Course Content
Year 1
Leadership Practicum
This module will provide a novel and leading edge perspective on leadership in contemporary organisational contexts. It will allow you to explore a range of perspectives on leadership looking at, for example, conventional trait and situational theories of leadership and considering these in comparison with more facilitative, relational and discursive approaches such as, transformational, charismatic and distributive leadership. Additionally, this work will be underpinned with coaching and mentoring and the module will provide rich and varied opportunities for you to contextualise your experiences.
Financial Decision Making
The Financial Decision Making module considers the dynamics of numerical data and information and your role in current business and management practices and business development. It will be delivered through a combination of face-to-face tutoring and distance learning and at different levels, in order to respond to different participant pre-accomplishment and ability. The module will employ case studies which illustrate how to interpret and effectively utilise financial information in a manner which adds value to business decisions and integrates financial information in the light of the realities of business strategy shaping in the contemporary era.
Strategy in Turbulent Times
The module will use a simulation and the teaching will be based around various aspects of understanding of the questions and situations generated. Business analytics will be covered during this module together with opportunities to work with techniques on real case studies and live business issues. The module will take you through conventional linear representations of strategy and progress to demonstrate and provide hands-on experience, through relating this back to your own professional experiences, to more incremental, complex and transformational approaches. Crucially, you will learn why strategies fail and succeed.
Year 2
Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation in New Settings
This module allows you to explore your academic and professional experiences in a novel context and engage in innovative and entrepreneurial behaviours. The work of the module is constructed around a number of ‘Sustainable Development Goals’. Current business challenges point at the need for new ways of thinking and new solutions. Such approaches can also be a driver for wider social change. The module introduces you to models and debates in the field of social entrepreneurship and social innovation, and examines some of the realities of rendering these operational. This module will also integrate research methods and field research, such as the field business project at Chiang Mai (Thailand). The team have access to a wide range of potential projects including, for example, Cocoa supply change management.
Business and Sustainability
Sustainability presents a contemporary domain in which organisations and business are obligated to balance constraints and pressures from both internal and external sources. Senior organisational figures and executives feel compelled to behave appropriately and therein resides a challenge – how to keep up-to-date with the latest information and research when resources in terms of time and work pressures are scarce. This module addresses the need for current and relevant research delivered in an applied manner so as to build and reinforce effectiveness, judgement and confidence in the contested area of business and sustainability. The module will be mindful of being presented without jargon yet will use and contextualise leading edge research with a view to stimulating novel and critical reflection on issues which are central and critical to organizational international business policy.
Future of Work and Organizations
This module is a capstone for the course. You will examine a wide range of stimulating and interesting topics emerging around, for example, the impact of artificial intelligence, crowdfunding, social enterprises, and virtual organisations. The module will include a series of company visits with the possibility of inter-institutional collaborative seminars. Students will relate the material of the module to the other modules of the programme drawing out inter-disciplinary and cross-modular themes and learning.
