Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Business Leadership

This subject aims to introduce students to the key issues, concerns and theories of business leadership and Indigenous leadership studies. This subject aims to support students to build a framework for the practice of their own leadership. The subject will guide students in their study of leadership by helping to develop a critical engagement with theories of leadership. The subject will explore a diversity of theories, using them as a ‘lens’ to view and practice leadership. Students will be encouraged to engage with leadership theories, applying them to their own practice and/or experience of leadership.

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Indigenous entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems are characterized by a complex set of interconnected elements: traditional territory, leadership, culture, capital markets, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members that continuously interact, collaborate, and compete in response to the specific dynamics of a particular region.

This subject aims to introduce students to the key issues, concerns, and theories of Indigenous hybrid venture creation in the context of entrepreneurial ecosystems that are unique to a region’s particular socioeconomic needs and priorities for social, cultural, spiritual, and environmental value creation. This subject aims to support students to build a framework for the practice of Indigenous entrepreneurship through generating insights into the creation, management, and development of new ventures by and for Indigenous peoples that are responsive to the community, its values, traditions, culture and socioeconomic needs.

Examining the objectives of Indigenous entrepreneurship in context of social interrelationships and interdependencies will bring students into critical discussions between community’s cultural and spiritual understandings, beliefs, practices, and socioeconomic needs. Understanding the tensions inherent in Indigenous business ecosystems and the way that organisations and individuals are embedded in a particular geographical, environmental and community context will lead to a more sophisticated understanding of what is at stake and at play in Indigenous business ecosystems. The subject will explore Indigenous entrepreneurship, hybrid venture creation and entrepreneurial ecosystems and students will be encouraged to apply them to their own practice, experience and/or context of entrepreneurship.

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Indigenous business and leadership are most often practiced in capitalist systems where values of private capital accumulation reign. Whilst more socially focused business strategies are gaining popularity, businesses still operate for a primary profit motive because of the dominant operating environment. This subject explores a wide spectrum of business ethics issues in the context of Indigenous culture and philosophy, and factors that should be considered in addressing the central tension for Indigenous business and leadership that being profit vs purpose. Drawing upon Native and Indigenous philosophies and values, students will investigate, discuss, and present culturally based solutions and methods that Indigenous-managed businesses and organizations can anticipate and plan for future ethical problems.

This course opens with a consideration of Indigenous philosophy and practical wisdom alongside Dewey’s pragmatist approach to ethics and Howard Bowen’s philosophy of business ethics pertaining to business’s roles in society. These foundations will support students to critically examine and discuss the meaning of “Indigenous” as it pertains to cultures and values. From this point students will transform and expand these ethical principles into Indigenous contexts, and then and apply these Indigenous-grounded ethical principles to organization management.

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This subject is designed to enable students to enhance their ability to prepare and use financial information in decision making – crucial skills in business. The subject begins by examining core concepts in accounting and developing students’ ability to prepare financial reports. The subject then explores how that knowledge and information may be used to inform decision making by diverse stakeholders in a variety of business contexts including via the preparation of a business case to support a major financial decision and through consideration of various current issues faced in accounting and business.

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This subject will focus on quantitative approaches to analyse business problems and based on these analyses, make effective decisions. The subject will explore descriptive analytic, predictive analytic, and prescriptive analytic techniques. Using these techniques, students will develop understanding of a wide variety of strategic and operational business decision problems being faced by managers and decision makers in the fields of financial management, human resource management, marketing management, operations management, and international business management. Students will be expected to be able to calculate and manipulate data as well as interpret the results in order to derive and evaluate alternative solutions to typical business decision problems.

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The subject provides an introduction to the fundamentals of microeconomics and strategy, and applies this knowledge to a number of business and management issues. Topics to be covered include: the working of competitive markets and the determination of market prices and quantities; the organisation of the firm and various measures of the costs of production; business strategies and market outcomes in different market environments; and public policy towards business in the presence of “external costs” in production.

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The subject introduces students without a strong mathematical background to some of the methods used to collect, present and analyse data and to provide illustrative applications to decision problems faced by business managers. Topics will be chosen from: sources of data; sampling and collection of primary data; presentation and summary measures of data; random variation of data and some implications for hypothesis testing and forecasting; an introduction to decision models with uncertainty; the use and interpretation of estimated regression equations; some forecasting methods used by business.

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This subject is designed to equip students with the tools necessary to enable them to make the core decisions faced by managers and investors. The first part of the subject deals with establishing the environment in which organizations operate, namely the objectives of the suppliers of financial and human capital. The subject then considers the basic tools commonly employed by financial managers and investors including discounted cash flow techniques and financial mathematics. Measures and definitions of alternative forms of risk are considered and the relation between risk and expected reward in capital markets is established. Finally, the subject considers the important decisions faced by firms (investment, financing, dividend policy, hedging and executive compensation) and by investors (the composition of their optimal retirement portfolio).

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This subject exposes students to an integrated perspective of the firm, how it interfaces with its environment, and how it creates and sustains value. Critical to the creation of value is the way a firm interacts with its various stakeholders. The subject builds a conceptual framework to examine the choices managers face in determining how best to create value, and how these choices may be shaped by key stakeholders including: government, society, trading partners, customers, employees and competitors. A key focus of this subject is on value creation as a cross disciplinary and cross firm activity. As such, the focus is on value creation from multiple disciplinary perspectives including strategy, entrepreneurship, marketing, HRM, supply chain management and organisational design.

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