Online courses directory (61)

Negotiation refers to the process of interacting in order to advance individual interests through joint action.  Contrary to what you might think, negotiations are not confined to the professional world; we often negotiate in our personal lives.  The principles that guide successful negotiations in world politics are equally important in the business world as well as our personal lives.  In fact, almost every transaction with another individual involves negotiation.  As you will learn in this course, negotiation, conflict resolution, and relationship management are complex processes.  Successful practitioners possess and apply a blend of perceptual, persuasive, analytical, and interpersonal skills that you will examine carefully in this course. In the ever-changing environment of modern business, firms start and grow by virtue of successful negotiations and by developing long-term relationships among two, three, or more parties involved, either directly or indirectly, in various business processes.  B…

The Business Administration major is designed to prepare you for a leadership role in today’s highly competitive, global business environment.  This elective course will allow you to incorporate risk management principles into your individual management style.  Risk management refers to the process of identifying, assessing, and prioritizing risks.  This course will teach you how to accurately assess the consequences of uncertain events; the ultimate goal for risk managers is to reduce and control the likelihood of such occurrences.  Personal attitudes toward risk vary widely (for example, attitudes can range from risk-averse to risk-seeking).  You are advised to approach this course from the perspective of a business manager (i.e., as a decision maker). Unforeseen circumstances can occur in various contexts, including natural disaster, collapses in financial markets, and accidents.  As a business manager, you will need to use risk management tools to minimize and control the probability and impact…

What is strategy?  When your friend tells you that his “strategy” in basketball is to win, he is not telling you a strategy at all.  A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a goalin the case of your friend, a more appropriately defined strategy for his basketball game would be: “I am going to apply defensive pressure and force the opposing team to make mistakes with the end goal of winning the game.”  In this course, you will learn that you must first clearly define your goals before you develop strategies in order to achieve them.  You will also learn that strategy in business is similar to strategy in sports, war, or politics; the parallels are so close that early business strategists studied military strategies in depth.  The science of strategy development has developed beyond this by now, but the parallels still exist. Strategic Management involves two processes: first, the process of identifying specific goals for a firm and designing strategies to achieve those goals, and seco…

There is no shortage of quotes in which inspirational business leaders describe the sources of their success. Their reasons are often diverse, but almost everyone comes back to the same thing: people. The people are the company; they create the success. In BUS301: Managing Human Capital, you learned how to find, train, and manage these people. Please keep in mind that there is more to successful business leadership than managing human capital. You must have a suitable structure and culture at your firm in order to achieve success. Imagine the U.S. military; it boasts some of the best-trained soldiers in human history, but that talent would be wasted without a structure designed to appropriately deploy forces. In other words, the military would not be as successful without streamlined organizational behavior. Organizational behavior (OB) is the study of how people interact in organizations. These interactions are governed by a number of factors, including your personal life, the personality of your boss or you…

This is the capstone course in the Saylor Customer Service certificate program which is currently under development. CUST105 is designed to teach you about the customer service work environment, methods for successful customer relations, and career advancement tactics. Future courses in the certificate program will provide a solid knowledge base in the areas of computer skills, business communications, and best customer service practices.

Principles of Microeconomics belongs to the CLEP® PREP suite of Saylor courses. This version of ECON101 will help you master the subject of microeconomics and will help prepare you to take the CLEP® exam in microeconomics [1]. The purpose of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of the principles of microeconomics. At its core, the study of economics deals with the choices and decisions that have to be made in order to manage scarce resources available to us. Microeconomics is the branch of economics that pertains to decisions made at the individual level, i.e., by individual consumers or individual firms after evaluating resources, costs, and tradeoffs. When we talk about the economy, we are referring to the marketplace or system in which these choices interact with one another. In this course, you will learn how and why these decisions are made and how they affect one another in the economy. Each of the following units has been designed as a building block, where the concepts you le…

The purpose of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of the principles of microeconomics.  At its core, the study of economics deals with the choices and decisions that have to be made in order to manage scarce resources available to us.  Microeconomics is the branch of economics that pertains to decisions made at the individual level, i.e. by individual consumers or individual firms, after evaluating resources, costs, and tradeoffs.  When we talk about “the economy,” then, we are referring to the marketplace or system in which these choices interact with one another.  In this course, we will learn how and why these decisions are made and how they affect one another in the economy. Each of the following units has been designed as a building block, where the concepts you learn in one unit will enable you to understand the material you discover in the next.  By the end of this course, you will have a strong grasp on the major issues that face microeconomists, including consumer and…

Economics is traditionally divided into two parts: microeconomics and macroeconomics. The main purpose of this course is to introduce you to the principles of macroeconomics. Macroeconomics is the study of how a country’s economy works while trying to discern among good, better, and best choices for improving and/or maintaining a nation’s standard of living and level of economic and societal well-being. Historical and contemporary perspectives on the roles and policies of government are part of the mix of interpretations and alternatives that surround questions of who or what gains and loses the most or least within a relatively small set of key interdependent players. In the broadest view, that set consists of households, consumers, savers, firm owners, investors, agency and elected officials, and global trading partners in which some wear many hats and face price considerations at two levels. Consider one distinction between macroeconomics and microeconomics though prices are taken into account in bot…

Economics is traditionally divided into two parts: microeconomics and macroeconomics.  The purpose of this course is to provide you with a fundamental understanding of the principles of macroeconomics.  Macroeconomists study how a country’s economy works and try to determine the best choices to improve the overall wellbeing of a nation.  Typical topics include inflation (the overall level of prices), employment, fiscal policy (government taxing and spending), and money and banking (interest rates and lending policies).  Individuals and firms need to consider how macroeconomic events will affect their own prosperity.  To better define macroeconomics, consider its distinction from microeconomics.  Imagine you are attempting to figure out how the price of a certain good has been determined.  Microeconomics would focus on how supply and demand determine prices, while macroeconomics would study the determination of prices at all levels.  To test particular policies and ideas, or to find out the causes of…

This course is designed to introduce you to the study of Calculus.  You will learn concrete applications of how calculus is used and, more importantly, why it works.  Calculus is not a new discipline; it has been around since the days of Archimedes.  However, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, two 17th-century European mathematicians concurrently working on the same intellectual discovery hundreds of miles apart, were responsible for developing the field as we know it today.  This brings us to our first question, what is today's Calculus?  In its simplest terms, calculus is the study of functions, rates of change, and continuity.  While you may have cultivated a basic understanding of functions in previous math courses, in this course you will come to a more advanced understanding of their complexity, learning to take a closer look at their behaviors and nuances. In this course, we will address three major topics: limits, derivatives, and integrals, as well as study their respective foundations and a…

In this course, you will look at the properties behind the basic concepts of probability and statistics and focus on applications of statistical knowledge.  You will learn about how statistics and probability work together.  The subject of statistics involves the study of methods for collecting, summarizing, and interpreting data.  Statistics formalizes the process of making decisions, and this course is designed to help you use statistical literacy to make better decisions.  Note that this course has applications for the natural sciences, economics, computer science, finance, psychology, sociology, criminology, and many other fields. We read data in articles and reports every day.  After finishing this course, you should be comfortable evaluating an author's use of data.  You will be able to extract information from articles and display that information effectively.  You will also be able to understand the basics of how to draw statistical conclusions. This course will begin with descriptive statistic…

Math for Economists will help you assemble a toolkit of skills and techniques to solve fundamental problems in both macroeconomics and microeconomics.  The material covers both precalculus and calculus concepts and should help you identify the best approach to solving problems.  For example, an economist may be called upon to determine the right mix allocation of capital to a production process.  The tools in this course will help you evaluate the options and select from the best alternatives.  Advanced courses in economics typically utilize mathematical techniques beyond basic calculus; so, gaining practice in fundamental skills can serve as a good basis for further study.  Of note, this course applies precalculus and calculus; this is different from “applied math,” which economists typically use to refer to probability and statistics. This course begins with a survey of basic optimization tools and then applies them to solve problems over several periods in time.  These optimization tools descri…

This course is designed to extend your knowledge of the basic microeconomic principles that will provide the foundation for your future work in economics and give you insight into how economic models can help us think about important real world phenomena.  Topics include supply and demand interaction, utility maximization, profit maximization, elasticity, perfect competition, monopoly power, imperfect competition, and game theory. Microeconomics is the study of rational choice behavior on the part of individual consumers and firms.  In general, economists are interested in how market mechanisms solve extremely complex resource allocation problems.  This course presents a logical and coherent framework in which to organize observed economic phenomena. Several economic "models" are developed and analyzed in order to help explain and predict a wide variety of economic (and sometimes, seemingly non-economic) phenomena.  Microeconomic theory is based on the notion that individuals (and firms) have well defin…

In this course, you will build on and apply what you learned in the introductory macroeconomics course (ECON102 [1]).   You will use the concepts of output, unemployment, inflation, consumption, and investment to study the dynamics of an economy at a more advanced level.   For example, now that you understand the relationship between supply and demand in general terms, you will be asked to examine the effects that short-run and long-run price changes have on full employment and output.  As the course progresses, you will gain a better appreciation for how policy shifts and changes in one sector impact the rest of the macroeconomy (whether the impacts are intended or unintended).  You will also examine the causes of inflation and depression, and discuss various approaches to responding to them.  By the end of this course, you should be able to think critically about the economy and develop your own unique perspective on various issues. Remember that macroeconomics attempts to explain the role of gover…

This course is designed to provide you with a simple and straightforward introduction to econometrics.  Econometrics is an application of statistical procedures to the testing of hypotheses about economic relationships and to the estimation of parameters.  Regression analysis is the primary procedure commonly used by researchers and managers whether their employments are within the goods or the resources market and/or within the agriculture, the manufacturing, the services, or the information sectors of an economy. Completion of this course in econometrics will help you progress from a student of economics to a practitioner of economics.  By completing this course, you will gain an overview of econometrics, develop your ability to think like an economist, hone your skills building and testing models of consumer and producer behavior, and synthesize the results you find through analyses of data pertaining to market-based economic systems.  In essence, professional economists conduct studies that combine…

As a student of economics, you must study the history of economic thought to understand why individuals, firms, and governments make certain choices. Economists try to answer three basic questions: what to produce, how to produce it, and for whom. The history of economic thought represents a wide diversity of theories within the discipline, but all economists address these three basic questions. As you learn more about the history of economic thought, you may realize that policies presented as great innovations today are founded upon centuries-old writings. You will learn that without a clear sense of the discussions and debates that took place among economists of the past, the modern economist lacks a complete perspective. By examining the history of economic thought, you will be able to categorize and classify thoughts and ideas and will begin to understand how to think like an economist. Economics is both a social science and a business subject; accordingly, economic thinking affects everything from art t…

This course is designed to provide you with a thorough understanding of the importance of money, banking, and financial markets of a developed economy.  Money, financial institutions, and financial markets have emerged as instruments of payments for the services of factors of production, such as labor and capital.  The use of money facilitates business in a market by acting as a common medium of exchange.  Of course, as that market expands and develops on a national and international level, the importance of money, banking, and other financial markets expands to accommodate innumerable exchanges. This course will allow you to examine not only the origins and nature of money, but also the institutions and markets that have evolved to enable the exchange of goods and services worldwide.  It will provide you with the opportunity to examine the instruments and strategies assisting production, distribution, and consumption.  Also, this course will help you develop an appreciation for important concepts in e…

In economics, the term "labor" refers to workers.  As a factor of production, labor earns wages for the services that it renders.  As such, students of labor economics have traditionally set out to understand wage formation, the level of employment, and all elements that go into the making of a wage relationship.  Over the years, the social and economic contexts in which labor markets operate have become increasingly complex; nowadays, labor economics is no longer limited to the study of wages.  Modern labor economics instead seeks to understand the complex workings of the labor market by studying the dynamics between employers, employees, and their wage-, price-, and profit-making incentives.  In other words, modern labor economics explores the outcomes of the labor market under the assumption that workers strive to maximize their wellbeing and firms strive to maximize profits.  It also analyzes the behavior of employers and employees and studies their responses to changes in government policies and/or…

This course introduces major theories of economic development and to place them in a historical context. In his contributory introduction “Economic Growth, Economic Development and Human Development” in The Development Economics Reader (2008), edited by Giorgio Secondi and published by Routledge, Secondi defines economic development as the “branch of economics that studies relatively poor countries.” In the same book, Mahbub ul Haq, writing under the title “The Human Development Paradigm,” suggests that the “basic purpose of development is to enlarge people’s choices,” which is in line with the views expressed by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. Whether development is simply studying poor countries or expanding people’s choices in poor countries, one of the essential requirements is that there must be a means for making the choices available. This means that economic development must include growth, but growth can take place without economic development. Without economic growth, the choices…

Public Finance rests at the intersection of two disciplines: Public Economics and Public Choice.  Public Economics deals with issues of social optimality: how much of a good (or ill) does a society desire (or tolerate), and how do we incentivize producers and consumers to attain that amount?  Public economics concerns itself with externalities, which are costs that are borne by persons not involved in a market transaction.  There are both positive and negative externalities; public economists want to know how we get more of the good and less of the bad.  Public choice is the field of economics that looks into the behavior of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats and studies how they choose given different policy institutions. The field of Public Finance studies the interaction between these two disciplines, asking questions like: How do the incentives of the political actors shape the policies they craft?  How does that in turn affect the outcomes in the marketplace?  Alternately, students of Public Fi…