Sustainability has never been more important, so as organizations are realizing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are everyone’s responsibility, they are placing sustainability at the heart of their business, requiring all their employees to play their part. 

With the IE Certificate on Foundations of Sustainability, you’ll learn how to incorporate a sustainability point of view across all business activities and functions, and be prepared to tackle the social, economic and environmental challenges of today’s world in any organization. And with this qualification under your belt, you’ll boost your career opportunities and show potential employers that you’re committed to sustainability and aligned with their values. This is an optional certificate that can be completed alongside your core studies. To earn the certificate, you must obtain ten credits through eligible courses, electives, and extracurricular activities (such as participation in relevant student clubs) and as a mandatory component, the completion of the Online Learning Journey. 

* Please keep in mind that some of these courses, electives, and extracurricular activities may already be included in your program, while others will need to be added. We’ve ensured maximum flexibility, including alternative routes to attain the number of credits needed. 

The goal of this course is to examine the tools for comparing cash flows that occur at different points in time. Students will compute present and/or future values of lump sums and/or annuities for cash flows, study the time value of money techniques— which are key tools in real-world business decisions—and focus on math formulas and their real-life applications.

This course is a practical approach to using Excel* as a tool to solve business problems. As the level in the group may be mixed, students will begin with the basics and continue at a steady pace. The main goal is to learn how to use the tools needed across a variety of assessments and selection processes from a practical standpoint.

*Please note: Students must have access to Excel, as alternative programs (such as Numbers, OpenOffice, or Google Sheets) do not have the same functionalities.

This course introduces students to the basic economic concepts that they will later encounter in the economics course. Understanding microeconomics is the first step to understanding wider economic principles, so this pre-program focuses on supply and demand, competitive markets and market failures. This gives students a broad perspective on how markets function and how supply and demand influences business decisions.

This course offers an introduction to financial accounting from an international perspective, including the impact of differences in various financial reporting environments and their influence on international markets. The course covers general accounting theory and practice, with an emphasis on understanding financial statements, the role of financial reporting in capital markets and optimal capital allocation processes, and ethical dilemmas in financial accounting. Students will learn how to analyze income statements, balance sheets and statements of cash flows, with an emphasis on valuation.

This course acts as an introduction to quantitative methods and how they can be applied to decision-making practices. Students will also build confidence in numerical information through active participation, which they will use throughout the program. The pre-program is divided into four areas of focus: mathematical concepts, probability, basic statistics and regression analysis, to create a solid foundation of quantitative methods.

The ever-increasing pace of change driven by new technologies and globalization has created countless opportunities for potential entrepreneurs. However, this same change has made the task of entrepreneurship more complex and challenging. This course aims to provide students with first-hand experiences which will familiarize them with key entrepreneurial challenges such as uncertainty, ambiguity, value creation, scarce resources, and ongoing change. Students will be encouraged to critically question, interpret and synthesize information through group work and presentations.

The main objective of this course is to help students learn to make sense of various data sources, organize inputs, and use state-of-the-art tools and models to aid decision-making. The course is multidisciplinary in nature and links to a number of other areas including finance, operations management, marketing and accounting. Students will be equipped with specific skills in the areas of data analysis, structuring decisions, building decision models, risk assessment, and decision-making under uncertainty.

This course will teach students how financial statements are created and how accounting decisions affect these statements, emphasizing the use of accounting as a tool for decision-making and problem-solving. It will familiarize students with accounting processes so that they can read and understand annual reports, and will cover the problems associated with accounting subjectivity and flexibility while evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies and estimates. Please note that in order to adhere to our limited time schedule, the course will only cover the very basic principles of financial statement analysis.

Leadership is one of the most essential and in-demand skills today. This course is designed to address those fundamental aspects of managing and leading people. The emphasis is on those areas of human behavior, at the individual, group and organizational level, that are important determinants of people’s experience in the workplace. The different sessions will provide students with a number of critical concepts and competencies on key issues such as self and career management, motivation, leadership, managing people and change management.

This course is designed to provide students with a unique case-based learning experience which is supplemented by conceptual marketing input. Cases serve to enhance the collective in-class exposure to—and exploration of—a wide variety of useful concepts, frameworks, tools and techniques. Cases also serve to facilitate the discussion of marketing problems in real-world situations. Students will be expected to read and prepare these cases carefully in order to contribute to the general class discussion.

This course is designed for future leaders who want to make big-picture management decisions surrounding information, technology and innovation. There are five key elements to the course:

• Junior management perspective: the course is designed so that students’ learning will still be relevant in five to ten years’ time
• Diverse backgrounds: this course does not require a background in technology, and contributions from students from a variety of geographical, educational and employment backgrounds
• Innovation and digital businesses
• Self-driven IT awareness: students will be expected to use their own personal strategies to keep up to date with the changing technological landscape
• Tools and skills: an introduction to the frameworks, tools and methods to help make informed decisions

This course will teach students how to:

• Define an industry and analyze the main forces explaining its attractiveness
• Analyze intra-industry competitive interactions
• Identify companies’ strategies to develop competitive advantage
• Assess the dynamics of competition, introducing concepts like game theory, network externalities and innovation
• Learn theoretical concepts and tools of corporate strategy
• Identify and evaluate how companies can achieve superior profitability using the right strategies
• Understand the uncertainties of management and how to use data and logic to make informed decisions
• Exercise critical thinking to challenge simplistic solutions
• Develop employability and key transferable skills
• Apply theoretical tools and concepts to real business situations
• Synthesize, analyze, interpret and critically evaluate information from a range of sources

This course covers microeconomics and the basic concepts underlying supply and demand and market structure, focusing on various types of government interventions in markets; macroeconomics, including the main economic indicators such as GDP, inflation and unemployment and their relationship in the business cycle; and the main macroeconomic policies including monetary and fiscal policy, trade policy and exchange rate policy. Students will learn these concepts and tools of economic analysis, will have a more formal vision of why and how different economic policies operate, and be able to assess the implications of different economic contexts and policies on the welfare of individuals, companies and the government. Finally, they will be able to think critically about the dilemmas of today’s global economy and the policies used to address controversial issues.

This course is intended for both students who plan to work in the finance area or wish to understand important financial concepts and tools which they might encounter in the normal course of their career as consultants or managers. It will cover financial decisions that firms take with the objective of creating value for their shareholders, broadly categorized into investment and financing decisions. Students are expected to follow the financial news and participate in class discussions on current and related topics. After completing this course, students can opt for the finance track of the Master in Management program, or take more courses from the several electives in finance that will be offered in the following semesters.

This course highlights key issues in corporate entrepreneurship. It will examine how existing firms can create an organizational environment conducive to entrepreneurship and will cover a broad range of issues based on how an organizational structure/design can assist opportunity identification and value capture. This course is relevant to students aiming to become an independent entrepreneur, corporate entrepreneur or a corporate manager. By the end of the course, students will be more experienced in understanding the challenges corporate entrepreneurs face and how to overcome them.

Cost allocation is at the heart of most accounting systems. The data provided by a cost accounting system is used for various purposes, which include product costing, planning and control and decision-making. This course mainly focuses on the first of these objectives: product costing. Students will become familiar with the goals of cost accounting systems, the fundamental features and design of these systems, and the various uses of the data provided by cost accounting decisions.

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Explain the strategic role of operations management, and how process design can support the strategy
• Propose systems, aligned with the organization strategy, for quality, inventory management, planning and logistics
• Propose supply chain configurations and processes for different types of business, as well as mechanisms to increase collaboration and integration, emphasizing sustainability and environmental respect
• Utilise project management tools
• Describe innovation mechanisms for process and product improvement, including lean/JIT tools
• Prepare and communicate reports on real companies, proposing operational improvements