What you'll learn

Skills you'll gain

Specialization - 5 course series

This Specialization will provide you with the skill set needed to help achieve the next step in your career.

This course will provide you with the accounting language's essentials. Upon completion, you should be able to read and interpret financial statements for business diagnosis and decision-making. More importantly, you will possess the conceptual base to keep learning more sophisticated accounting and finance on your own. Do not forget that, as with any other language, becoming proficient with accounting requires constant practice.

When it comes to numbers, there is always more than meets the eye. In operational finance, you will learn how to read the “story” that the balance sheet and income statement tells about the company’s operations. The insights you gain from this “financial story” will then become a tool for short-term decision-making at the top management level relating to current assets, current liabilities and the management of working capital. Finally, by the end of the course you will understand the financial consequences of managerial decisions on operations, marketing, etc.

The course will cover the following: 1. Marketing Fundamentals 2. Product, Pricing and Channel Decisions 3. Building Strong Brands 4. Communication Strategy

The objective of this course is therefore to provide insight into four key areas: • Motivation. In this course segment we will understand the concept of motivation and review various perspectives that will help you understand how we can motivate others. • Leadership. In this part of the course, we will analyze the concept of leadership and consider various perspectives and approaches to help shed light on leadership emergence and effectiveness. • Teamwork. Here we look at team functioning and effectiveness. Using the widely used input – process – output model of team effectiveness, we consider such topics as team diversity, team processes, and team outcomes. • Culture. Finally, we'll move to the level of the organization and consider the concept of organizational culture, also touching upon the concept of national culture. We look at the various ways in which culture is expressed, and discuss the implications of culture for people within organizations and cross-cultural collaborations.

In this culminating course, it’s time to use the business tools you have learned throughout the specialization to solve this real business problem. To help you as you develop a solution to the GAS GAS dilemma, in the Capstone you will also learn a six-step analysis of business problems methodology. By the end of the course, you will understand how to weave together considerations from accounting, finance, marketing and organizational behavior in order to arrive at a sound decision that will positively impact the firm’s future.

Finance for Managers

Marketing: Customer Needs and Wants

Organizational Behavior: How to Manage People

Analysis of Business Problems