge about innovation management and help these firms better understand the challenges and opportunities posed by emerging technologies and markets. 0.5-1 Course Unit
MGMT 8940Advanced Study Project - Multinational Management
ASP topics can be individually selected by the student with the advice and consent of any instructor in the management Department. All ASP registrations require the written consent of the instructor and appropriate course and section number on the registration form. If the student has the instructor's written permission, he/she is not required to obtain written consent from the Department. Students, however, should send an email to MGMT-Courseinfo@wharton.upenn.edu to request the course and section numbers 0.25-1 Course Unit
Contact the Management Department for additional information at: Courseinfo@wharton.upenn.edu. Decision making in the leadership chair is a complex task and one that is difficult to teach in a business school setting. To bridge this gap, Mr. William P. Lauder and invited executives will bring their experiences into the classroom, primarily addressing key decision they made, how they weighed their options, and what they learned from the outcomes. The framework for the class centers around two crucial aspects of decision making in the leadership chair: the need to manage many groups of stakeholders, and the need to play many roles when doing this. This course is by application only to second- year Wharton MBAs and a maximum of 48 students will be selected. A communication will be sent regarding the application details. 0.5 Course Units
Special course arranged for Wharton MBA students, focused on global business, management and innovation. 0.5 Course Units University of Pennsylvania Catalog 2237
This course examines some of the central questions in management with economic approaches as a starting point, but with an eye to links to behavioral perspectives on these same questions. Economics concerns itself with goal directed behavior of individuals interacting in a competitive context. We adopt that general orientation but recognize that goal directed action need not take the form of maximizing behavior, particularly for organizations comprised of individuals with possibly divergent interests and distinct sub-goals. Further, we treat competitive processes as playing out over meaningful periods of calendar time and, in general, not equilibrating instantaneously. A central property of firms, as with any organization, is the interdependent nature of activity within them. Thus, understanding firms as "systems" is quite important, a perspective which has important implications for understanding processes of organizational adaptation. Among the sorts of questions we explore are the following: What underlies a firm's capabilities? How does individual knowledge aggregate to form collective capabilities? What do these perspectives on firms say about the scope of a firm's activities, both horizontally (diversification) and vertically (buy-supply relationships)? As a "foundations" course, readings will cover key conceptual foundations, but also provide an arc to current work --- an "arc" that will be developed more fully in our in-class discussions.
This course examines processes of organizational learning. Learning, changing beliefs and efficacy in action, may be linked measures of progress and performance but presents a number of challenges. Performance is not always readily interpreted and the link between the actions an organization takes and proximate observable outcomes is often unclear and these measures may be loosely coupled to ultimate goals and interests. Organizations help facilitate coordinated actions among individuals and the outcomes that are realized by the organization are a function of those joint actions. However, these properties pose challenges for inferences around more or less desired action at both the individual and collective level, as well as divergent views as to what is in the individual and collective interest. Even if the organization does not face a conflict of interest among organizational members, it still faces a tension between the need to perform well in the near term, and exploit its current knowledge and bases of advantage, and to perform well over longer horizons, which may entail exploring other bases of action with which it is less familiar and perhaps less competent. However, performance itself can be a problematic construct --- different actors within the organization may have different views as to what goals or outcomes or more or less important, and even individual actors may face some degree of internal conflict over these issues. The contestation of goals and policy can take the form of organizational politics, where power, attention, and force of argument influence the playing out of this conflict. The last theme we consider is the challenge by which individual opinions and beliefs become aggregated to organizational level decisions and some of the learning challenges that this process of aggregation presents. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
This is a half-semester PhD course in the Management Department that is also open to any current PhD students at Wharton. The canonical model in economics views an agent as a fully rational, atomistic individual making optimal choices under scarcity. This approach has been very powerful theoretically and empirically to explain and to predict behavior in the workplace. This model has also been enriched to accommodate other phenomena arguably affecting behavior in the workplace like the social context (e.g. peer effects, altruism, or social comparison), non-standard time preferences, loss aversion, and cognitive costs. Incorporating these ideas into the standard model can be accomplished in various ways but the real stress test for these theories is whether they predict behavior more generally (i.e. we don't just use theory to explain one choice but choices more generally) and to generate empirical predictions that can be tested using experiments. In this mini-course we start-off with a tour de force of the fundamental principal-agent model and the various behavioral extensions. The core of the course is, however, not theoretical but a practical course on how to design field experiments to test these ideas. 0.5 Course Units
This is a half-semester PhD course in the Management Department that is also open to any current PhD students at Wharton. It is a continuation and builds on MGMT 918 - please see the course description for MGMT 918. As in MGMT 918 we expand on the canonical model in economics and introduce views from behavioral economics and introduce views from behavioral economics to derive novel theories with empirically testable implications on workplace behavior and individual performance in labor markets and health. In this mini-course the focus is on continuing our review of the literature but the primary aim is to work towards a project description and paper that can be developed into a PhD chapter or journal article. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
The class is organized around understanding labor and work. For management students trained in social science disciplines, there is a considerable gap between what we can learn about the workplace from economics, which relies on markets and incentives for its explanations, and psychology, which relies on dispositional attributes and social interactions. Managing people is arguably the biggest topic in the social sciences each with its own subgroups: labor economists in economics, I/ O and personnel psychologists in psychology and organizational behavior researches use the work place as their central research context, work and occupations and career students in sociology. For the most part, these fields talk past each other and are largely unaware of what the others are doing. We try to bridge that gap a bit in this class, although by no means do we attempt to span the range of topics represented across these quite different fields. In most contexts, the employer has considerable discretion as to the arrangements that are chosen for influencing the behavior of workers and, in turn, their outcomes and subsequent attitudes. The management practices they choose are our main focus. They drive many of the most important outcomes in society - who gets access to the most important and powerful jobs, how much income will people have and how it is distributed, whether and to what extent we have control over our lives at work, and so forth. Most of the attention still goes to employment, but it is not the only arrangement for doing work, though. We consider others, especially various forms of contracting and the gig work organized around electronic platforms. To the extent that there is a common conceptual orientation across the class, it is analysis at the organization-level, typically used for independent variables although often for outcomes and dependent variables as well, and power as a mechanism. Many of the most important and exciting topics in public discourse are in our focus, from remote work to gig work to the influence of artificial intelligence. The range of new issues to explore is enormous. A caveat: the phrase "human resources" is a contemporary business term that began as a description of the set of management practices coming out of the "great corporations" and the lifetime employment model for managing non-union employees. Many of these are within the domain of I/O and personnel psychology, such as employee selection tests, succession planning exercises, and so forth. The use of these practices has declined dramatically and are now only one approach to addressing the practical problems that lie 0.5 Course Units
This course introduces PhD students to randomized controlled trials as a rigorous methodology for advancing causal inference in strategic management, entrepreneurship, and innovation research. Experimental methods enable scholars to identify causal mechanisms precisely, test theoretical predictions in organizational settings, and generate actionable managerial insights. The course provides the methodological foundation and strategic perspective necessary for designing impactful experimental research. We examine how experimental approaches address inference problems in strategy, emphasizing research questions where experiments offer unique contributions that complement existing methods. Students learn how different experimental designs illuminate distinct aspects of firm behavior and competitive dynamics. 0.5 Course Units
This course explores current research on corporate strategy. Over the past two decades, research in the area of corporate strategy has evolved considerably. The fundamental focus of the field has been on sources of competitive advantage at the of the firm, and the process of building and maintaining competitive advantage. In this class, we explore current research articles that best represent the development of rent-generating resources at the level of the firm. Topics addressed include the concept of strategy, research on the evolution of firm capabilities, competitive interaction, top management teams and strategy formation, and changes in firm scope through acquisitions, divestitures and alliances.
MGMT 9260Seminar in Strategy and Organization Design
This half-semester course examines one of the foundational questions in strategy: the role of organizational structure in both supporting and shaping strategy. As Winston Churchill famously said: "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us." This course examines this proposition from two traditions, the "institutional economics" and "information processing" schools of organizational design. We will examine foundational works from both schools, such as Coase, Williamson, Simon, March, and others, and then proceed to recent work in the area. Some of the questions that we will explore in the class are: why do firms exist? What determines their boundaries? What determines formal and informal structures within firms? How does the strategic context shape the answers to these questions? How might the nature of the firm and its boundaries relate to innovation, human capital, and knowledge creation? The aim of this class is to provide students with a grounding in the fundamental questions and contributions in this area, and to spark ideas for research in their own graduate work. 0.5 Course Units
This quarter-length doctoral seminar deals with major streams of management research in technology strategy and innovation. We will focus on both classical topics such as incumbents' management of technological change and industry evolution, and new emergent topics such as ecosystems and platforms. The emphasis will be on understanding the link between technologies and firms in terms of both strategy choices and performance outcomes. 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 9310Special Topics in Organizational Behavior
This is a complement course to MGMT 9330, and it has the same purpose to examine and understand basics of theory and empirical research in the field of organizational behavior and to increase our understanding of people's behavior in organizations. The course takes both a top- down and bottom-up view of the forces that shape motivation, identity, relationships, power, and meaning in work and organizational life. 0.5 Course Units University of Pennsylvania Catalog 2239
MGMT 9320Proseminar in Management in Qualitative Methods
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the methodological approaches we commonly think of as qualitative, with special emphasis on ethnography, semi- structured interviews, case studies, content analysis, and mixed-methods research. The course will cover the basic techniques for collecting, interpreting, and analyzing qualitative (i.e. non-numerical) data. In the spring quarter, the course will operate on two interrelated dimensions, one focused on the theoretical approaches to various types of qualitative research, the other focused on the practical techniques of data collection, such as identifying key informants, selecting respondents, collecting field notes and conducting interviews. In the fall semester, the course will operate on two interrelated dimensions, one focused on the theoretical approaches on building arguments and theory from qualitative data, the other focused on the practical techniques of data collection, such as analyzing data, writing, and presenting findings. Note: This class is part of a two-part sequence which focuses on qualitative data collection and analysis. The first of this course, offered in the Spring, focuses on data collection and the second half of the course, offered the following Fall, will focus on qualitative data analysis. Each course is seven weeks long. Students may take either class independently or consecutively. Two Term Class, Student may enter either term; credit given for either Also Offered As: SOCI 9320 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 9330Psychological Foundations of Research in Management
This seminar-based course, with active discussion and analysis, is required of all first-year doctoral students in Management and open to other Penn students with instructor permission. The purpose of this course is to examine and understand basics in the theory and empirical research in the field of micro organizational behavior and to build an understanding of people's behavior in organizations and across organizations. The course covers a blend of classic and contemporary literature so that we can appreciate the prevailing theories and findings in various areas of organizational behavior. This course covers micro- organizational behavior, focused on topics such as influence/status, virtual teams, job design, organizational culture and socialization, identity in organizations and overall look on where the field of micro- organizational behavior is going.
This seminar-based course, with active discussion and analysis, is required of all first-year doctoral students in Management and open to other Penn students with instructor permission. The purpose of this course is to examine and understand basics in the theory and empirical research in the field of macro organizational behavior and to build an understanding of people's behavior in organizations and across organizations. The course covers a blend of classic and contemporary literature so that we can appreciate the prevailing theories and findings in various areas of organizational behavior. This course covers macro- organizational behavior, covering the topics of organizational ecology, institutional theory, organizational status and reputation, impression management, social networks and social movements.
This course explores network models and their applications to organizational phenomena. By examining the structure of relations among actors, network approaches seek to explain variations in beliefs, behaviors, and outcomes. The beauty of network analysis is its underlying mathematical nature - network ideas and measures, in some cases, apply equally well at micro and macro levels of analysis. Therefore, we read and discuss articles both at the micro level (where the network actors are individuals within organizations) and at the macro level (where the network actors are organizations within larger communities) that utilize antecedents or consequences of network constructs such as small worlds, cohesion, structural equivalence, centrality, and autonomy. We begin by examining the classic problem of contagion of information and behaviors across networks, and follow by considering the various underlying models of network structure that might underlie contagion and other processes The next two sessions address a variety of mechanisms by which an actor's position in a network affects its behavior or performance. Then, the following two sessions address antecedents of network ties via the topics of network evolution and network activation. We close with a "grab bag" session of articles chosen to match class interests. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
MGMT 9360Organizational Theories of the Employment Relationship
Why do organizations look the way they do — and with what consequences for the people inside them? This seminar takes those questions seriously, drawing on theoretical traditions that have made organizations the central unit of analysis for understanding inequality, authority, careers, and economic life. Whether your primary interest is in how firms compete and survive, how workers experience opportunity and constraint, how managers shape organizational culture, or how entrepreneurs build new ventures, the answers run through the same foundational terrain: organizations as social structures, and the dynamics that govern their creation, transformation, and effects. The employment relationship sits at the heart of this inquiry. Organizations are not simply passive conduits through which market forces flow; they are active structures that shape who gets hired, how work is organized, how rewards are distributed, and who advances. Sociology, organizational behavior, and institutional theory have each developed distinct frameworks for understanding these dynamics at the organizational level — frameworks that complement, and at times challenge, the individual- and market-level models more characteristic of labor economics. Students in strategy and entrepreneurship will find here the organizational foundations that underpin competitive advantage, firm boundaries, and the conditions under which new organizations emerge and succeed or fail. Organized historically, the syllabus traces the intellectual evolution of organization theory’s perspective on the employment relationship, highlighting major shifts in analytical focus: from workers to managers, from internal processes to organizational outputs, from single organizations and their environments to populations of organizations, and from separate supply- and demand-side models of labor markets to integrated approaches that examine their joint dynamics. These shifts matter not just as intellectual history but as live debates — about what organizations are for, whose interests they serve, and how they can be designed and led differently. Substantive topics include the structure of internal labor markets, hiring and promotion practices, gender and racial inequality in careers and compensation, organizational founding and change, and how organizational forms themselves evolve over time. The early weeks combine classic theoretical works with historical materials that provide essential context for understanding the emergence and transformation of core ideas. The latter part of the course turns to contemporary research, with particular attention to how scholars study these questions empirically — drawing on large-scale surveys, administrative and government data, qualitative and ethnographic methods, and field and natural experiments. The seminar is designed for doctoral students at the beginning of their training and presumes no prior specialized background in organization theory. By the end of the course, students will be able to (1) situate current research within broader theoretical traditions, (2) critically evaluate competing theoretical perspectives across disciplines, and (3) develop theoretically grounded research questions about people, organizations, and the markets and environments in which they are embedded. 0.5 Course Units
The seminar seeks to expose students to theoretical and empirical perspectives on entrepreneurship research. We will focus on the main questions that define the field and attempt to critically examine how, using a range of methodologies, researchers have approached these questions. As we review the literature, we will seek to identify promising research areas, which may be of interest to you in the context of your dissertation research. In addition to addressing the content of the received literature, we will examine the process of crafting research papers and getting them published in top tier journals. Towards that end we will characterize the key elements of high impact papers and review the development process of such studies. Students are expected to come fully prepared to discuss and critique the readings that are assigned to each class meeting (see details below). Each student will serve as the discussion leader for one or more of the class sessions. Discussion leaders are expected to critically review several articles, identify new insights in the research that is being reviewed and evaluate its contribution to the literature, position the articles within the literature on the subject matter, raise discussion question, and act as the discussion moderator for the class session. Each discussion leader is asked to prepare a one or two page summary of the assigned papers which includes a statement of the main research question(s), the methodology, data set if any, summary of findings, a commentary with your thoughts on the reading, and proposed discussion questions. Prior to each class, the discussion leader will meet the instructor to help plan the class meeting. Towards the end of each class meeting, each student will be asked to articulate a research question that emerged from the session and describe the research design used to investigate the issue. 0.5 Course Units
This half-semester course examines how social enterprise organizations emerge, attract resources, and affect society. The course will bridge micro and macro theoretical perspectives to provide insight into the unique challenges faced by social enterprises, while also showing how the study of such organizations can help to advance mainstream entrepreneurship research. Individual sessions will focus on defining social entrepreneurship, the tensions and tradeoffs that emerge in organizations that pursue social and financial goals, impact investing and other sources of finance, and the role of incubators/accelerators in supporting the development of these organizations. This is a seminar- based course with active discussion and analysis. 0.5 Course Units
This quarter-length course explores key topics at the intersection of entrepreneurship and innovation. While the course primarily draws from established theory and empirics from management and economics, it will also include discussions of emerging phenomena in this rapidly evolving field. We will begin by reviewing the basic properties of ideas that uniquely shape the sources and dynamics of entrepreneurship and innovation. Subsequently, we will explore innovation-related challenges and opportunities for startups. Special focus will be placed on research application in which students design and present their own research proposal broadly in the area of entrepreneurship and innovation. Students are highly encouraged to take this course in sequence with MGMT 937. 0.5 Course Units University of Pennsylvania Catalog 2241
MGMT 9510Special Topics in OB: Theories and Methods
The purpose of this half-semester course is to examine and understand theory and empirical research in the field of micro-organizational behavior and to build an understanding of people's behavior in organizations. The course covers a blend of classic and contemporary literature to appreciate the prevailing theories and findings in various areas of micro- organizational behavior. We will cover topics such as identity, diversity/ inclusion, work design/proactivity, extra-role behaviors, behavioral ethics/ organizational justice, and an overall look at where the field of micro- organizational behavior is heading. This is a seminar-based course with active discussion and analysis. 0.5 Course Units
Organizations are ubiquitous, and so is organization. This half-semester course explores organization theory (OT) from the 1960s through the end of the 20th century. We will examine the proliferation of organizational theories during this time period (such as contingency theory, resource dependence theory, ecological theory, and institutional theory) and understand how each theory attempts to relate structure and action over varying levels of analysis. We will determine one or two additional schools to add once we discuss your exposure in other management classes to other potential topics such as behavioral decision theory, sense-making and cognition, organizational economics, corporate governance, social networks, and the like. 0.5 Course Units
This is an introductory doctoral seminar on research methods in management. The course is designed to help you define your research interests, to strengthen your grasp of research design choices and standards, and to move you further along on the path to becoming a skilled, accomplished, engaged, and independent research scholar. We will read about, discuss, and in some cases practice: framing of research questions, writing for publication, defining and meeting research standards, and conducting experimental, archival, survey-based, and qualitative research suitable for publication in top-tier management journals. 1 Course Unit
The goal of the course is to provide you with a foundation in some of the major research areas that underpin the study of Multinational Management. International Business (and the study of MNCs) is an interdisciplinary field. As such, our survey of the seminal articles in the field will span a number of different theoretical and empirical approaches (i.e., economic, managerial, organizational and institutional). Much of our seminar discussions will focus on identifying and developing interesting research questions raised by this interdisciplinary literature, which offers many opportunities for systematic empirical study. 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
This course builds on the foundational material presented in MGMT 955 with a deeper focus on current research examining institutional influences on multinational management. These include regulative supports (e.g., laws, regulations, contracts and their enforcement through litigation, arbitration of incentive compatible self-regulation) but also normative (e.g., socially shared expectations of appropriate behavior, and social exchange processes) and cognitive (e.g., creating shared identity to bridge differences in values, beliefs and framing) elements of the institutional environment. We will examine not only strategic responses in the market environment but also influence strategies of multinational and domestic firms that seek to alter the institutional environment in which they operate. We will draw not only upon the international business literature but also related literatures including political economy, sociology, law, finance, communications, institutional theory, strategic corporate social responsibility, social movements, network theory and the management of extractive industries. 0.5 Course Units
MGMT 9610Special Topics in OB: Making a Contribution
This is a complement course to MGMT 951, and it has the same purpose to examine and understand basics in the theory and empirical research in the field of micro-organizational behavior and to increase our understanding of people's behavior in organizations. To do so, we will cover a blend of classic and contemporary literature so that we can appreciate the prevailing theories and findings in various areas of micro- organizational behavior. In addition, for each topic we will then try to go beyond the existing literature. We will work to increase our understanding by re-framing the research variables, altering the perspective, bringing in new theory, and comparing levels of analysis. The purpose of this course is not meant to be exhaustive, rather it covers approximately half of the organizational behavior literature. For a more complete understanding of the basics of organizational behavior it is mandatory for organizational behavior students to have taken MGMT 951 which covers the remaining topics in basic organizational behavior. However, it is not mandatory to have taken MGMT 951 before MGMT 961 as they cover different sets of topics. Not Offered Every Year 0.5 Course Units 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26
This is a graduate course focusing on the empirical aspects of multinational firms and international trade. The goal of the course is to familiarize graduate students with empirical work on multinational firms in the global economy, by reviewing the recent as well as older literature on this topic. Econometrics and statistical techniques for doing empirical work in international trade will also be discussed. We will focus on a variety of issues that are related to the multinational firm, beginning with trends in multinational activity, then moving to both horizontal and vertical theories of the multinational firm. Topics over the course of the semester will include patterns in the expansion of multinational firms, horizontal and vertical multinationals; the linkages between openness to trade and investment and growth; trade orientation and firm performance; technology transfer and spillovers; innovation and productivity; immigration; labor markets and multinational firms; and global value chains. This course has a mandatory attendance policy. 0.5 Course Units
Select 1 additional credit unit of any graduate level Methods course Or any graduate level course with Attribute: WPRM (https://catalog.upenn.edu/attributes/wprm/) Management Specialization Electives Select at least 4.0 credit units from the following 0.5 credit unit of Management specializations:
An individual, PhD level course of study with guidance from an instructor, geared to a specific topic that is not part of the school's established curriculum.
