Tag archives for MBA

Celebrate Walden University’s Global Day of Service by Volunteering: Saturday, 2 October, 2010

Once again, our students, alumni, faculty and staff members, along with their friends and family, came together in a truly remarkable way to celebrate Walden’s Global Day of Service.  On Saturday, Oct. 2, more than 1,700 individuals volunteered across 455 cities, with 700 of those volunteers specifically participating in more than 90 Walden-sponsored service projects. [...]

The Dog Ate/Scooped My Research: What scholarly research doesn’t need

I won an Amazon Kindle 2 from Springer, the academic journal publisher, at AOM 2010 in Montréal!

In response to the article dated 23 August, 2010, wherein Patricia Cohen, New York Times, explains how Dan Cohen, George Mason University, considers current academic culture–literature, in particular–the “exclusive” domain of “the charmed circle of tenured academe” (Cohen, 2010). They crticize the dearth of individuals that have invested significant time and effort to develop disciplined [...]

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics III: Statistics Canada International Methodology Symposium 2010

Statistics Canada 2010 International Methodology Symposium

Those of you familiar with my recalcitrant non-conforming ways but also know that I am loathe to reject any traditionally-accepted theory without first striving to gain a mastery ofit will appreciate, then, my plans to attend the 2010 Statistics Canada International Methodology Symposium, from October 26 to 29, 2010, in my hometown (well, from the time [...]

How do you define business “Strategy”? Post your idea!

Academy of Management 2010 Montréal at Palais de Congrès

I introduced my platform for the 2010 CIRA Board elections as a response to a post in the LinkedIn CIRA group discussion by the current Vice Chair. I agreed in principle with the strategy and positioning CIRA has selected, but identified many opportunities to reduce exposure to risk inherent to the strategy. I outline disciplined business strategy and my experience peer reviewing papers presented that Academy of Management 2010 in Montréal for Business Policy and Strategy Division.

How I took my most effective notes in school

[tab name='McMaster @fb'] The following post was in response to a Wall post by the McMaster University, Michael G. DeGroote School of Business Farcebook group on 19 August, 2010: What’s the best way to take notes in class? A) Good ol’ paper and pen B) Laptop C) iPad (or other tablet PC) D) Sound / [...]

Do credentials mean we can should evaluate a statement any less critically?

Robin with V-Cube 7

In the spirit of being in Montréal for the 2010 Academy of Management Annual Meeting, with over 8,000 professionals and academics from 80 countries participating in over 7,000 programmes (the programme for the event is 491 pages long), I thought I would post an interesting discussion from the Academy of Management’s ht#mce_temp_url# site.  I had [...]

Citing Discussions and Personal Communications in Scholarly Discourse in APA Style

I contributed the following to the Walden University Writing Centre Facebook Discussion in response to a question pertaining to citing personal communications.  Even if you’re not a Walden University doctoral student, you can appreciate how the Foundations course (first course in all Walden doctoral programmes), RSCH 8100 (introductory Research Theory and Design course), and RSCH [...]

CFA or MBA? (Or M.Fin?)

For aspiring Finance students, the question of whether to do a Finance MBA or the CFA Institute’s pretisigous Chartered Financial Analyst designation is a decision that they probably will be answering quite confidently in a few years.  Loren Fox asked the question on LinkedIn Answers: “I currently work in the investment management industry and am [...]

Starbucks Strategy

Thompson, Strickland, & Gamble. (2008). Crafting and Executing Strategy. 16ed. McGraw-Hill Higher Education ISBN: 0073381241

The following answer was my response to a question posed in LinkedIn Answers by Pratik Raghav: “I would like to know how strategy has been defined by high-end outlets like Starbucks.”  My response was as follows.  The original question, with answers from other members, can be found at http://www.linkedin.com/answers/product-management/positioning/PRM_PST/700921-78050926 Since Pratik specified “high-end,” I suspect he [...]

Is an MBA worth the cost and workload to get it?

The following is a question posed by Michael Amers on LinkedIn Answers http://www.linkedin.com/answers/professional-development/career-management/PRO_CMA/703656-33184901, a forum for members to ask questions, similarly to Yahoo! Answers, except since LinkedIn targets–and comprises primarily–the professional and technical segment, you can expect more reliable answers.  Michael asked the following: Is an M.B.A. worth the price of tuition and workload to [...]

Is lowballing acceptable? Is it ok to charge below variable cost if you’re desperate? If you like the client?

The following is my response to a LinkedIn Answers question pertaining to managerial economics and cost accounting issues surrounding pricing that can be found in its entirety, including other contributors’ answers, at http://www.linkedin.com/answers/professional-development/ethics/PRO_PET/695563-7604647 The original question, posed by Vasco Philip de Sousa, Screenwriter and Historian, was as follows: Is lowballing acceptable if your client can’t [...]

Walden Announces Expanding into its Most Important Foreign Market: Canada

As a Canadian student in the AMDS PhD programme, Finance specialization, I have a personal interest in Walden’s success in entering the Canadian market and gaining credibility.  I completed my BSc (Hons) at Carleton University in Ottawa, and my MBA from McMaster University in Hamilton.  I find myself continually on the defensive when I mention [...]

Canadian Banking as a Dissertation Topic? A letter to my PhD mentor

Dr. Fadul: I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to potential dissertation direction that could also be a good direction for future prospects.  I need to do this because I will need to have a very good plan to show the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada selection committee when I apply [...]

Arrogance of Science, and Rubiks Cubes

I have found that modern scientists have a certain arrogance that was not as evident in the past–a sense that “science has arrived,” and “we didn’t know better back then, but we got it right, now.” And it is this feeling that science cannot do wrong now, I believe, more than anything else, that is dangerous.

It is that elegance, beauty, and simplicity, the complexity, that I have come to appreciate from cubing. And the process of abstracting generalizations that apply to all (n-layer) cubes that I learned by developing strategies for solving (n-1)-, (n-2)-, and (n-3)-layer cubes, for example.

CYA: Consider Your Audience!

It is interesting that Dr. Winsten-Bartlett mentioned the Academy of Management as a potential audience. I recently completed reviewing two papers for presentation at the Academy of Management annual meeting this August in Montréal in the Business Policy & Strategy category. Both papers were highly theoretical and quantitative and nature. From reviewing these papers I [...]

Evaluation Research: Motivations and Methods

Powell (2006) outline numerous goals of evaluation research, including accounting for use of limited resources, increasing visibility of organizations, and to provide feedback to staff. With these goals in mind, organizations can employ one of the three methods previously discussed in the course: quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. In terms of quantitative evaluation research, while [...]

Walden Finance PhD Self Pre-Assessment

In Commonwealth countries, there are commonly two types of degrees: a three-year “Pass” degree and a four-year “Honours” degree.  There are no Associates degrees and college credits are not readily transferable to university programs.  The major differentiator between a Pass and Honours degree is the requirement of formal research and preparation of an “Honours Thesis.”  [...]

Portfolio Theory and CAPM

Conventional wisdom amongst investors recommends maintaining a diversified portfolio.  The reasoning behind this, however, is not so common knowledge.  One theory put forth by Harry Markowitz, Modern Portfolio Theory, asserts that asset returns represent normally-distributed random variables, each with their own variances, and quantifiable risk being represented by standard deviation (Markowitz, 1999).  While variants of [...]

Islamic Finance: Engineering Shariah-compliant debt instruments

Gunn (2008) provided the inspiration for further study into Islamic financing by point out the relative paucity of studies pertaining to Islamic finance.  Gunn (2008) point out that to an extent more so than western religions, Islam demands that its law be integrated into every aspect of a Muslim’s life—spiritual, commercial, professional, legal.  While the [...]

Holistic Analysis

(For a case study I completed with a Holistic Approach in mind, please see http://robincheung.info/samples/bbc.pdf). The historian proposed that the way to understand ethical problems is to look historically at how they evolved and how they developed; the international lawyer suggested that the way to do it is to see how in fact people actually [...]

Islamic Law and Capital Structure

One of my favourite Canadian television shows, recently picked up by an American network (although it will be reworked in an American setting before airing) is Little Mosque on the Prairie (http://www.cbc.ca/littlemosque). Mainstream media have emphasized how ignorant of Islam the general population is; from law enforcement who profile Sikhs with turbans as Muslims to [...]

The challenges to using Qualitative Research Designs

In contrast to quantitative research, qualitative research uses a more adaptable framework that suits inquiry into systems that are much more complex than quantitative research can anticipate. Quantitative research has traditionally been popular in the pure and applied sciences since its top-down approach of establishing hypotheses and directed methods to test these hypotheses are obvious [...]

Challenges to Mixed Method Research Designs

Onwuegbuzie & Leech (2005) advocate a pragmatic epistemological approach to research design. They propose that researchers that strongly favour either qualitative or quantitative approaches miss out on four major benefits, including flexibility in investigate techniques, increased collaboration, a more holistic analysis, and a bi-focal interpretive lens (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2005). Indeed, a sample MB case [...]

The Quantitative-Qualitative Debate Continues: When to use Mixed Methods Approaches

Quantitative versus Qualitative research designs, I believe, have been somewhat misunderstood, in part due to a poor choice of nomenclature. Quantitative research refers more to the structure of a study based on proposing a priori hypotheses to be tested than whether the data collected are numerical or not.  Qualitative research does not attempt to formulate [...]

Morals versus Ethics

The following is a post exerpted from a compulsory weekly course discussion in my PhD (Finance) program at www.waldenu.edu in the Winter 2009/2010 quarter regarding Ethics.  The full discourse can be found archived at http://robincheung.info/rsch8100/week2/discussion1/ In 2000 when I began my MBA studies, McMaster University had no formal ethics course in the curriculum. Just before [...]

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