MBA

Corporate crises are recurring events in the evolution of almost any company. They are a regular part of a company’s development, and it is part of any manager’s job to deal with them. Against this background, this chapter explores a contingent approach to crisis-specific management of various marketing policies. The basic assumption is that situational, contingent properties of crises (should) determine the structure and behaviour of marketing management. Thus, managers should aim to achieve a specific “crisis-marketing fit” which involves the subfields of strategic marketing, and a set of typical responses for product, sales, pricing and communication policy.

This chapter provides a technical outline of the basics of online marketing. The outline includes an introduction to digital marketing and strategic planning and development. Our contribution offers theoretical and practical insights relative to this growing marketing area, with information on the main areas for which online marketing is particularly suited: (1) the E-commerce section explores different business models and what techniques are used for their development; (2) Web Search Marketing focuses on SEO and SEM, as well as in keyword selection for optimisation; (3) E-mail Marketing offers interesting content to develop a successful newsletter; and (4) Social Media Marketing addresses planning and the most important tools used to maximise communication through social media. In a nutshell, this chapter offers an overview of digital marketing and its strategies for an active and effective Web presence.

The main aim of this chapter is to give some ideas about the relevance of human resource management (HRM) in nowadays organizations, with a special emphasis in the operational perspective of HRM. So, and beginning with a glance about the evolution and concepts, giving relevance to the transition from personnel management to HRM, the chapter follows with the discussion of some of the challenges presented to this management and the presentation of the main policies and practice of HRM that can be developed by the different types of organizations.

This chapter aims to provide, for all those that pursue a managerial career in the private industry, public sector, government, technological and engineering area, the “core” concepts, principles, rules and techniques of the accounting area. Positioning accounting within its broader social, economic and historical context, this chapter provides useful insights concerning the needs of different users of accounting information and provides a clear understanding of the differences and complementarities between financial and management accounting. In detail, the chapter defines accounting; analyses the evolution of accounting from mediaeval times to present; identifies the users of accounting information and their needs; identifies the objectives of financial reporting; identifies the qualities that make financial statements useful; defines the basic elements of financial statements—assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses; provides an understanding of the accrual basis and going concern assumptions which underlie the preparation of financial statements; explains the nature and purpose of accounting standards; and introduces the financial statements that appear in a set of published accounts. To complement, the main concepts of management accounting and the distinctiveness and usefulness of the information it provides for decision-making are described.

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the main topics discussed in a first-year MBA class on corporate finance. One more motivation is not only to summarize them but also to provide some hands-on tools that can be applied in practice in relevant to corporate finance positions. Section 1 introduces the reader to the corporate finance field, the organizational structure of the firm, the conflicts between stakeholders, the financial management decisions as well as the financial markets. Section 2 refers to the utility of financial statements and provides the way to extract the necessary information from them. Later on, we discuss about the cost of capital and its fundamental importance in the capital structure of the firm. Finally, we present some tools for capital budgeting decisions and project valuation such as net present value, internal rate of return, and discounted payback period. Attention is also paid to the dividend policy of the firm and its consequences to the firm’s earnings. The chapter concludes by presenting some of the most important techniques in equity and business valuation such as free cash flow and discounted cash flow analyses.