Logistics, Business & Public Policy

Business Law

The study of law is a vital component of business education. Business leaders must understand and effectively navigate the legal environment. Everyday activities demand the responsible management of legal risks and issues. In today’s fast-moving market economy, business professionals must grasp the interface between government and business, comprehend the function of courts and lawyers, and appreciate the role of business in society. Successful leaders must also behave ethically and exercise sound judgment.

Courses in business law prepare students to meet the ethical, governance, and compliance challenges that arise in complex business transactions. These courses help students explore how responsible companies can engage effectively with all stakeholders, including legislators, regulators, and the general public. With increasing attention paid to the social impact of business, the business law curriculum encourages students to participate in solving society’s most pressing and intractable problems.

Business law students acquire both valuable knowledge and a range of critical thinking abilities essential to business decision-making. Students develop qualitative reasoning skills that are crucial when corporate officers and managers face hard choices under conditions of empirical uncertainty or moral ambiguity. By studying business law, students attain proficiency in identifying and evaluating moral and legal issues embedded within complex circumstances; developing a coherent approach to analyzing legal problems; applying legal principles to reach appropriate conclusions; and, reasoning by analogy between similar cases and situations. Business law classes also promote the exercise of good judgment by emphasizing the distrust of personal motives, sensitivity to the perspectives of others, patience in decision-making, and courage in making difficult decisions. Because these analytical competencies are useful in many problem-solving contexts, business law courses are the ideal complement to more quantitative courses and degree programs.

The Business Law Area faculty are experienced lawyers and scholars publishing cutting-edge research. Multiple articles have been placed by them in the premier peer-reviewed business law journal, as well as in journals published by such leading law schools as Yale, Stanford, Penn, Virginia, Michigan, Texas, Notre Dame, North Carolina, Iowa, and Boston University. The business law faculty’s research has earned several national awards and their scholarship has been widely cited in articles, treatises, and judicial decisions. The research spans all the following topics: equity, obligations, jurisprudence and philosophy of law, remedies, employment, employee benefits, government pensions, constitutional law, securities, corporate governance, and intellectual property. The business law faculty are leaders in their fields, holding editorial positions in top journals and executive offices in the Academy of Legal Studies in Business. They are sought out for their expertise by state and national organizations, the media, and corporate litigants.  Business law faculty serve as advisors to the Business Law Society and UMD’s Green Wolverine club. Finally, they are exceptional instructors and have earned numerous teaching awards at the school and national levels.

For more information on recruiting from our top-ranked supply chain program contact supplychain@umd.edu.

Managerial Economics

The Managerial Economics (ME) area uses an economics lens to understand firm behavior and managerial decision-making. With expertise in industrial organization, organizational economics, labor economics, and regenerative economics, ME faculty consider such questions as:

• How does ownership structure affect firms’ investment time horizons and R&D performance?
• What drives gender diversity in top management? How does top management teams’ level of gender diversity affect firm policies and performance?
• How do corporate governance policies rooted in the Anglo-American model of Shareholder Capitalism translate into disparate institutional contexts?
• How do economic and organizational factors influence individual decision-making?
• How do economic and organizational factors influence firms’ geographic location choices?
• What would a regenerative business approach to business entail? How can such approaches be developed given institutional pressures to pursue shareholder-centric approaches?

ME faculty teach the Smith School’s core MBA and MS courses in micro- and macroeconomics as well as PhD courses. The ME area also has its own PhD program, with recent dissertation topics including “Green or Greenwashing? How Manager and Investor Preferences Shape Firm Strategy” and “Competition, Firm Financial Pressure, and Location Strategy: Evidence from the Micro-Mobility Industry.” Recent graduates were placed at UT Austin and Vanderbilt. Learn more about the PhD in Managerial Economics.

Students can study supply chain management on all levels at the Smith School – undergraduate, MBA, master of science, and PhD. The Supply Chain Management Center (SCMC), run by Smith's top-ranked supply chain faculty, delivers cutting-edge solutions to private industry and government clients.