Indigenous Business Leadership Executive MBA

Fall

• Indigenous business leadership (in-person)
  Explore the collective potential of Indigenous leaders to drive meaningful change for Indigenous Nations. Examine and explore how traditional, contemporary, and emerging leadership styles and best practices result in achieving optimal performance in Indigenous organizations.
• Financial and managerial accounting for indigenous leaders (online)
  Enhance your decision-making abilities by exploring three elements: financial governance, financial accounting, and managerial accounting. Learn how the various forms of financial information companies publish in financial statements are related and how you can extract useful information to develop well-informed strategic plans and decisions.
• Fundamentals of project management in indigenous organizations (online)
  Explore the fundamentals of project management by guiding students through the project management tools and skills necessary to manage Indigenous-led or owned projects successfully. Balance practice and theory to gain a solid understanding of current project management methodologies and techniques.

Spring

• Data and decision making for indigenous businesses (online)
  Examine the need and importance of relevant, high-quality, accessible data to support the Indigenous business community and become inspired on how to collect and share data that protects and enhances our community wisdom and knowledge through examination of three key areas: data analytics; tools and resources for gathering and interpreting data; and Indigenous data sovereignty. Explore how data has been used to date within a colonial framework and learn how to reframe data knowledge from Indigenous-centered worldviews.
• Entrepreneurship and innovation in indigenous communities (online)
  Explore, critique, and celebrate innovation and entrepreneurship as an important aspect of Indigenous community design. Mix theory with practice and reality, and apply the principles, concepts, and frameworks of innovation and entrepreneurship to situations that are important to you. By the end of the course, you will know how to ideate and explore human-centred design in your thinking and planning for new business opportunities.
• Indigenous policy & governance (in-person)
  Applying Indigenous law can develop community capacity, foster leadership, develop businesses, and influence policy. Recapturing, revitalizing, and newly developing Indigenous law can help communities improve well-being and economic success. Examine Indigenous legal values and consider their application in governance contexts to promote the resurgence of Indigenous social, political, cultural, and economic success.

Summer

• Negotiations for indigenous leaders (online)
  Learn how to become a better negotiator by analyzing negotiation styles and developing a practical understanding of effective negotiating behaviours that will improve your ability to plan and conduct successful day-to-day negotiations in various situations. The course will also provide opportunities for students to determine what role if any, cultural protocols, history, and Indigenous approaches to negotiation play in successful negotiation situations.
• Financial management for indigenous leadership (online)
  Accountability is increasingly the fundamental motivation for First Nation governments and Indigenous organizations to establish sound financial management practices and procedures. Gain a solid grounding in the principles of business finance as it is applied to Indigenous communities and businesses. Students will be introduced to important financial tools to gain an appreciation of how business decisions impact both financial performance and shareholder value.
• Indigenous economies (in-person)
  Examine global Indigenous worldviews, theories, and concepts of Indigenous economy based on traditional principles of wealth and value. Aspects of the particular economic environments where Indigenous views on wealth and value intersect with Anglo-Western principles of wealth and value will be explored. Gain relational comprehension through content that encourages transformative approaches to development, innovative models based on Indigenous knowledge, and up-to-date research in this field.
• Managing people and organizations (online)
  Description coming soon.

Fall

• Indigenous sustainability (in-person)
  Explore strategies for creating and fostering sustainable economic opportunities for Indigenous businesses and organizations. Examine sustainability holistically, encompassing organizations' ecological, social, and economic responsibilities. Students will consider alternative philosophies and theories concerned with corporate responsibility and examine how modern businesses are re-aligning and re-inventing corporate strategies toward more sustainable business models.
• Marketing strategies for indigenous leadership (online)
  Take a critical approach to decolonize the marketing field and address challenges in launching, leveraging, and accelerating Indigenous products, services, or an Indigenous-owned company. Learn how to apply the fundamentals of marketing management, including understanding the fundamentals of competitive rationality, why competitive advantage needs to be managed as a process, and the creation and valuation of customer equity.
• Business strategy for indigenous leaders (online)
  Learn the principles and frameworks for evaluating threats to an organization’s performance by integrating business strategy into the broader backdrop of Indigenous economies and business-government relations. Understand how policy choices enable private and collective enterprises to succeed and promote citizen wellbeing to further Indigenous Nation’s strategic goals.

Spring

• Decolonizing business
  Description coming soon.
• Applied project preparation (online)
  Learn the principles and fundamental elements of planning and preparation. Students will decide on a topic, develop their project concept, prepare a work plan and create an outline, and identify reasonable milestones and deliverables.
• Applied project (in-person)
  The Applied Project involves a literature review and the systematic application of frameworks, models, concepts, and theories to a specific business problem or situation, for which students develop practical recommendations or conclusions. Students will undertake strategic business analysis and write an extended essay jointly supervised by SFU faculty members and/or an industry partner.