Nanyang Fellows Programme

The objective of this course is to increase understanding of the essential elements in the strategic financial management process and to build proficiency in the application of these elements to real world problems. The course covers the following broad topics: functions and operations of the financial markets, valuation, portfolio theory, asset pricing, market efficiency, capital budgeting, capital structure and dividend policy, derivative assets, international finance, and other issues in corporate finance. Emphasis will be on applying these financial tools to derive optimal decision strategies.
 

This course focuses on the nature and scope of using accounting information for economic decision making. The emphases are on the nature of accounting information, the uses and the limitations. While the focus of the course is on the users’ perspective, it is essential that the user understands the building blocks of accounting, the process by which the information is generated and the incentives underlying the preparation of the accounting information. A proper understanding of the accounting process would enable the user to ask the appropriate questions when looking at the accounting information and understand the limitations of the information.  

Once the accounting process is understood, we will move on to explain how accounting information can be used for short-term decision making, longer-run capital budgeting decisions, and strategic analysis. Accounting is studied within the context of the organization and its competitive environment. The accounting system needs to reflect and support the strategy of the organization. The performance evaluation of the organization must include an assessment of its ability to achieve its strategy. We will discuss various performance evaluation and control mechanisms used in organizations, including compensation systems and strategic performance measures.
 

This is a seminar course where students will write a term paper, present and defend it.  The objective of the course is to expose students to current and contemporary economic problems, issues and policies.  The issues cover Singapore’s development experience.  It includes the role of government in the economy, budgetary and exchange rate management, human resource utilisation and development, investment, entrepreneurship and growth, savings and growth, monetary and exchange-rate policies, currency crisis and international competitiveness and productivity.  Throughout the course, a global perspective will be emphasised.  There is, however, some focus on the development and underdevelopment of East Asia.
 

Rapid and dynamic changes in the business landscape as evidenced by such factors as digitilisation, globalisation and futurisation have rendered the role of marketing even more critical for any sustainable business. The purpose of this course is to provide an in-depth understanding of the principles and practice of marketing in a global environment.  The scope that is covered include an introduction and overview of  marketing; analysing the global marketing environment; targeting marketing opportunities from a local, regional and global perspective, formulating marketing strategies and managing the marketing effort.  The course emphasises not only an understanding of the relevant theoretical principles and concepts, but also on the application aspects in relation to the real world.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate restructuring activities will feature widely in the economies of Asia over the next several decades in line with the dynamic economic and financial growth of the region. This course will explain the reasons and motivations for M&A and corporate restructuring activities, including related transactions and leveraged buyouts. It will examine the strategic considerations in planning and implementing M&A and corporate restructuring activities in either friendly or hostile environments and explore alternative methods of financing. It will also create awareness of the pertinent legal issues and the necessary financial reporting aspects that need to be dealt with in M&A exercises. A substantial part of the course will focus on both the strategic and financial analysis of corporate restructuring decisions.
 

This course aims to provide a balanced view of the organisation and its interaction with its environment. It focuses on the role of a general manager, the various skills needed to integrate and co-ordinate business functions in managing the organisation's resources and in developing distinctive competencies and advantages. Students will receive an update on the latest tools (eg. BPR, EVA, Balanced Scorecard, Scenario Planning, TQM, Learning Organisation) used in transforming organisations and examine their value in the context of strategy formulation and implementation. The concept of profit patterns & value migration will be introduced to help students understand how to conduct Business Redesign.
 

This course adopts a general management perspective on managing people in organisations, focusing on the strategic management of the organization’s human capital rather than a functional human resource management perspective. It sees human capital management as an approach to the fundamental management issue of improving business and organizational performance through an effective people management philosophy and practice which is anchored on the importance of alignment between organization’s strategy and its human resource (HR) systems and practices. The aim of the course is to understand the value added by employees and to provide tools to gain insights on the organization’s people strategy and its impact on the bottom line. It will examine how HR programs, such as talent acquisition, development and retention, and performance management, affect and shape the strategy implementation process.  It will also explore current issues in human capital measurements and evaluation as well as the role of HR in human capital management. The aim is to analyse and evaluate how people policies and practices help create value for the organization and when they become barriers to value creation. Key topics include: People as source of organization’s capital and assets; workers as human capital investors; linking human capital to corporate strategy; managing talent - acquisition, development and retention; overview of major human resource systems & processes including performance management; the evaluation and measurement of human capital value add, and the collection and reporting of human capital information.
 

The Nanyang Fellows Strategic Leadership course is specifically designed for senior leaders and executives who are ready for an in-depth study of what leadership means for them. How do you lead? How does your leadership style affect others and organizational outcomes? How would you evaluate the impact of your leadership style? How would you develop your leadership style as you take on new leadership challenges? What are the key insights gained from corporate leaders that will shape you thinking on the essence of leadership? What is required for effective leadership in the future? Participants will get to explore and examine these key questions in an intellectually stimulating, methodologically rigorous, and practice-oriented framework on strategic leadership. This course attempts to broaden and deepen participants’ understanding of strategic leadership and organizational behavior. Core strategic leadership challenges such as leading teams, motivating and rewarding desired behavior, using power and influence effectively, selecting the appropriate leadership style to motivate others to perform, designing organizations to fit with strategic objectives, and leveraging organizational culture will be addressed in this course. Participants will obtain individual strategic leadership profiles that will help them identify their strengths and areas of further development.

The present environment is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Changes are brought about by political forces, economic cycles, social and cultural adaptation, technological innovations and natural phenomenon.  The need to sustain global environment and the impact of activities by Special Interest Groups (SIGs) also shape the strategies for organizations.  Successes are achieved on key success factors and appropriate strategies and these may change over time.  Often, a dual strategy is proposed, one for the current situation and one for the future.

• the need to be proactive and to prepare for the future in terms of creating various scenarios.  Scenarios is about mental preparedness for any eventualities, and opening up our minds and steering us away from the tunnel vision that often gets tagged when we are too focused on what we are doing (the Icarus Paradox).
• the usefulness of contingency planning, the allocation of resources to deal with an eventuality should it occur
• the ways to deal with, resolve, manage and subsequent recovery from a crisis that occur, to allow us to move forward in strength   

The central theme of this course is to strive for sustainability and continuity of business through adaptation of the relevant business models through forward environmental scanning and analysis, and building a corporate radar screen to track the developments and changes in the environment.

The objective of the course is to enable Fellows to understand how Governments, Public Policies and regulation have a very significant impact on the economy and thus on the way Business is conducted in a specific economic context.  The course will examine the differences as well as similarities between business and public policy management. It will cover the key macro- and micro- economic concepts that guide and shape public policy choice.  The Singapore economy will be examined in detail but comparisons with the economic policies in other major economies will be made to understand the causes and reasons for the differences in approach and outcomes.  The scope will include the challenges and difficulties of undertaking economic reforms especially in respect of market opening, deregulation and re-focussing of the economic role of government, liberalization and privatization, the importance of competition in the market place, market failures and the key role of regulation to ensure competition takes place even in oligopolistic markets.   The emphasis of the course as a whole is on a practice based approach with the stress on how decisions and choices of public economic policies are made amidst the practical constraints of time, insufficient timely, detailed data and public acceptance.  Insights would be drawn from Behavioural Economics and cognitive and complexity theories.  The course will deal with both the content and process of public policy making.