Course Descriptions

Fundamental quantitative methods used in business decision-making: mathematical programming, stochastic modeling, and simulation, with emphasis on formulation, analysis, and implementation.

Financial accounting with a managerial emphasis. Generally accepted accounting principles, concepts, standards, and practices used in recording business transactions in order to prepare major financial statements such as the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. Accounting for inventories, plant, property, and equipment as well as measurement of liabilities, capital stock, and retained earnings; generation of accounting information for internal planning and control purposes are studied. Role of management accounting for decision making, determination of cost of products and services, and performance evaluation of business units are examined. Different methods of determining product costs using job costing, process costing, and activity based costing are examined. Use of cost, volume, profit analysis in order to determine product contribution margins and break-even point and study of cost behavior in relation to activity levels; determination of relevant information for decision making.
Fundamental decisions and tradeoffs in control of a firm’s operations: obtaining and controlling the flow of materials through a production facility and distributing them to customers. Four modules: process fundamentals; cross functional integration, coordination and control; improving the performance of productive systems; and competing through technology and operations.
The analysis of growth, inflation, balance of payments, and foreign exchange. Understanding the fundamentals of monetary and fiscal policy. The key differences between the main schools of economic thought, including classical and Keynesian schools. Globalization and the main institutions of the global economy. The role of emerging economies, including Türkiye, in the post Great Recession economic order.
Introduction to the time value of money and discounted cash flow analysis; coverage of financial decisions to maximize the value of the firms equity: valuation of assets, liabilities, and common equity; capital budgeting decisions; opportunity cost of capital; risk and return.
Human behavior and interpersonal relations as they occur in organizational context, particularly work teams.
Marketing management in modern organizations; knowledge and application of key strategic frameworks to customer analysis, environment, competition, and organizational strengths and weaknesses. Creative selection of target markets and planning the components of the marketing mix. The role and use of information in marketing planning, determinants of and the nature of buying behavior. The complexity of developing and managing the marketing process in a multinational arena.
Introduction to the concept of Strategy and Strategic Management, industry analysis: External environment of the firm, resources and capabilities of the firm, key success factors in competitive advantage, corporate strategy, global strategies and the multinational corporation, management of the multi-business corporation, current trends in strategic management.
Execution of business strategy; interdependence with policy, structure, people, strategic and operating plans, performance measurement, processes, corporate vision and values, business unit metrics. Understanding of corporate dynamics that hinder or foster effective execution. Systems, tools and resources for strategy aligned implementation.
Changing global context and its reflections in foreign policy strategies. Main factors determining Turkish foreign policy and what they mean for geo-political dynamics, as well as the possible threats and opportunities that they pose for the business world.
Procedures and processes by which companies are directed and controlled; the board of directors and its working procedures; strategies to influence management thinking on the part of the board of directors, individual directors, shareholders and the wider community of stakeholders; comparative perspectives on governance in the Industrialized World and in Emerging Markets.
Koç MBA degree doesn’t require a graduation thesis; however, students are required to submit a graduation project according to the regulations and requirements of the Turkish Higher Education Council (YÖK). The graduation project is conducted individually under the guidance of a faculty member and culminates in a written project report which is graded as; Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory.

Speeding up the orientation process of graduate program students; enabling the use of communication skills through teamwork; improving independence and communication, creating common goals, creating the fundamentals of an environment of trust and making it long-lasting; increasing productivity and efficiency

Leadership and Management Development Program (LMDP) is an extra-curricular program aiming to develop the managerial competencies of students. LMDP consists of integrative learning experiences outside of the traditional classroom setting. The main tracks of the Leadership and Management Development Program are: developing managerial Skills, developing communication skills, career planning, career sessions, guest speaker series. Students are required to participate in a minimum number of activities to be able to get an S grade. In addition to the mandatory activities, students can choose from among a set of workshops and guest speakers in order to fulfill the requirements.

Electives Courses

Introduction to system dynamics and systems thinking; theory and applications to support strategic decision making. Current topics in health policy and management, mapping tools for system dynamics, crisis/pandemic management, case studies, sustainability and management simulations. Concepts of systems thinking and modeling for better decision making and analysis.
Every strategic decision is taken under uncertainty and yet risks and the biases in our thinking have been by and large ignored. Subsequently more business fail than meets the eye and bad strategies outweigh good ones by a large margin. This course aims to develop better strategic decision making ability.

The valuation framework developed in MFIN 501, applied to a series of major corporate financial and asset management decisions: Issuance of corporate securities, corporate financing decisions, dividend policy, capital structure, and corporate risk management.

Design thinking methodology as a strategy for disruptive innovation: Discovering a problem area by using a human-centered approach (i.e. empathizing with user, collecting information with user interview & observation studies). Interpreting complex information by using visualization methods (i.e. journey maps, mind maps, storyboarding). Based on user insights, conducting problem-focused ideation sessions. Turning ideas into low fidelity prototypes (i.e. paper prototypes, video-sketch). Creating a business plan for the idea and marketing opportunities.
What is big data? Value creation with big data, Data sources and extraction from unstructured sources. Learning tasks and statistical learning. Fundamental concepts and their operationalization; overfitting vs generalization; curse of dimensionality; correlation vs causation; data collection strategy and biases; security, privacy and ethical considerations.
Foundations of user experience. User experience design principles and research methods. Connecting user experience research with user experience design through design guidelines. Introduction to user experience management; an investigation into bad and good user experience practices.

Introduction to the concepts of extended reality. New experiences that extended reality provides. State of the art software and hardware solutions for extended reality. The holistic design process of extended reality projects: research, ideation, design, prototyping, and evaluation.

Technology and Innovation Management taught using academic papers, sharing real life experiences, case studies and field trips to R&D Centers of Corporations, SME, and Academia.  Multidisciplinary structure and full life cycle of technology based innovation management will cover R&D structures, patent and academic paper search, high tech investment trends, standardization committee realities, intellectual property rights, national strategic requirements and priority areas; government grants structures, technology transfer offices, incubation centers, corporate venture capital environments, regulatory bodies, and different corporate innovation models. Toolkits for strategy development and daily operation will be developed.

Address the key concepts that shaped the dynamics of money management and widely used in practice. Three phases in top-down stock picking: Macroeconomic & Industry Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis and Equity Valuation. The relation between risk & return, Modern portfolio theory and Capital Asset Pricing Model. Efficient Market Hypothesis and Behavioral Finance. Bond prices & yields and management of bond portfolios. Virtual Stock Exchange Simulation based on US listed equities using their live data.
Acquisition of technologies for transforming to digital business to stay competitive. Even more critical due to the pandemic. Provides tools to address digital era challenges. Technology road mapping for a comprehensive plan towards digital transformation.
Brief history of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, basics of AI and robotics, effects of AI on robotics and automation, potential impact on work and employment, ethical concerns. Computer and network security fundamentals, privacy on the web, mobile device security, personal security, data privacy, password security.
The course aims to teach students three key concepts that constitute its title: sustainability, complexity and systems. Fundamental analysis and omnipresence of systems will first be explored. Complexity and examples of complex problems such as economic, environmental, political and social sustainability as well as corporate management issues will be discussed. Interdependence, delays and reinforcing and balancing feedback loops that lead to complexity will be analysed. Distinction will be made between complex and complicated issues in terms of ways to address them and how systems thinking, and system dynamics tools are potent to addressing the former, whereas the latter can be easily tackled through a reductionist approach.
Understanding the ways by which cultures and workers from different walks of life differ. Effective management of cultural and demographic differences in multicultural and international work environments. Impacts of these cultural and demographic differences on organizational and personnel outcomes.