MBA – Master of Business Administration

The module aims to enable students:

1. To identify and evaluate the techniques used in both internal and external financial reporting:
2. To interpret accounting statements and reports, and use the information for decision making in both the short and long terms;
3. To provide an understanding of economic tools and their applications to inform financial data.
4. To develop knowledge and critical understanding of the theoretical models, analytical methods and practical aspects of corporate financial decision making in a competitive business environment
5. To examine ethics and ethical principles / codes that impinge on the norm in professional life and how ethical codes could assist both professional and corporations to act in an ethical manner.
6. To identify a company’s financial strategy and the implications on the exposition of the organisation.

This module is core for all MBA and MBA pathway students. An MBA programme has a significant role to play in developing its students as responsible and evidence informed management practitioners. This module challenges the criticism often levied at business research and the teaching of research methods by adopting a learning-centred, reflective and integrated approach. This will support all MBA students’ understanding of research-informed practice and research methods. It will prepare them to undertake and to communicate a business research project which links context with management theory, evidence and practice. It will provide a firm foundation in the philosophical and practical factors that characterise business research, the opportunity to critically analyse and evaluate recent research studies and support the development of a research proposal. In this way it will support the development of the research-related management knowledge and skills necessary for professional development and the decision making processes appropriate to management practitioners.

The Management Learning and Research module anticipates that responsible management learning for dynamic and complex environments involves the whole person in taking professional and personal responsibility for making and implementing justifiable decisions. By adopting a learning-centred approach, students are introduced to the choices and judgements that have to be made in crafting, executing and evaluating research which provides the essential link between theory and business practice. The module is intended to prepare students to critically read and evaluate research within their chosen field of study and then to design a research proposal for their business research project.

It provides a comprehensive introduction to research philosophy, methodology and design and their application in researching business-related issues in diverse domestic and international contexts.  It seeks to introduce MBA and MBA pathway students to the part that research plays in business development, and the different skills involved, including rigorous investigative techniques, data collection and analysis and the communication methods that may be employed.

Students will be encouraged from the beginning of the module to use formal and informal learning opportunities across and beyond the course to identify possible research topics relevant to their particular areas of interest.  Towards the end of the module students will devise a proposal for a research project that will form the basis of the Business Research Report

The aims of the module are:

1. To introduce students to research philosophy, methodology and design and their application to researching business-related issues in diverse domestic and international contexts;
2. To provide students with the practical skills necessary to design and undertake a postgraduate business research project in a subject of their own choosing;
3. To provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate understanding of research through the analysis and evaluation of research studies;
4. To formulate a coherent proposal with appropriate aims and objectives and a realistic plan of execution;
5. To foster a critical awareness and deep interest in a management/business topic associated with their subject specialist area and to combine knowledge and analyses acquired in core MBA modules to explore that topic fully;
6. To enable students to produce a full research report and a research summary on an appropriate topic to a professional and engaging standard.

This core module supports the development of the learner through their engagement with Leadership and Strategic Management theory and further develops their on-going leadership skills through the application of theory to practice. It will also prepare and develop them for an organisational leadership and/or management role.  Key features of the module are an emphasis on effectiveness in a leadership role together with doing this in a socially and ethically responsible manner. The module draws on a wide-range of academic research and professional experience. It introduces core leadership and strategic management concepts and encourages students to develop a critical, analytical approach to solving work-based leadership/ management issues. Students will develop an awareness of different theoretical perspectives so that the complexity of managerial work is explored rigorously. The module explores a range of strategic and operational perspectives through academic research and an examination of work-based issues. It encourages students to adopt a reflective approach on current practice and critique academic theory in relation to their future leadership and management development. This module contains a strong experiential learning approach.

This module aims to stimulate the student’s critical awareness and application of key leadership and strategic management theories to their own practice and develop their ability to evaluate current practice in the light of relevant academic theories. It is expected that students will develop an increased awareness of the impact and influence of leaders and their own leadership development.

This core module covers the major dimensions of marketing management, including marketing research, marketing strategy, marketing communications and operational management, and how they interrelate.

The module culminates in bringing all the marketing dimensions together with a view to implementing them in a real business environment.  This will support students’ learning of theoretical knowledge and practical skills to help them succeed in the modern business environment.

This module aims to encourage the student to appreciate the tools marketing provides the business planner and learn how to make use of them in a real business context.

This module covers the multi-disciplinary field of innovation in its many contexts: primarily, the increase in innovation in theory and practice in recent years, and how organisations and institutions, whether start-ups, SMEs, or global corporations, or whether commercial or public, can exploit and manage innovation;  and secondarily, innovation in the context of its history, its adoption as governmental / institutional policy, its links with network and globalisation theory and practice, its expression as organisational and entrepreneurial  intent, and its links with creativity, leadership, technology, new product development (NPD), and the flourishing digital economy.

This module aims to:

1. Enhance student academic understanding of the multi-disciplinary aspects of innovation
2. Explore and develop student’s own knowledge and experience of innovation
3. Relate student’s knowledge and experience to developing their own personal and professional methods of managing  innovation in practice

This module has an experiential learning focus and is devised to enable students to develop their identities as influential managers and leaders. It is based on the principles that personal growth and sustained development of leadership and management potential are relational activities, essentially supported by ongoing personal knowledge and understanding.
Through a reflective, action learning approach, the module enables students to become aware of themselves, their values and their purpose, and identify their personal development needs and influence their management and leadership potential. It connects individual and team-based learning and development, and encourages a lifelong, life-wide attitude to personal development. It enables students to become aware of enablers and barriers to individual, team and organisational success and their relationship to leadership and management in a global context.

Students will work in purposeful groups, identifying and setting their own targets for development, as individuals and as a reciprocal learning community. They will then devise an agreed vehicle for meeting those targets with their tutor, and report on the progress of their development through a portfolio of assessment tasks.  

The module aims to assist students in becoming aware of and influence their personal potential and development needs with regard to leadership and management in a global context.

This module builds on the module Management Learning and Research, where students will have identified a suitable topic for research and produced a research proposal. Students are expected to demonstrate understanding the significance of an organisational or sector issue, awareness of the importance of rigorous investigative techniques, standards of data collection and analysis in business decision making through undertaking independent research. They will produce a postgraduate research-based report and a summary of the research suitable for a business audience.

Aims

1. To undertake, with the necessary supervision, an independent research project based on an agreed proposal into an organisational or sector issue with the aim of making ethical and socially responsible recommendations for the future of the organisation or sector
2. To foster a critical awareness and deep interest in a business topic and to combine knowledge and analyses acquired in core MBA modules to explore that topic fully
3. To enable students to communicate the purpose, method, findings and recommendations of the research in an accessible, engaging and professional manner both as a report and in summary form