In this age of globalisation, the competencies to communicate cross-culturally well are indispensable. This course provides strategies on how to read people and corporate cultures. Features of culture such as individualism / collectivism, power distance, masculinity / femininity, and issues related to intercultural adaptation, ethnocentrism, prejudice, stereotyping and racism will be discussed. The aim of this course is to develop intercultural competencies that will make business practices more meaningful and significant.

With the globalisation of financial markets, it is vital that communication practitioners work closely with the C-suite to deliver effective two-way communication between the company and global investors to build trust and loyalty. This course introduces communication practitioners to the essentials of Investor and Business Communications and investigates how companies successfully communicate with the global investment community. You will gain an understanding of the factors that influence equity valuation and use this knowledge to develop a communication programme to engage investors and the financial community as part of your Group assignment.

No organisation can afford to ignore the importance of corporate reputation. A favourable reputation is an intangible prized asset and its contribution to a company's value is indisputable in today's business environment. This course will introduce you to the discipline of reputation management. Through short lectures, case studies and discussions, you will become familiar with the concepts, strategies and tools critical to building, protecting and enhancing corporate reputation.

Careers in management increasingly involve opportunities to collect, analyse and communicate with data so as to make effective managerial decisions and obtain optimal results. This eight-week course is designed to provide tangible and actionable skillsets for computational data mining, analytics and visualisation with strategic thinkers in organisations. You will learn how to collect, analyse and visualise real-world empirical data that potentially contains consumer insights. The first week will focus on the basics of data collection, while the following six weeks will involve hands-on training in data mining, analytics and visualisation in order to address real-world business questions. The course will culminate in Week 8 with group project presentations. The learning in the course will be informative within the programme as well as for the Capstone Project, which is the ultimate outcome of the MCM programme. Ultimately, such learning will prepare you to execute data-driven, evidence-based decisions in the digital economy.

Digital communication, especially social media, has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for communication management. The main goal of this course is to tap upon these possibilities, particularly the ability of organisations to further their engagement with their stakeholders so as to establish, develop and maintain excellent relationships with crucial stakeholders. Drawing upon established theories in the field of public relations such as Relationship Management Perspective and Dialogic Theory, this course will explore the various ways that organisations can capitalise upon the use of social media for communication management. This course will also touch on current issues affecting the industry due to the rise of social media and the resultant implications for the organisation, industry and society.

This course offers an overview of corporate communication by providing an up-to-date treatment of strategic communication in an age of disruption, and connects other modules via a common structure and understanding. With the world of business constantly changing, this course combines fundamental theoretical concepts with practical guidelines and cases to inform communication managers in their strategic and tactical communication work decisions. Designed for postgraduate students, with or without communication background or experience, this course will demonstrate how communication should be purposeful in order to foster trust between organisations and their stakeholders. In particular, it will look at the value of communication from the management and C-suite perspective, which you will acquire through lectures, case studies, guest speakers and team discussions.

This course is designed to provide cutting-edge knowledge in behavioural sciences so that you can perform an exercise to create actionable interventions, overcoming motivational, cognitive, social and affective barriers to solve problems in business and public policy practices.

This course examines digital media within the context of greater Asia and its fragmented markets, diverse cultural practices and differing regulatory environments. Students will learn how organisations have successfully (and unsuccessfully) worked across these markets via social networks, blogs, microblogs and other platforms including mobile. Differences between the markets will be highlighted and the managerial implications discussed. The course moves you through situational analysis and localisation, digital strategy, content strategy, measurement and talent management.

A strong corporate brand can help an organisation to establish relevancy and differentiation by winning the hearts and minds of various stakeholders. This course will introduce you to the most influential theories and practices in corporate branding. In addition, it will show you how the corporate brand can be expressed through the art and science of storytelling. Using the methods of studio pedagogy familiar to designers, the course will familiarise you with storytelling frameworks and principles, and demonstrate their power to express purpose and core value propositions.

Despite the proliferation of social media platforms, the mainstream, accredited media remains a critical player in public discourse. Building media relations with the mainstream media, with its suite of digital platforms, remains a key function of strategic communication (Sriramesh & Vercic, 2009). In media relations, organisations seek favourable publicity for their products and services (Sallot, Steinfatt & Salwen, 1998; Seitel, 2004; Sinaga & Wu, 2007; Yoon 2005) to “enhance the reputation of an organisation” (Bland, Theaker, & Wragg, 2005, p. 55). Studies on media relations have focused on different aspects of media work. This course emphasises the strategic aspects of media engagement aimed to equip organisational leaders with the knowledge of media relations so that they can incorporate this as part of their organisational strategy.

In this course, you will be introduced to the theoretical concepts and analytical tools required for formulating and implementing appropriate strategies that affect the enduring success of the entire organisation. Topics covered include external and internal environmental analyses, business-level strategies, corporate-level strategies and strategy process and implementation, as well as special topics such as competitive dynamics and competition in high-tech industries. The course emphasises the application of theory to a number of real-world strategic issues. You are encouraged to synthesise knowledge from other business courses into a comprehensive understanding of the competitive advantages of firms.

In this day and age, it is no longer sufficient for managers and leaders in organisations to be simply transactional or simply transformational. They also need to be fair, just, ethical, moral and responsible. The same might be said for organisations themselves. It is not enough for organisations to be profitable. They must also behave responsibly and sustainably. This course is divided into two sections that cover (1) what it means be ethical in an organisational setting and (2) the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its role in business and society.

What it means be ethical in an organisational setting
This part of the course is designed to explore, inform and stimulate thinking on issues related to behavioural ethics and responsibility as encountered in the corporate world. To create this intellectual exchange, it will focus on how individual and organisational behaviour is shaped by context as well as by biases, why these factors make it difficult for managers to be responsible leaders and what can be done about the influence of these factors. It is important to emphasise that the goal of this course is not the ethical or moral transformation of students, but the ability to develop a set of tools and frameworks (where possible) that allow you to manage effectively in a world increasingly characterised by stakeholders with competing needs and responsibilities.

The importance of CSR and its role in business and society
In this portion of the course, we explore the idea that businesses bear a responsibility to society and a broader set of stakeholders beyond their shareholders, an idea that has gained currency since the 1970s. The question remains, however, whether corporations have a responsibility towards and within society that goes beyond being merely well-run companies? Through this course, we will engage in a critical evaluation and discussion of different views on the meaning of CSR and the “proper” role of CSR in business and society. We will also discuss contemporary research and organisational practices that inform the integration of CSR within a firm's core business strategy and operations. We will understand that through strategically managed CSR, including ways to create shared value and apply sustainable business strategies, business corporations can potentially identify business opportunities that help address the world's most pressing challenges and manage relationships with important stakeholders who affect the firm's sustained success.

Finance is about the allocation of capital for productive use in the economy. In this course, we examine how financial assets are priced (asset pricing) and how firms raise capital (corporate finance).

Asset pricing
In this first portion of the course, you will learn about the importance of finance in society. You will get familiar with tools that are necessary in finance, such as the time value of money, and apply these tools to the pricing of bonds and stocks. Finally, you will learn about the fundamental concepts of risk and return, as well as portfolio theory, and how these relate to investing.

Corporate finance
This second part of the course is about financial decision making in a firm with the objective of maximising the firm's value. The key corporate finance decisions can be grouped into three types: investment decisions, financing decisions and dividends decisions. This segment aims to provide you with fundamentally important ideas about what to look for in making good decisions from a corporate manager's perspective.

In this project, you will effectively develop and present a workable solution to solve a corporate communication challenge. You will be provided an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to diagnose and investigate a live business issue, research the current literature, collect and analyse data and develop conclusions.

Corporate communication professionals increasingly work in business environments characterised as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). We face changing definitions and boundaries of stakeholder groups, uncertainty and complexity in negotiations, dynamic development of information systems and challenges in the governance of organisations operating in such environments. During the summer programme at UCLA Anderson School of Management, each member of the faculty team presents frameworks and strategies drawn from their managerial discipline to enable you to build an important management toolkit and become an effective strategic leader in organisations that operate in these business environments. The faculty director of the programme assists participants in addressing the overarching challenges of working as a corporate communication professional in a VUCA world.