Master of Business Administration (MBA)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.