Master of Business Administration

Core modules

Consultancy Skills

This module enables you to develop the skills and knowledge required to be an effective internal or external consultant, and understand how to manage the consultancy process. Social impacts are addressed by examining the relationships between consultants and clients, and the ethics of consultancy. By undertaking a group consultancy project with a client company, you will have the opportunity to integrate your prior learning and apply it to a real-world situation.

Creating Customer Value

You will examine how organisations can create customer value by matching their capabilities to the requirements of their customers. The module provides an opportunity for you to analyse a multidisciplinary contemporary business case within a team, highlighting the necessity for a holistic and integrated approach to developing and implementing value-generating strategies.

Identifying and Evaluating Value in the Organisation

You will examine the principles and concepts underpinning different aspects of accounting and finance, with particular emphasis placed on their practical application in the profit and not-for-profit sectors. In addition you will become familiar with techniques of financial decision making and the particular problems of financing enterprises in emerging economies.

Leading and Managing People

This module explores, conceptually and practically, the nature of the relationship between leadership, people management, organisational culture and organisational behaviour. You will be equipped to conceptualise the importance of human factors involved in creating an organisation’s competitive advantage, through exploration of the practical skills and methods needed to lead and develop high-performance organisations.

MBA Compass

This module enables you to refresh your knowledge of the study skills required to successfully undertake your MBA, and enhance your ability to undertake critical analysis of complex situations. You will use data analysis techniques to analyse and interpret data to support business decision making and write well-structured, lucid board papers and executive reports.

MBA Dissertation

The MBA Dissertation provides you with the opportunity to put the knowledge and skills gained through the programme to practical use on a relevant, strategic-level business issue or management priority. You will conduct an original and detailed investigation into the selected issue. Although applied research based on organisations is actively encouraged, dissertations based on reviews of literature and secondary data analysis are acceptable.

Personal and Professional Development

This module comprises a number of different activities including visits, networking events, speaker events, coaching, career workshops, skills workshops, and action learning sets. It is designed to enable you to develop your career plans based on strong personal and professional skills, abilities and networks enabling you to work at leadership or senior management levels in organisations.

Strategic Management

Building on the material presented in the other core modules, this module integrates relevant theories and concepts and presents you with the models and frameworks required to develop and implement strategies capable of delivering business success within complex business environments. It addresses key contemporary topics and debates within strategic management. It focuses on linking theory to practice, developing your practical abilities to analyse environments, think strategically and formulate and implement strategies.

Four-week internship

All full-time MBA students have an opportunity to undertake a four-week internship as a part of their course. You will normally secure an internship which is relevant to your business interests, allowing you to put into practice your newly acquired knowledge or to try a new sector or industry, which will be especially relevant if you are thinking of changing your career.

Option modules

Choose two from the following:

Business Negotiation

You will consider the theory and practice of conducting business negotiations within an international business context. You will assess and analyse the theory of negotiation from various perspectives including the psychological, sociological, political, behavioural and mathematical approaches.

Contemporary Leadership

The module provides the opportunity for you to examine in depth a current leadership issue in the context of contemporary theory.

Financial Strategy

This module explores the interaction between financial management and corporate strategy and provides you with sufficient knowledge about finance and financial markets to enable you to understand the financial implications of possible strategic decisions. It will help you to understand how a company’s financial choices can be used to enhance its business strategy and its value.

Foresight and Future Studies

The ability to identify and anticipate the impact future trends and technologies have on the business environment is a key skill for any senior executive. This module provides you with a set of tools and frameworks designed to help you develop better foresight. The initial theoretical perspective is informed by a series of practical exercises culminating in the rigorous application of scenario planning to an industry of your choice.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

This module provides both a theoretical and practical basis for understanding key elements of entrepreneurship ? defined as the creation and development of new business ideas ? and of innovation, which is viewed in terms of sustainable business growth. Specifically, the module aims to introduce you to different conceptions and types of entrepreneurship, how innovative activities underpin entrepreneurial success in different businesses beyond the UK, and how a new business venture may be structured and developed as a sustainable commercial enterprise that generates customer value and presents a valuable investment proposition.

Programme and Project Management

The module evaluates current project management thinking. You will examine the strategic importance of programme, portfolio and project management in the modern organisation, and scrutinise the tools and theory available to the project manager to orchestrate the project to successful completion.

Responsible Organisations

This module examines successful organisations with respect to ethical policies and practices and sustainability.

Social Entrepreneurship

This module involves learning about social enterprises and charities, and focuses on the importance of the triple bottom line (people, planet and profit) in the third sector. Emphasis is placed on working on social problems within a challenging overseas environment.

Strategy Dynamics

You will explore the Strategy Dynamics method developed by Kim Warren. It is a modelling technique developed to enable managers to analyse business performance to date, and develop future strategies based on building and retention of resources and capability. Although the theoretical underpinning for the method is examined in detail, the module has a strong practical focus.

Sustainability and the Corporation

The module gives you an appreciation of how issues of sustainability affect corporate decision making. It examines the long-term, strategic objectives of the corporation and its relationship with capital markets, and will explore how the issues of sustainability ? environmental questions and the durability of the business model ? affect business policy and communications with capital, labour and product markets.