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Master of Business Administration (MBA)

2024-25

How to apply Order a prospectusPostgraduate Open Days
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This course is eligible for Master's loan funding. Find out more.

Start date

16 September 2024

Duration

1 year full-time
2 years part-time

Places available (subject to change)

70

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About the course

Studying for the Huddersfield MBA will help you realise your ambitions, become a more effective, responsible leader, develop a strategic and global management perspective and improve your communication skills. Our MBA has an overarching focus on responsible leadership, which engenders the need to take a multiple stakeholder perspective. The course aims to develop in you, an integrated and critically aware understanding of responsible management and organisations and necessary skills to prepare you for effective roles within organisations. It offers four areas of knowledge and skill development: * Professional developments to be a responsible leader * Responsible leadership and people management in an organisation * Responsible leadership in a changing environmental and societal context * Strategy development and innovation for fulfilling value propositions

Inspirational and supportive tuition, exposure to the latest management thinking and the benefits of mixing with and learning from other talented students for the duration of the programme will help equip you for senior management roles.

An MBA qualification is a globally recognised postgraduate management qualification that is highly valued by employers. Studying our MBA will help you to achieve your personal goals, become a valuable asset to your organisation and help improve your chances of climbing the career ladder. Alternatively, you may choose to use your MBA to explore and redefine your ambitions and change your career direction.

Course detail

Strategic Financial Decisions Analysis

The module provides opportunity to develop a systematic understanding of the purposes and uses of financial information, together with the ability to use quantitative skills to improve performance management and strategic financial decision making within an organisation. The module is designed for non-specialists in finance and will help in understanding the main finance and accounting empirical concepts, including risk analysis, transparency of financial information, and strategic financial decisions. Such topics are relevant to different types of organisations including the public sector since the public sector increasingly embraces the private sector.

Strategic Marketing

The business world has become increasingly volatile, meaning that organisations are having to grasp the changes and adapt efficiently and effectively in order to connect with the market while taking into account responsibilities towards multiple stakeholders. Under this context, strategic marketing allows firms to organise and perform their customer facing activities in a way that produce desired customer, financial and societal outcomes. Marketing is an outward-facing function that interfaces between the organisation and its markets. Marketing is at the forefront of a company in gathering market intelligence and facilitating market-driven propositions. It also provides means for communicating meaningful values across the organisation and to the market. This module emphasises a market-oriented, customer driven approach to planning and implementing marketing strategies that help achieve organisational goals. The module aims to equip the knowledge and skills to undertake strategic analysis of any given markets, and create, adapt and implement marketing strategies. The main elements include challenges facing companies in increasingly dynamic marketing environment, the need to consider marketing as a strategic function that guides organisational strategy through strategic marketing development.

People Matter

In contemporary workplaces and society at large, people matter. Organisations want to be successful in their chosen field and sector but today, more than ever emphasis is placed on how they gain this success. This module will therefore consider how sustainable success is delivered through strategic and responsible management of people. The module will explore a wide range of organisations and consider how responsible people practices encourage commitment and improve performance in the challenging environment which organisations exist.

Responsible Leadership and Systemic Risk Management For Business

Good leadership is considered to be one of the most important factors for ensuring organisational effectiveness and efficiency. Leadership in the 21st century also requires a consideration of wider issues of sustainability and responsibility, particularly in the context of systemic risks. This module presents the opportunity to explore and understand theories of responsible leadership and systemic risks and to consider how they, as responsible business leaders, can manage or mitigate them. Systemic risks are a modern manifestation of the tragedy of the commons and derive from and involve shared resources that are subject to indirect causality (often with long timescales) and are normally beyond the immediate and direct control of individuals and organisations. They require widespread, often global solutions and require changes in stakeholder behaviour. In order to survive them all stakeholders (businesses, governments, international organisations and civil society) need to display greater responsibility and leadership. This module therefore explores how responsible leadership can avoid or mitigate a selection of systemic risks.

Strategic Management and Innovation

This module aims to explore the nature of strategic management and innovation practice within a range of organisations and across business networks. This includes understanding and exploring strategic formulation and responsible leadership practices in the 3rd Sector (Voluntary and social Enterprises) as well as other public sector bodies. Whilst considering the importance of well-established strategic planning concepts in the so called linear-rational process model, the module will also focus on contemporary concepts such as digitisation, servitisation, digital ecosystems, platforms, business model innovation and disruption - synonymous with more fast moving and complex environments. Hence, the module involves developing a critical understanding of core models of strategy and innovation. The learning programme will deploy a range of cases, simulations and thinking tasks to explore strategic decision making in contemporary organisations.

Professional and Personal Excellence (PROPEL 1)

This module is focused on enabling you to maximise your professional and personal development, and develop the skills necessary to become continuous learners. To that end, knowledge and ability will be developed in the areas of learning styles and preferences, and research methods. The module provides an opportunity to develop insights into professional and personal preferences, and to reflect on professional development, past, present and future. You will be encouraged to undertake personal change to modify existing work behaviours and acquire new skills.

Professional and Personal Excellence (PROPEL 2)

This module follows on from PROPEL 1 and is similarly focused on enabling learners’ to maximise their professional and personal development, and develop the skills necessary to become continuous learners. Within this module, the focus is on developing knowledge and ability in the areas of self-awareness, planning and undertaking personal and professional development, and improving interpersonal relationships.

Business Economics

This module aims to provide a simple framework for beginning to understand some of the behaviour observed in firms, markets, and industries and offer some suggestions as to appropriate forms of optimising behaviour. A range of models and concepts for the analysis of business activity are introduced.  The discussion will demonstrate that while the assumptions and devices used in economics may sometimes seem simple and abstracted from reality, it can nonetheless often provide a powerful framework for interpreting and framing strategic issues.

Business-Research Project

The Business-research Project provides you with the opportunity to get involved in a project, normally within a business of your choice. The Business-research project aims to provide solutions to a commissioned business problem. You'll have the opportunity to engage in the process of scoping the project, undertake the necessary information gathering, analysing the information and make recommendations. The nature of the task will vary according to the nature of the issue to be investigated; it may be strategic or operational in nature.

Additional information

Here at Huddersfield 100% of permanent teaching staff* have professional recognition as Fellows of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). Fellowships are only awarded to academics who can demonstrate their knowledge and ability to teach to a high standard.

We have links with a number of professional bodies that can help your professional development and offer additional insights to your industry and profession. Huddersfield Business School is an official HE Partner of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). You'll have access to a number of guest lectures and networking events throughout your studies.

*Permanent staff, after probation: some recently appointed colleagues will only obtain recognition in the months after their arrival in Huddersfield, once they have started teaching; research degrees applies to those on contracts of more than half-time.

We use a range of teaching methods with a significant emphasis on group discussion. You are expected to share your experiences. Lectures will provide the formal input to the modules. These will be supplemented by guided reading and case study analyses. We also use workshop, tutorial and seminar activities.

There are a variety of assessment methods, including individual and group reports, essays, learning logs, time constrained assessment activities and the dissertation.

The postgraduate dissertation proposal module is delivered through the entire programme, enabling you to get an understanding of the importance of research for business while you develop a research question which will inform your dissertation. You will undertake your postgraduate dissertation during the summer term, once all of the taught elements of the module have been completed.

Entry requirements

Entry requirements for this course are normally:

  • You should have an Honours degree (2:2 or above) in any subject or an equivalent professional qualification.
  • In addition you would need at least two years' relevant work or managerial experience.
  • Applicants with other professional qualifications and/or experience will be considered individually.
  • Advanced entry onto the programme would be possible for suitably qualified applicants. In such cases the University’s standard regulations and processes for accreditation of prior learning (APL) will apply.

If your first language is not English, you will need to meet the minimum requirements of an English Language qualification. The minimum for IELTS is 6.0 overall with no element lower than 5.5, or equivalent. Read more about the University’s entry requirements for students outside of the UK on our Where are you from information pages.

Student support

At the University of Huddersfield, you'll find support networks and services to help you get ahead in your studies and social life. Whether you study at undergraduate or postgraduate level, you'll soon discover that you're never far away from our dedicated staff and resources to help you to navigate through your personal student journey. Find out more about all our support services.

Important information

We will always try to deliver your course as described on this web page. However, sometimes we may have to make changes as set out below.

Changes to a course you have applied for

If we propose to make a major change to a course that you are holding an offer for, then we will tell you as soon as possible so that you can decide whether to withdraw your application prior to enrolment.

Cancellation of a course you have applied for

Although we always try and run all of the course we offer, we may occasionally have to withdraw a course you have applied for or combine your programme with another programme if we consider this reasonably necessary to ensure a good student experience, for example if there are not enough applicants to ensure you have a good learning experience. Where this is the case we will notify you as soon as reasonably possible and we will contact you to discuss other suitable courses with us we can transfer your application to. If we notify you that the course you have applied to has been withdrawn or combined, and you do not wish to transfer to another course with us, you may cancel your application and we will refund you any deposits or fees you have paid to us.

Changes to your course after you enrol as a student

We will always try to deliver your course and other services as described. However, sometimes we may have to make changes as set out below:

Changes to option modules

Where your course allows you to choose modules from a range of options, we will review these each year and change them to reflect the expertise of our staff, current trends in research and as a result of student feedback or demand for certain modules. We will always ensure that you have a range of options to choose from and we will let you know in good time the options available for you to choose for the following year.

Major changes

We will only make major changes to the core curriculum of a course or to our services if it is necessary for us to do so and provided such changes are reasonable. A major change in this context is a change that materially changes the services available to you; or the outcomes, or a significant part, of your course, such as the nature of the award or a substantial change to module content, teaching days (part time provision), classes, type of delivery or assessment of the core curriculum.

For example, it may be necessary to make a major change to reflect changes in the law or the requirements of the University’s regulators; to meet the latest requirements of a commissioning or accrediting body; to improve the quality of educational provision; in response to student, examiners’ or other course evaluators’ feedback; and/or to reflect academic or professional changes within subject areas. Major changes may also be necessary because of circumstances outside our reasonable control, such as a key member of staff leaving the University or being unable to teach, where they have a particular specialism that can’t be adequately covered by other members of staff; or due to damage or interruption to buildings, facilities or equipment.

Major changes would usually be made with effect from the next academic year, but this may not always be the case. We will notify you as soon as possible should we need to make a major change and will carry out suitable consultation with affected students. If you reasonably believe that the proposed change will cause you detriment or hardship we will, if appropriate, work with you to try to reduce the adverse effect on you or find an appropriate solution. Where an appropriate solution cannot be found and you contact us in writing before the change takes effect you can cancel your registration and withdraw from the University without liability to the University for future tuition fees. We will provide reasonable support to assist you with transferring to another university if you wish to do so.

Termination of course

In exceptional circumstances, we may, for reasons outside of our control, be forced to discontinue or suspend your course. Where this is the case, a formal exit strategy will be followed and we will notify you as soon as possible about what your options are, which may include transferring to a suitable replacement course for which you are qualified, being provided with individual teaching to complete the award for which you were registered, or claiming an interim award and exiting the University. If you do not wish to take up any of the options that are made available to you, then you can cancel your registration and withdraw from the course without liability to the University for future tuition fees and you will be entitled to a refund of all course fees paid to date. We will provide reasonable support to assist you with transferring to another university if you wish to do so.

When you enrol as a student of the University, your study and time with us will be governed by a framework of regulations, policies and procedures, which form the basis of your agreement with us. These include regulations regarding the assessment of your course, academic integrity, your conduct (including attendance) and disciplinary procedure, fees and finance and compliance with visa requirements (where relevant). It is important that you familiarise yourself with these as you will be asked to agree to abide by them when you join us as a student. You will find a guide to the key terms here, along with the Student Protection Plan, where you will also find links to the full text of each of the regulations, policies and procedures referred to. You should read these carefully before you enrol. Please note that this information is subject to change and you are advised to check our website regularly for any changes before you enrol at the University. A person who is not party to this agreement shall not have any rights under or in connection with it. Only you and the University shall have any right to enforce or rely on the agreement.

Equal opportunities

The University of Huddersfield is an equal opportunities institution. We aim to create conditions where staff and students are treated solely on the basis of their merits, abilities and potential, regardless of gender, age, race, caste, class, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, family responsibility, trade union activity, political or religious belief, or age. Please visit our website to see our Equal Opportunities and Diversity Policy

Data protection

The University holds personal data on all enquirers, applicants and enrolled students. All such data is kept and processed in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Legislation. The University’s Data Protection Policy and Privacy Notices are available on the University website.

Students’ Union membership

Under the 1994 Education Act, students at all UK universities have the right to join, or not to join, the Students’ Union. There is no membership fee. If you choose not to join you have the right not to be disadvantaged; however, you are not entitled to vote, take part in elections, or hold any office. The following arrangements apply in order that non-Union members are not disadvantaged: Non-members are welcome to take part in the activities of Affiliated Clubs and Societies on payment of the appropriate subscription. However, they may not vote or hold office in the society or club. Union members may be offered a discounted subscription. Non-members are free to use Union facilities on the same basis as members. Welfare, catering and shops are available to non-members as well as members. Union members may be offered a discounted price.

The Office for Students (OfS) is the principal regulator for the University.

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