All students earning their undergraduate degree in a Business discipline from the OSU College of Business complete a common business core. This core, consisting of about 100 credits across all four years, provides students with a strong business foundation.

Our business graduates are taught:

An entrepreneurial perspective. Students will identify, assess, and shape entrepreneurial opportunities in a variety of contexts, including:

  • Recognizing entrepreneurial opportunities for new business ventures and evaluating their potential for business success.
  • Understanding implementation issues including financial, legal, operational and administrative procedures involved in starting new business ventures.

Professional communication and behavioral skills. Students will demonstrate effective communication and professional behavioral skills in business settings, including:

  • Communicating effectively and professionally in business situations through physical or virtual presence, writing, speaking, listening and electronic media.
  • Demonstrating the ability to lead by using team building skills and facilitating collaborative behaviors in the accomplishment of group goals and objectives.
  • Demonstrating good work habits, time management and self-discipline.

An ethical and social responsibility perspective. Students will understand business ethics and issues of social responsibility, including:

  • Recognizing basic concepts and theories related to business ethics and social responsibility.
  • Demonstrating knowledge of the ethical behavior appropriate to specific business situations.

Analytical and problem solving skills. Students will demonstrate problem solving skills supported by appropriate analytical and quantitative techniques, including:

  • Identifying and analyzing business problems and opportunities and formulating recommendations for courses of action.
  • Using quantitative and qualitative tools and methodologies to support organizational decision-making.

A broad knowledge of the functional areas of business and an understanding of the diverse contexts of business, including:

  • Demonstrating awareness of the global economic, environmental, political, ethical, legal and regulatory contexts of business practice.
  • Assessing how organizations create value in their global supply chains through the integrated production and distribution of goods, services and information.
  • Describing the concept of competitive advantage and how it may be achieved through strategic and tactical methods.
  • Analyzing the information content of organizational processes.
  • Defining markets and applying marketing concepts and principles using a customer focus to effectively sell products and services.
  • Recognizing and appropriately responding to ethical, legal and strategic concerns relating to human resource and organizational management.
  • Applying accounting concepts and methods to interpret financial statements for evaluating the financial position and performance of organizations.
  • Interpreting and analyzing accounting information for internal control, planning, performance evaluation and coordination to continuously improve business processes.
  • Making basic investment and financing decisions for a business using financial management concepts and methods.