Courses tagged with "Information Theory" (219)

This course integrates psychological insights into economic models of behavior. It discusses the limitations of standard economic models and surveys the ways in which psychological experiments have been used to learn about preferences, cognition, and behavior. Topics include: trust, vengeance, fairness, impatience, impulsivity, bounded rationality, learning, reinforcement, classical conditioning, loss-aversion, over-confidence, self-serving biases, cognitive dissonance, altruism, subjective well-being, and hedonic adaptation. Economic concepts such as equilibrium, rational choice, utility maximization, Bayesian beliefs, game theory, and behavior under uncertainty are discussed in light of these phenomena.

The economic growth of developing countries requires the acquisition of technological capabilities. In countries at the world technological frontier, such capabilities refer to cutting edge skills to innovate entirely new products. In developing countries, the requisite technological capabilities are broader, and include production engineering, project execution and incremental innovation to make borrowed technology work. Theories of technology acquisition are examined. The empirical evidence is taken from two sets of developing countries; the most advanced (Taiwan, Korea, India, China and Brazil) and the least advanced (Africa and Middle Eastern countries).

15.874 and 15.871 provide an introduction to system dynamics modeling for the analysis of business policy and strategy. Students learn to visualize a business organization in terms of the structures and policies that create dynamics and regulate performance. The course uses role playing games, simulation models, and management flight simulators to develop principles for the successful management of complex strategies. Special emphasis will be placed on case studies of successful strategies using system dynamics.

15.874 is a full semester course and 15.871 is a half semester course. The two classes meet together and cover the same material for the first half of the term. In the second half of the semester, only 15.874 continues.

The strategic importance of information technology is now widely accepted. It has also become increasingly clear that the identification of strategic applications alone does not result in success for an organization. A careful coordination of strategic applications, information technologies, and organizational structures must be made to attain success. This course addresses strategic, technological, and organizational connectivity issues to support effective and meaningful integration of information and systems. This course is especially relevant to those who wish to effectively exploit information technology and create new business processes and opportunities.

The objective of this course is to learn the financial tools needed to make good business decisions. The course presents the basic insights of corporate finance theory, but emphasizes the application of theory to real business decisions. Each session involves class discussion, some centered on lectures and others around business cases.

This subject is about building, running, and growing an organization. Subject has four central themes:

• How to think analytically about designing organizational systems
• How leaders, especially founders, play a critical role in shaping an organization's culture
• What really needs to be done to build a successful organization for the long-term and
• What one can do to improve the likelihood of personal success.

Not a survey of entrepreneurship or leadership; subject addresses the principles of organizational architecture, group behavior and performance, interpersonal influence, leadership and motivation in entrepreneurial settings. Through a series of cases, lectures, readings and exercises students develop competencies in organizational design, human resources management, leadership and organizational behavior in the context of a new, small firm.

Traditional finance and other business courses analyze a broad spectrum of factors affecting business decision-making but typically give little systematic consideration to the role of taxes. In contrast, traditional tax accounting courses concentrate on administrative issues while ignoring the richness of the context in which tax factors operate. The objective of the course is to bridge this gap by providing a framework for recognizing tax planning opportunities and applying basic principles of tax strategy.

This course covers theory and evidence on government taxation policy. Topics include tax incidence, optimal tax theory, the effect of taxation on labor supply and savings, taxation and corporate behavior, and tax expenditure policy.

Our subject is the ethics of leadership, an examination of the principles appealed to by executive authority when questions arise about its sources and its legitimacy. Most treatments of this subject resort to case-studies in order to illustrate the application of ethical principles to business situations, but our primary emphasis will be upon classic works of imaginative literature, which convey more directly than case-studies the ethical pressures of decision-making. Readings will include works by Shakespeare, Sophocles, Shaw, E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Henrik Ibsen, among others. Topics to be discussed include the sources of authority, the management of consensus, the ideal of vocation, the ethics of deception, the morality of expediency, the requirements of hierarchy, the virtues and vices of loyalty, the relevance of ethical principles in extreme situations.

14.461 is an advanced course in macroeconomics that seeks to bring students to the research frontier. The course is divided into two sections. The first half is taught by Prof. Iván Werning and covers topics such as how to formulate and solve optimal problems. Students will study fiscal and monetary policy, among other issues. The second half, taught by Prof. George-Marios Angeletos, covers recent work on multiple equilibria, global games, and informational fictions.

This subject focuses on the specifics of strategy and organization of the multinational company, and provides a framework for formulating successful and adaptive strategies in an increasingly complex world economy. Topics include the globalization of industries, the continuing role of country factors in competition, organization of multinational enterprises, and building global networks. This particular version of the subject is taught and tailored specifically to those enrolled in the MIT Sloan Fellows Program.

This seminar is intended for doctoral students and discusses topics in applied probability. This semester includes a variety of fields, namely statistical physics (local weak convergence and correlation decay), artificial intelligence (belief propagation algorithms), computer science (random K-SAT problem, coloring, average case complexity) and electrical engineering (low density parity check (LDPC) codes).

15.320 Strategic Organizational Design focuses on effective organizational design in both traditional and innovative organizations, with special emphasis on innovative organizational forms that can provide strategic advantage. Topics include when to use functional, divisional, or matrix organizations, how IT creates new organizational possibilities, and examples of innovative organizational possibilities, such as democratic decision-making, crowd-based organizations, internal resource markets, and other forms of collective intelligence. Team projects include inventing new possibilities for real organizations.

In virtually every industry and every firm, information technology is driving change, creating opportunities and challenges. Leaders who don't understand at least the fundamentals of information systems will be at a strategic disadvantage. This course provides broad coverage of technology concepts and trends underlying current and future developments in information technology, and fundamental principles for the effective use of computer-based information systems. There will be a special emphasis on manufacturing. Information Systems topics that will be covered include networks and distributed computing, including the World Wide Web, hardware and operating systems, software development tools and processes, relational databases, security and cryptography, enterprise applications, B2B, the semantic web and electronic commerce. Sloan LFM students with an interest in Information Systems are encouraged to register for this course.

Through lectures, discussions, and class exercises, 15.322 analyzes the human processes underlying organizational behavior and change. The class makes students aware of the challenge of organizational change and equips them to better handle it. There are many psychological and sociological phenomena that regularly occur in organizations, though many of these forces are difficult to see. The aim is to increase the students' understanding of these forces – in themselves and in others – so they become more visible and manageable. The prerequisite for this course is 15.321, Leading Organizations I.

Your success as an academic will depend heavily on your ability to communicate to fellow researchers in your discipline, to colleagues in your department and university, to undergraduate and graduate students, and perhaps even to the public at large. Communicating well in an academic setting depends not only on following the basic rules that govern all good communication (for example, tailoring the message to meet the needs of a specific audience), but also on adhering to the particular norms of academic genres.

The purpose of this course, then, is threefold. First, the course will acquaint you with guidelines that will help you create well-crafted academic communication. Second, it will give you the opportunity to practice your communication skills and to receive extensive feedback from your colleagues and from me. You will write and/or revise an article manuscript or conference paper, present a conference paper or job talk, write a manuscript peer review, and engage in various other communication exercises. The article and talk, which are the major assignments of the course, will be based on material from your own doctoral studies. Third, the course will provide an opportunity for you to learn about professional norms for a range of activities that surround the academic enterprise, including, for example, the scholarly publication process and the job search process.

This course draws on a wide range of perspectives to explore the roots of long term competitive advantage in unusually successful firms. Using a combination of cases, simulations, readings and, most importantly, lively discussion, the course will explore the ways in which long term advantage is built from first mover advantage, increasing returns, and unique organizational competencies. We will focus particularly on the ways in which the actions of senior management build competitive advantage over time, and on the strategic implications of understanding the roots of a firm's success.

This course is designed to lay the foundations of good empirical research in the social sciences. It does not deal with specific techniques per se, but rather with the assumptions and the logic underlying social research. Students become acquainted with a variety of approaches to research design, and are helped to develop their own research projects and to evaluate the products of empirical research.

The first two weeks of this course are an overview of performing improvisation with introductory and advanced exercises in the techniques of improvisation. The final four weeks focus on applying these concepts in business situations to practice and mastering these improvisation tools in leadership learning.

This course examines opportunities and risks firms face in today's global market. It provides conceptual tools for analyzing how governments and social institutions influence economic competition among firms embedded in different national settings. Public policies and institutions that shape competitive outcomes are examined through cases and analytical readings on different companies and industries operating in both developed and emerging markets.