(Archived) NUS BBA Curriculum AY2017/2018 and AY2018/2019

1. Business Analytics

With the increasing availability of computing power, decision making has undergone an evolutionary change, resulting in more use of data at all levels within an organisation. Business graduates thus need to be more numerate and analytical. We often see positions requiring a higher level of analytics know-how being advertised by recruiters to form decision teams with expertise in collecting and extracting actionable intelligence out of data. We aim to train our business students to the level where they can immediately be a valuable interface between data scientists and senior management, or qualify for the best graduate business analytics programmes globally.

This specialisation will pivot on the core business knowledge already acquired by all BBA students, and will take good contextual management understanding as given. Graduates with this specialisation should function very well as a data-savvy business consultant, either internally for their own organisations or externally for client establishments.

Business students will already have benefited from instructions in the online academic orientation course BPM1702 Microsoft Excel Skills for Business at the beginning of their first year, as well as DAO1704 Decision Analytics using Spreadsheets and AI and DAO2702 Programming for Business Analytics and AI.

Please visit our public interest group for more details.

Refer here for more information on the Business Analytics specialisation.

List of Business Analytics Specialisation Courses

** Available from Semester 1, AY2023/24 onwards
*** Available from Semester 1, AY2024/25

2. Innovation and Entrepreneurship Specialisation 

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship specialisation aims to equip our students to become visionaries and change makers to lead the transformation of Singapore businesses into the future economy. The pace of innovation means the industries our students enter will drastically transform over the course of their careers. Economic growth will come from leaders who understand the organisational and business challenges inherent in these changes, and are comfortable managing an uncertain environment.

This specialisation will furnish our students with broad theoretic lenses to lead change effectively, whether in an entrepreneurial venture or a large multinational corporation. Partnered with rich experiential projects and courses, students will enter the workplace comfortably applying these theories with the broader skills developed in the BBA Programme.

This specialisation will interest a broad cross-section of BBA students from those planning specific careers in management consulting or entrepreneurship to those who want to be well-equipped for the dynamic industrial environment.

List of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Specialisation Courses

** Must be letter-graded and taken on NOC
*** Must be completed BEFORE August 2023

3. Business Economics Specialisation

To ensure that students in this specialisation receive holistic training in business economics, the curriculum offers distinct alternative pathways from the second to the fourth year. To maximise synergies, the curriculum uses multiple courses from the Departments of Economics, Analytics & Operations, and Marketing.

Why Business Economics?

a) Offers a coherent specialisation for BBA students seeking careers in management or economic consulting, finance, or general management.

b) Develops a group of talent who will be well versed in business and management practices, and are also strongly proficient in economics.

Who should take it?

a) BBA students pursuing careers in management or economic consulting.

List of Business Economics Specialisation Courses

4. Leadership and Human Capital Management Specialisation

Leadership is the linchpin in organisations and teams. By understanding leadership, students will place themselves in a central node of influence to inspire people, create organisational outcomes, and ultimately realize the full potential of human capital.

To keep the specialisation current and relevant, keen attention will be paid to the shifting business landscape that forms the backdrop to leadership, for instance, trends on human resource (HR) big data analytics, controversial new organisational structures, and the impact of technology and globalization. These will be addressed in advanced seminar classes in collaboration with other departments where we probe the evolving role of leadership and how to lead organisations to stay ahead in a rapidly changing world. At the same time, Human Capital Management will proactively address the changes in the environment, especially on its horizontal and vertical alignment with strategy and culture to obtain sustainable competitive advantage for the firm and people.

Students who achieve this specialisation can look forward to careers in management consulting, HR consulting, organisation development, HR generalist/specialist, and HR policy maker.

List of Leadership & Human Capital Management Specialisation Courses

** Available from Semester 2, AY2022/23 onwards

5. Finance

The finance specialisation aims to produce ethical, high quality and job-ready finance professionals with a global mind-set for the finance industry. This is achieved through the following dimensions: industry relevance, ethics, breadth, rigour, and cross discipline. The finance specialisation is a Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) programme partner, meeting the CFA programme curriculum requirements which are updated frequently for industry relevance.

The specialisation involves many distinguished industry professionals as adjunct professors and invited speakers, bringing to the classroom the latest know how and innovations in the industry. Other than internships, students complete a field service project with a company in the industry which involves solving real business problems faced by the company. Students take part and perform well in finance competitions organised by the industry. The finance specialisation takes the development of ethics very seriously. All students go through an ethics workshop based on the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct. The ethics dimension is often revisited in every finance course through discussions and case studies. Students are held to the highest standard of ethics requirement, especially in the area of non-plagiarism, honesty in assessment related work, and professionalism in project work.

The specialisation addresses the need for breadth through its three required finance courses: FIN3701 Corporate Finance, FIN3702 Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management and FIN3703 Financial Markets. This ensures that students know the basic workings in the various sectors within the finance industry. It addresses the need for rigour through its many elective subjects ranging from the area of asset management, to personal finance, banking and business finance. Students may package their electives freely to develop all rounded rigor or specialized rigor for a particular finance career.

The finance specialisation integrates well with other specialisations in the Business School producing not just finance specialists but balanced business professionals with strength in leadership and technology. Students have enough elective courses to take another specialisation such as marketing, decision science and management. The case studies and projects in the finance courses often require analysis in these other specialisations as well. The specialisation supports overseas student exchange programme stimulating the development of global mind-set and perspectives in finance.

The finance specialisation employs the latest and best pedagogy for education including blended learning. Some courses are conducted in our trading and computer lab complete with industry software such as Bloomberg and MSCI Barra, producing job-ready graduates. The specialisation enjoys the support of its numerous enthusiastic and dedicated alumni. They regularly come back for networking sessions with undergraduates and provide mentorship and career guidance. This adds to the vibrancy and colourful learning experience in the specialisation.

List of Finance Specialisation Courses

6. Marketing Specialisation

Marketing, more than any other business functions, deals with customers. It is also the revenue-generating department in any organisation.

Marketing is about managing profitable customer relationships by satisfying customer needs better than competition, thus creating superior value for customers. Hence, students majoring in Marketing should understand not only the company and its customers, but also the competition in the context of the political, economic, socioeconomic, and technological environment to identify opportunities and harness them through well thought out product, pricing, distribution and promotion strategies to bring value not only for the customers but also to the company.

As such, marketing courses are developed and offered at various stages of the curriculum to enhance learning progression and outcomes consistent with what Marketing is. All students begin with learning Principles of Marketing (MKT1705) in their first year. The second marketing course (MKT3701 – Marketing Strategy: Analysis and Practice) builds on the principles by sharpening students’ analytical proclivity and going in-depth in key topics especially from a managerial and strategic perspective. The Consumer Behaviour (MKT3702) course drills deep into understanding customers – the fundamental premise of marketing; specifically, how consumers affect business practices and also how marketers influence them. These courses are the building blocks upon which electives are offered.

Our electives cover comprehensively the strategies involving what is often termed the marketing mix – product and brand, pricing, retailing and promotion. As Singapore is a service economy, our curriculum also offers a Services Marketing course to equip students for this important sector.

Beyond these marketing mix courses, we keep current with offerings concerning Digital Marketing as well as Customer Relationship Management, among others. As data analytics is an important driver in today’s businesses, we offer MKT3722 Research for Marketing Insights as well as MKT4812 Marketing Analytics to train Marketing majors in understanding the quantitative bases underlying the strategies.

List of Marketing Specialisation Courses

* Available from Semester 1, AY2022/23 onwards
** Available from Semester 2, AY2022/23 onwards

7. Operations and Supply Chain Management Specialisation

Managing business operations effectively is crucial to the competitive advantage of any organisation. This specialisation is not only designed for students who are keen to venture into the functional area of operations, logistics or supply chain management, but also for anyone who will play an effective role in contributing to the competitiveness of any organisation regardless of industry sectors. Building upon the BBA core course DAO2703 Operations and Technology Management, students are equipped with foundational knowledge in supply chain management and service operations, which are applicable to both manufacturing and service industries.

Electives relating to project management, information management and business analytics further provide students with essential knowledge and skills needed for sound decision making and effective management of business processes. Given growing environmental concerns, sustainable operations management becomes a highly relevant and hence included topic.

This specialisation offers an elective project course to provide students with hands-on experience in addressing issues and resolving challenges in the operations and supply chain domain. Please visit our public interest group for more details.

List of Operations & Supply Chain Management Specialisation Courses