MBA 209F-1 3-units CCN 08913 Fundamentals of Business (Click for an Overview)   Textbooks Spring 2008 Class meets Wednesdays 6 - 9 p.m. Andersen Auditorium, F 295 Haas School Module Exams: Mondays after each Module at 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.  2/25, 4/7, 5/12 (No exam in Exam Week)
	Contacts (direct admin Q's to D. Robinson) Nancy Euske euske@haas.berkeley.edu David Robinson  robinson@haas.berkeley.edu Gregory La Blanc lablanc@haas.berkeley.edu GSI: Kayela Beatty kayela_beatty@haas.berkeley.edu
2002 2003 2004 Sp 2004 F 2006 Sp 2007 Sp A+ 5% 5% 5% 5% 5% 13 % A 25% 33% 31% 20% 43% 33 % A- 25% 25% 26% 32% 32% 33 % B+ 25% 22% 21% 27% 12% 8 % B 15% 11% 13% 12% 5% 6 % B- 5% 5% 4% 5% 3% 6 %   The table above shows the grade distribution for the previous years. We grade by class rank, not by absolute score.	Downloads available We are now using Bspace.
	Main syllabus Spring 2008 Writing Tips Handout Mod 1 Syllabus (OB, Euske) Mod 2 Syllabus (Robinson) Mod 3 Syllabus (LaBlanc)
Module Lectures
Haas School of Business

Overview

Many graduate students in Law, Engineering and the Sciences will take a job in "industry" on leaving Berkeley. In addition, many students of Public Policy and in other Schools will interact with business people in their professional careers. Our goal is that by the end of the course, you'll feel comfortable talking with people whose graduate school work has been in Business. You'll understand the vocabulary, techniques of analysis and decision-making. Although Fundamentals of Business is a broad survey course, we understand that Berkeley graduate students are intellectually demanding and so we address some topics in depth. We also want to train you in the brief, clear writing style used in business.

The format of the course is three five-week modules taught by a team of instructors with different functional expertise:

    Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management (Nancy Euske)

    Accounting and Finance (Gregory P. La Blanc)

    Marketing and Strategy (David Robinson)

The course meets a once-a-week 3 hour class on Wednesday evenings, with three scheduled examinations after the end of each module. In each module, students write a short term paper.

The course is open to graduate students only, from departments other than Business Administration. No prerequisite coursework is required, but a familiarity with basic economics is helpful.

For further information, and for any additional questions, please contact David Robinson.

Back to top

Textbooks

Textbooks are expensive, and there is no single book that neatly covers the material in this course. Please respect copyright and do not photocopy texts or readers without paying for them. However, where two or three people in the same department join the course, forming a "buying club" for the textbooks is a good way to share the expense.

• For Prof. Euske's Module 1, there is no text, but a Reader of articles available from Copy Central Bancroft.
   
• For David Robinson's Module 2: there is no required text. You will be able to successfully complete the exam from lecture notes and in-class handout articles. However, students who know that they will be going into a job where greater depth of knowledge of marketing would be an advantage should consider any recent edition of Phillip Kotler's "Marketing Management" recommended as a useful reference.  The current edition is Kotler, P. & Keller, K. L. "Marketing Management, 12/e" Prentice Hall, 2006, but used copies of Kotler, P. "Marketing Management 11/e"  would be acceptable for general principles. For further reading, there is also a list of general interest marketing books.
   
• For Gregory La Blanc's Module 3, (used OK):

  Finance and accounting for non financial managers,
  Wm. Droms Basic Books 2003, ISBN 0738208183

   

If you know you will be working in business or with business-people, you might want to consider the following 2,200 page tome, that is recommended but not required.

                Business, The Ultimate Resource, 2e Basic Books, 2006

It is a very good encyclopedia of modern business terms, buzz phrases and fads and has some excellent summaries of major theories. However, in the words of a colleague: "It's a cook-book, not a book on cooking" so it's not very meaningful without some prior study and it certainly isn't suitable as a textbook.

Back to top