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Dates Location Tuition
Sep 7, 2008 - Sep 19, 2008 Philadelphia $24,750
Feb 8, 2009 - Feb 20, 2009 Philadelphia $24,750
May 3, 2009 - May 15, 2009 Philadelphia $24,750

In a tough and uncertain environment, leadership is more important than ever in giving your company a competitive edge. Organizational restructuring and career advancement place managers in more demanding roles, requiring skills beyond their areas of disciplinary training or expertise.

Wharton's two-week Executive Development Program gives managers the core business knowledge and organizational understanding to take on broader leadership responsibilities and add more value to their organizations. Wharton's faculty present and apply key knowledge in areas such as finance, marketing, leadership, and strategy based on current research and best practices. Executives in the program also gain an appreciation of the complexities of organizational dynamics, effective communication strategies, and leadership. Finally, a hands-on strategy simulation draws it all together by exploring different management styles, tools, and organization-wide strategic approaches.

Tuition for Philadelphia programs includes lodging and meals. Prices are subject to change. Program Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this program might meet your needs. Please contact them by telephone at +1.215.898.1776 or by e-mail.


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Wharton's Executive Development Program uses a multidimensional approach of lectures, an organizational dynamics workshop, and a strategy simulation to provide new insights and give participants opportunities to apply them. A team of faculty, experts in diverse business disciplines, provides in-depth knowledge in core business areas. Participants are encouraged to apply these insights from the program to their own organizations in daily application sessions.

Session Topics for the Executive Development Program

Please note that these are core faculty and may not be in every program.

  • Finance
    • Creating Shareholder Value – John Percival
    • Value-Driven Decision Making – Zehavit Cohen
  • Marketing
    • Marketing Strategy – Barbara Kahn
    • Branding– Barbara Kahn
  • Globalization
    • Managing Global Policy Risks - Witold Henisz
    • Global Supply Chain Management - Gerard Cachon
    • Faces of Globalization – Kenwyn Smith
  • Strategy
    • Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage - Nicolaj Siggelkow
    • Mergers & Acquisitions – Harbir Singh
    • Business Strategy Simulation
  • Leadership and Organization Dynamics
    • Executive Negotiations Workshop – Richard Shell
    • Decision Making and Leadership – Mike Useem
    • Leadership Workshop - Kenwyn Smith
    • Politics of Intergroup Relations – Kenwyn Smith

Admission Details

The Executive Development Program runs three times a year at Wharton's Philadelphia campus. We carefully monitor the balance of industries, regions, functions, and companies represented in each session. By doing this we lay the foundation for a strong peer learning environment. Therefore, given limited class size, we recommend that you submit your application at least four months prior to the start of EDP. To secure registration, a non-refundable 20% deposit is due two weeks after acceptance into the program.

Wharton's Executive Development Program is designed for successful functional, country, or unit managers preparing to take on broader responsibilities that require leading outside their areas of education and experience. Participants in our Executive Development Program represent many cultures, regions, and industries. They have included managers in general management, marketing and sales, and technology positions from pharmaceuticals, financial, computer, and high-technology firms. More than half of the participants are from outside the United States.

We encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional group benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.

The Executive Development Program is designed to increase the business skills and leadership capabilities of managers who lead key parts of the business and form the pool of future top leadership of the organization. You will:

  • Improve the capacity for strategic decision making to think faster and more creatively about current competitive strategies and solutions.
  • Deepen understanding of organizational dynamics to improve the design and implementation of new initiatives and avoid destructive conflicts.
  • Build capabilities for leading cross-border teams across functions and countries.
  • Develop knowledge in core areas of business, including finance, marketing, management, and strategy based on current research and best practice.

Faculty: A Concentration of Knowledge
The program is delivered by a diverse and talented team of senior faculty in management, finance, operations, marketing, and other disciplines. All of our faculty are active researchers and consultants, who are able to bridge theory and practice.

* Please note that these are core faculty and may not be in every program.
Peter Fader, PhD PETER FADER, PhD
Academic Director
Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor
Professor of Marketing
The Wharton School

Professor Fader’s expertise centers around the analysis of behavioral data to understand and forecast customer shopping/purchasing activities. He works with a wide range of data sources from industries such as consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, and music (online and offline). His research focuses on using data generated by such new technologies as retail scanners to understand customer preferences and to help companies fine tune their marketing strategies. His work has been published in (and he serves on the editorial boards of) a number of leading journals in marketing, statistics, and the management sciences.
Zehavit Cohen, PhD ZEHAVIT COHEN
Managing Director
Apax Partners

Zehavit Cohen brings to the class her extensive experience in finance and strategic planning at two well-known major financial organizations. Her current position is the managing director of the Israel office of Apax Partners, one of the world's leading private equity groups operating across the US, Europe, Israel, and Asia. Before joining Apax, she was the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of IDB Holding Corporation, the largest holding company in Israel.
undefined TOM DONALDSON, PhD
Mark O. Winkelman Professor
Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics
The Wharton School

Thomas Donaldson has written broadly in the area of business ethics, values, and leadership and was most recently the co-author of The Ties That Bind: A Social Contract Approach to Business Ethics (Harvard University Business School Press, 1999). A recipient of numerous teaching awards, Dr. Donaldson's book, The Ethics of International Business, was the winner of the 1998 SIM Academy of Management Best Book Award.
undefined WITOLD J. HENISZ
Associate Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Dr. Witold J. Henisz is an Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School. His research examines the impact of political hazards on international investment strategy. He analyzes the political and economic determinants of government attempts to redistribute investor returns to the broader polity, the strategic responses by organizations to such pressure, and the determinants of the success of individual organizations in withstanding such pressure.

Professor Henisz has served as a consultant for the World Bank, The Inter-American Development Bank, The Conference Board, and Eurasia Group. He previously worked for The International Monetary Fund. He is currently a principal in the political risk management consultancy PRIMA LLC.
undefined BARBARA KAHN, PhD
Dean and Professor of Marketing
School of Business Administration
University of Miami

Professor Kahn is the co-author of The Grocery Revolution: The New Focus on the Consumer (Addison-Wesley, 1997), a look inside the packaged goods industry and study of consumer behavior. Her research areas include consumer choice, variety seeking, brand loyalty, decisions under uncertainty/ambiguity, purchase timing/purchase process, and price promotions. She is currently researching mass customization techniques and their implications for marketing managers and consumer decision-making processes for medical and financial decisions.
Serguei Netessine SERGUEI NETESSINE, PhD
Associate Professor of Operations and Information Management,
The Wharton School

Prof. Netessine's current research focuses on the strategic aspects of supply chain management, incentives, and contracting in supply chains.His current industry projects include studies of performance-based logistics in defense industry as well as studies of retail store execution strategies. As a part of these and other projects, Professor Netessine worked closely with many organizations including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Rolls Royce, Safeway, Linens and Things, Kohl's and the Federal Aviation Administration. Serguei holds Associate Editor and Senior Editor Positions at several leading academic journals including Management Science, Production and Operations Management, Operations Research and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.
John Percival, PhD JOHN R. PERCIVAL, PhD
Adjunct Professor of Finance,
The Wharton School
CEO, JRP Associates

John Percival is active in the development and teaching of various Executive Education programs. At Wharton since 1971, he is the lead faculty on several open-enrollment programs: Creating Value Through Financial Management and The CFO: Becoming a Strategic Partner. He has also developed customized programs for companies such as GE Capital, Pitney Bowes, IBM, Fiat, Chubb, Hartford, American Skandia, Sun Life, Siam Cement, Scientific Atlanta, Ford, and Bankers Trust. He consults to organizations in both the public and private sectors, has authored or co-authored articles in numerous publications, and was recently the recipient of the WEMBA Program Core Teaching Award for Financial Analysis.
undefined NICOLAJ SIGGELKOW, PhD
Associate Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Nicolaj Siggelkow is an associate professor of management in the Management Department at the Wharton School. He earned his PhD in business economics from Harvard University. At Wharton, Professor Siggelkow teaches courses on business policy and competitive strategy. His current research interests include the evolution of activity systems, strategic consequences of contextual activity interactions, and organizational design implications for managing systems of connected activities. His work has been published in the Academy Management Journal, and he has won the Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Prize. Over the last several years, Professor Siggelkow has been a multiple recipient of the Wharton School’s MBA Excellence in Teaching Award.
Harbir Singh HARBIR SINGH, PhD
The Mack Professor
Professor of Management
Co-Director, Mack Center for Technological Innovations
The Wharton School

Harbir Singh is a leading researcher on strategic alliances and strategies for corporate renewal, including path-breaking projects on managing acquisitions and alliances and post-acquisition management. He has consulted for companies such as Bell Atlantic, IBM, Merck, and AT&T. His current research includes strategies for corporate alliances and acquisitions, corporate governance, joint ventures, management buyouts, and corporate restructuring. He serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious publications and has extensive experience in working with senior executive audiences in the U.S. and India.
G. Richard Shell, JD G. RICHARD SHELL, JD
Thomas Gerrity Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and Management
The Wharton School

An internationally recognized expert in law, dispute resolution, and negotiations, he is the author of several books: The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas; the award-winning Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People, a work which has been published in more than 14 language editions and appeared in 2006 in a revised and updated Second Edition; and Make the Rules or Your Rivals Will, a work on competitive strategy and law.

Professor Shell is the academic director of Wharton's Executive Negotiation Workshop and Strategic Persuasion Workshop: The Art and Science of Selling Ideas. He teaches in a variety of open-enrollment and customized programs. A partial list of his consulting clients includes the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, Merck & Co., Citibank, Bank of America, and several of the largest labor unions in the United States.
Kenwyn K. Smith, PhD KENWYN K. SMITH, PhD
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior
The School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania

Kenwyn Smith, a member of the University of Pennsylvania faculty for more than 17 years, has also taught at Wharton and at Penn's Fels School of Government. He designed the Social Systems Workshop and is known for his research on group dynamics, managing organizational conflict, and the impact of organizational dynamics on the health of employees.
Mike Useem, PhD MIKE USEEM, PhD
The William and Jacalyn Egan Professor
Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Mike Useem offers courses on management, leadership, and corporate governance to MBA and senior executive audiences in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He has worked extensively on leadership development and governance with many organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. He is the author of The Go Point: When It's Time to Decide; Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win; The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All; Investor Capitalism: How Money Managers Are Changing the Face of Corporate America; and Executive Defense: Shareholder Power and Corporate Reorganization. From the slopes of Mount Everest to the battlefields of Gettysburg, Dr. Useem has gone to great lengths to present leadership lessons to executives.

"The learning we experienced during the two intense weeks of EDP was immense. The program was well defined, covering all major facets of management in an industry context, and supported with case studies. One especially outstanding facet of the program was the opportunity to form a 'virtual company' and to play the role of an expert from a specific discipline, contributing the appropriate strategy to the company’s success. Thanks for the superb hospitality and for memories that I will cherish for years to come."
—Vijay Batra
Managing Director, Teva API India, Ltd

"The program was a great experience! As a senior executive, I don’t usually get the time to reflect on my role or receive the kind of feedback that I got from my peers in this program. I greatly appreciated having real-world professors and speakers — people like us who are living in the business world, not just basing their insights on theoretical or book knowledge."
—Hong (Margaret) Chen
Director, Asia, Telefonica

"The Wharton EDP experience exceeded my expectations. The instructors, team simulation, programming, and facilities were all — world-class and at the leading edge of business education. Importantly, the truly international and cross-industry make-up of the class enriched the diversity of thinking, requiring a global approach to problem solving. I was able to implement the new learning on day one when I returned to my job."
—Matthew V. Petronio
EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Just Born, Inc., Bethlehem, PA - US

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