Program: 30 credits
Program length: 16 months
The HEC Montréal Graduate Diploma in Management offered at USEK is the only one of its kind. Its highly flexible structure allows students to enrol in an 16-month international program in Lebanon while remaining in their jobs. The dynamic hybrid approach combines one-weekend intensive courses each month at USEK with distance education via videoconferences and on line, and at the same time respects the structure and quality of teaching of HEC Montréal programs.
Courses |
| The Graduate Diploma in Management is designed to provide general training in management for people who have completed university studies in another field and who are looking for additional skills. The 30-credit program consists of 10 three-credit courses. Each course is equivalent to 45 hours, including mid-term and final exams. |
Courses descriptions | |
Management | |
| Management | |
| The course explores the economic, political, social and cultural challenges that pertain to any organization, thus introducing participants to the world of the manager. It covers the basic functions of management, namely strategic planning, organizing and structuring, leading and controlling. In the process, students will be exposed to the challenges of international and intercultural management, innovation, management of creative enterprises and knowledge management. The course reviews different aspects of existing organizations, such as marketing, finance, accounting and human resources. New issues introduced include sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, corporate ethics and governance. | |
| Information Technology | |
| The ability to manage and use information in the pursuit of business objectives is an important managerial skill. Developing this skill requires an understanding of information technologies, the competencies and processes used to manage these technologies such as the governance of information systems, and the collection, manipulation and analysis of operational data. The course in Information Systems will focus on three critical technologies: Data Management, Integrated Systems and Business Intelligence. Students will examine the management and use of these technologies, their relationships to one another and the responsibilities of functional managers in their application. Participants will be asked to design the essential elements of an information system to support the implementation of a particular business initiative. | |
| Human Resources Management | |
| The underlying premise of the course is that Human Resources Management (HRM) is a responsibility shared by both HR specialists and the firm's managers. HRM is viewed as a key component of business strategy and as a potential source of competitive advantage. The course highlights the numerous challenges facing today's firms: growing pressures for continuous productivity improvement, better quality goods and services, more flexible production systems and changing employee expectations. These pressures are straining the traditional HRM model and leading to a realignment of HR practices and the restructuring of relationships among the firm's major players (i.e. executives, managers, employees and unions). The course is designed for managers, as they often do not have access to a human resources department, but must still manage human resources in all activities ranging from planning, recruitment and selection to performance evaluation, compensation and development of competencies. | |
| Managerial Economics | |
| Managers must organize, sell under competitive constraints and make profits. The aim of the course is to shed light on these responsibilities by providing students with an analytical grasp of the conduct of individuals and organizations, based on the incentives and the constraints present in the market place. Topics covered include market demand, product differentiation, costs, size and design of firms, market economics, competition and competitiveness. Real-world situations will be examined for each topic covered. Students will be asked to examine the situation of particular Lebanese firms with respect to the major themes covered in the course. | |
| Accounting Information: Financial Statements and Accounting Tools | |
| Managers make decisions based on various sources of information, one of which is the accounting system that produces financial information. The end products of this system are financial statements prepared according to a standardized set of rules. The first part of the course is designed to give students a general knowledge of the most important international standards used in financial reporting. The second part of the course focuses on management accounting. A key role for management accountants is to establish the control systems used to achieve organizational goals and minimize risks. One of the most important of these is budgetary control, a powerful tool that encourages planning, sets milestones, evaluates performance and suggests paths for improvement. The objective of this part of the course is to help students understand the role and functioning of the budget. | |
| Marketing Management | |
| Marketing is an applied science built on the foundations of economic, behavioural and management sciences. It is associated with a large number of topics, concepts, theories and examples. The objectives of the course are to demystify the terminology, concepts and theories, to understand and apply marketing management principles, and to develop the analytical and decision skills required in a competitive market place. The course will present this abundant material in a systematic framework so that students will be able to link the different subjects and understand the relationships between marketing research, consumer behaviour, market segmentation, targeting, product positioning, distribution channels and promotion alternatives. | |
| Finance | |
| The course will focus on the problems a financial manager faces. In particular, we will examine how to obtain adequate funds to allow a firm to operate and how to decide on their optimal allocation. To obtain funds, the financial manager must participate in markets for debt and equity securities. Thus, we will discuss how these markets work and how they can be most efficiently used by the firm. In allocating funds, we will learn how to assess the economic benefits of long-lived projects and how to make optimal choices between projects. We will also spend time developing basic financial tools that will assist us in the decision-making process. | |
| Management and Leadership Skills | |
| The course will help students develop skills required to carry out the activities and responsibilities associated with managing and leading people. The word “skills” here refers to abilities appropriate to a particular situation, suited to the person who exercises them and likely to lead to desired outcomes. The skills that students will learn, practise and develop in this course concern the task of overseeing the work of others. The focus is on the ways a manager can exercise authority and on the different contexts in which it must be exercised; the emphasis is primarily on action and practice. The course addresses the skills required in order to succeed in the following four broad domains: exercising authority, communication skills, political skills and team leadership. Students will be asked to react to concrete situations involving the management of people. Case discussions will be supplemented with practical exercises. | |
| Decision Support Models | |
| The course objective is to present quantitative tools used in practice for decision support, as well as the management situations to which they apply. Using stylized cases, students will learn to recognize several types of decision problems, express them as mathematical models and identify the appropriate techniques to solve them. Special attention is given to prescriptive models, which help identify the best (management) decisions. At the end of the course, students will have gained basic knowledge of the main techniques involved for these decision support models. This will allow them to deal with current problems of decision making with the help of specialized software attached to Microsoft Excel. | |
| Business Strategy | |
Business firms face constant pressure in a rapidly evolving competitive environment. Succeeding in this context requires an understanding of strategy issues and of the need to reinvest in the firm's strategic position. Two main objectives are pursued in the course. First, to introduce participants to the fundamentals of strategy, i.e. its formulation and its implementation. Building on these foundations, the second objective is to gain a thorough understanding of strategy execution. Two approaches will be favoured: case studies to illustrate the foundation of the business strategy, and a simulation to put participants in a position to strategically manage an organization. This simulation allows us to raise issues related to the formulation, implementation and execution of the strategy. | |
