Elective Courses

This course examines analytically and critically current problems in global management. It will address multiple employee and organizational problems that students would find beneficial to have exposures to. This course adopts a problem analytical approach to examining and understanding issues selected. Issues include tools of creative problem solving, diversity, visions, motivation systems, team building and challenges for change. This course serves to develop analytic, critical thinking, problem solving, and presentation skills that will contribute directly to effective global business management.

One element of global management concerns the managing of human resources in a diverse, worldwide organization. To manage employees in these organizations effectively, understanding of recruiting, selecting, developing, retaining and compensating is essential. This course provides students with knowledge and understanding of managing human resources in global contexts, as well as develops student ability and skills in analyzing international human resources in present day business organizations.

This course is to provide students in-depth learning for managing the multinational corporations across various product, business, geographic markets. Specifically, the course focuses on three central themes that are critical to the successful formulation of corporate strategy: (1) What are the new businesses opportunities emerged from globalization and how could multinational corporations capture value? (2) How could multinational corporations grow in different settings through acquisitions, partnerships, or internal development, and (3) How could the multinational corporations manage the portfolio of its businesses? Overall, this course will highlight the criticality of making profound decisions about the right pathways for firms to compete in the global business landscape. To tackle these issues, this course will provide theoretical frameworks and guiding principles to analyze practical problems at the corporate 6 or group level experienced by managers.

This course examines the opportunities and challenges that managers confront when doing business in China. It addresses the complex environment of China business with respect to economic, social, cultural, political, and legal institutions. It also aims to provide students with contemporary knowledge of the external environmental forces that are changing competition in today's China market. Threats and opportunities arising from the new rules in China will be discussed.

This course examines the opportunities and challenges that contemporary managers confront when conducting business across national borders. It addresses the complex environment of international business with respect to economic, social, cultural, political, and legal institutions. Special attention will be given to examine how these institutions shape business operations in the global market. Throughout this course, we will also highlight some of the drivers of global macroeconomic development and its impact on international business.

This course involves visits to companies that deal with significant global management issues inside and outside of Hong Kong. Orientation before the visits includes identification and preparation of academic and practical issues to be addressed to target companies. After the visits, academic reports on the issues raised, addressed, solutions and personal take-away would be collected.

This course is aimed at providing students with the tools to become a more effective negotiator by helping students learn how to analyze and conduct negotiations in various contexts. It will give students the opportunity to identify strengths as a negotiator and to work on weaknesses. The course will provide conceptual frameworks and principles based on academic research from a range of fields, such as interpersonal communication, psychology, and group decision-making, for students to diagnose problems and promote agreement.

This course is structured as a workshop in which students will be an active participant, where self-reflection is required. After all, if a “good deal” is reached, it may be difficult to know whether this was due to effective negotiating or luck. By contrast, if an undesirable agreement is reached, it is often possible to analyze what happened and identify steps to take to avoid similar outcomes in the future.

This course addresses multiple career management topics, including career stages/paths, human and social capital, employment relationships, and work-life balance. This course also highlights the career enhancing skills that are important for career progression. Upon finishing this course, students will be equipped with the knowledge of the main issues relevant for their own current and future career management. Cultural and global issues in career management will also be addressed.

This course focuses on the link between organizational structure and business strategy. The core question addressed is how firms should be organized to achieve their performance objectives. Topics covered in this course include incentive pay, evaluation, hierarchy, organizational culture, and personnel management. The course also discusses the determinants of a firm's boundaries and applied topics such as corporate mergers and outsourcing. The course consists mostly of lectures, which will cover both theoretical and empirical material. In the theoretical part, the course makes heavy use of basic tools in microeconomic theory; in the empirical part, the course draws on various statistical and econometric methods with an emphasis on causal inference.

This module provides an overview of the global concepts, theories, and practices of Knowledge Management (KM) and Knowledge Creation (Innovation) in global organizations and communities. Students will examine basic issues and approaches that global organizations take to create, identify, capture, validate, store, share, and apply knowledge. Techniques and tools for building a knowledge sharing platform and system will be introduced. KM and related case studies will illustrate the implementation and development of a knowledge sharing culture and innovation management in global organizations.  A special focus will be placed on the development of KM programs in practical situations.

This course is designed to provide a theoretical framework to analyze these questions. More specifically, this course is to provide a multi-faceted overview of the characteristics and unique challenges of governance strategy and practices in Asia. Main topics include the country institutional environment, corporate ownership, family- and state-owned enterprises, board of directors and corporate transparency. In addition, the topics of corporate social responsibility, sustainability reporting, nonprofit organizations and social enterprises will be discussed in-depth to bring this course to a more forward-looking conclusion.

This course aims to equip students with a strong conceptual foundation for understanding the digital revolution in the global business environment. As digitization transforms the nature of business across a wide range of industries, mastering the concepts and practices of digital innovation is crucial for managers, entrepreneurs as well as investors. Moreover, a global perspective is becoming ever more critical as digital technologies and platforms change both the speed and the reach for businesses to access new ideas and resources, provide their products and services, enter new markets, and navigate through both traditional partnerships and newly-emerged ecosystems. This course is theory- and research-based but practice-oriented. Through disciplined analyses of successful and unsuccessful cases across industry and national borders, this course will provide students with the sophistication to identify, evaluate and act upon new business opportunities successfully in a truly global and digital world.

The course covers evidence-based management (EBM) of organizations in global management contexts. Managers often make arbitrary decisions based on intuition, chance, preference, convenience or tradition. EBM is a potential remedy. It has gained prevalence among organizations over the years, including international organizations that operate in global contexts. It promotes a conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the best available scientific evidence from multiple sources to make informed managerial decisions. The effects of EBM on organizations, employees, and other stakeholders have been scientifically proven across many domains.

“Business Lab” is designed to equip students with a practical understanding of how to develop a new business under a startup environment or within a sizable organization in a real-world situation with reference to global contexts, considerations and challenges. The course will cover idea generation, business model formulation, strategic planning, financial modelling, resource and operational planning, pitching to external investor and/or internal management team, etc. The course will integrate what the students have learnt via various business and management courses, as well as applying them in a corporate scenario. Application of taught concepts / knowledge of entrepreneurship, design thinking, product / service development, strategic planning, financial forecasting, and/or marketing and promotion, etc. will be required throughout the course.

This course is about how to achieve alignment amongst stakeholders of enterprises operating in a global context. This entails the creation of an integrative perspective to understanding global management, both at the enterprise level and the executive level. This is of particular importance for global managers aspiring to become CEOs.

This course aims at developing students’ organisational storytelling skills through the study of works of fiction, memoirs, and speeches from around the world. By reflecting on the importance of storytelling in management, this course will help students become better leaders.

This course aims at introducing students to the European business culture through an interdisciplinary approach. 1) History and Geopolitics: to understand how the European Union came to be and its development; 2) Sociology: to examine different issues, such as cultural identities, politics, and ethics in the European context and their impact on business relationships; 3) Management: to analyse practical issues in a European context.

Capitalism has spread across the world as a driving force for economic growth and human prosperity, but it has also created a myriad of social ills, such as environmental crisis, social inequality, and political unrest. Managerial practices are both a cause for and a solution to these global challenges.

This course will introduce you to the basic components of wellness programmes. It will cover topics surrounding mental health, stress, anxiety, burnout, work-life balance, work recovery, coping strategies, and developing resilience. The focus will be on managerial training and implementation – how leaders can effectively help their company and the people within, achieve and maintain wellness at work. This course will also provide you with the skills to assess and develop workplace wellness initiatives based on practical application. Students will explore differences in wellness programmes across cultures to enhance a global management perspective. This hands-on course is designed with interactive and practical activities to prepare you to use these tools in your own workplace.

You can take up to three electives from the Master of Accounting, Master of Economics, Master of Finance, Master of Finance in Financial Technology, Master of Science in Business Analytics or Master of Science in Marketing programme at HKU. Enrollment in electives from other programmes is subject to seat availability and approval by the Programme Directors concerned based on your profile, capabilities and performance in the MGM programme.

Since enrollment in other taught postgraduate electives is not guaranteed, you should always choose four MGM electives during the course enrollment at our programme. Course enrollment results of other programmes may only be confirmed after that course has started. If your enrollment is successful, you can drop the MGM elective(s) and enroll in the other taught postgraduate elective(s).

It is your responsibility to make sure you obtain 60 credits to fulfill the graduation requirements and there is no overlapping of classes and exams in courses from different programmes.

*The list of available electives from other programmes may have prerequisite requirement(s) and is subject to change for future intakes.