University of London -
EXTERNAL PROGRAMME
MBA and Postgraduate Diploma in
International Management
Course
Outlines
For
both MBA & Postgraduate Diploma
Students who successfully complete only
the core courses given below are awarded the Postgraduate Diploma.
Core Courses
What is the image that comes to your mind
when you hear the term “accountant”? Do you think of someone working at
a desk poring over lots of numbers in a large book? Do you have an image
of an individual wearing a smart suit presenting accounts to a group of
investors? What do you think the term “accounting” means? At the moment,
you may have little idea. However, by the end of your studies of this
course on international accounting and finance you will understand what
is meant by accounting and how it fits with finance; how to use simple
accounting techniques to analyse financial statements and financial
situations; and the limitations of accounting and finance. By the time
you have completed this course, you will not be an accountant, but you
should be able to understand how an accountant prepares information and
be able to ask informed questions about accounts. This should be of
benefit in your working life and in your private life.
Economic development is the result of the
purposeful, responsible, risk-taking actions of individuals as managers
and entrepreneurs. Marketing, if adopted and practised by individuals
within firms, means the setting of high standards by firms in
free-market competition. Areas of attention include the product and
customer service, but also areas such as conduct, integrity,
reliability, and ultimately a concern for the basic long-range impact of
decisions on the customer, the economy, and society. Inter-firm rivalry
allows firms to progress from strength to strength. Increasing the
freedom of choice to the consumer means that marketing serves human
wants. From this, one can see how the notion of marketing as a
competitive medium, which benefits the public and the most effective and
efficient firms, and ultimately the national economy, materialises.
Strategic management is concerned with the
processes by which management plans and co-ordinates the use of business
resources, with the general objective of securing or maintaining a
competitive advantage. Corporate strategic management, in both domestic
and international settings, generally has three dimensions. The first is
strategy process, whereby strategy formulation may be conceived as a
process with a policy outcome. The second dimension is strategy content,
concerned with the foundations upon which successful corporate strategy
decisions can be developed. The third facet of corporate strategic
management is context, wherein the particular internal characteristics
of corporations and their external competitive environments must be
understood in order to formulate successful strategies. There are
numerous conceptual frameworks, theoretical models and analytical tools
designed to help management understand and analyse these dimensions of
strategy. This course deals with some of these, particularly those that
may be of most relevance in an international context. It will be of
particular value to individuals employed in organisations undergoing
strategic change, and those involved in the implementation of business
policy in highly competitive environments. The first half of the course
deals with strategy generally and the second concentrates on
international strategy.
This course combines two subjects which
are increasingly separated, namely Organisational Behaviour (OB) and
Human Resource Management (HRM). We have selectively brought the two
together not to create an over ambitious course, but in order to give a
comprehensive account of the nature of work within the modern
corporation. The operative word here is selective. We have chosen what
we see as the key issues and dimensions of managing people at work,
namely: selecting and recruiting staff from external and internal labour
markets, rewarding and motivating them, fitting them into an
organisational structure and culture, and seeing how they cope with
organisational change, much of it driven by the internationalisation of
business in the modern world. Overall, we have utilised what could be
called a macro, sociological or organisational approach to the subject
of people at work.
International operations management
[8000045]
Operations management is a vital
discipline and one that covers a wide range of skills. Without
operations we have nothing to sell. So we need to understand the crucial
role operations play in business life. Operations management ranges from
the mathematics of forecasting and production control to the black arts
of leadership and people management. Operations managers have to balance
huge production responsibilities to their customers, while also
negotiating with powerful interest groups such as trade unions or local
authorities. The objective of the course, through students’ independent
study together with reinforcement via the materials, is to provide a
sound understanding of the essentials of operations practices, focusing
on operations strategy, inventory control and quality management; you
will develop your understanding of the scope of operations, recognise
its central role and be able to answer some of the questions facing
operations managers.
Information
systems
[8000046]
This course aims to
introduce students to some important information systems (IS) issues
faced by organisations in today’s global business environment. Starting
with the changing role of information systems in business organisations
and their implications for competitive advantage, the course will
address important organisational and managerial concerns in the
development, implementation and effective management of information
systems. Particular emphasis will be placed on using a variety of case
scenarios to make explicit the problems involved in the management of
technological change in organisations as well as the impact of
information systems on the organisations.
For
the MBA programme only
Students who
successfully complete the core courses, the elective courses, the
compulsory research course and project are awarded the MBA in
International Management.
Elective Courses
This course will focus
on the ways in which history, culture, environment and politics have
shaped the organisational evolution of business in the Asia Pacific
region and will assess its ability to survive the global pressures of
the 21st century. Asian business initiatives in the 19th and 20th
centuries were built upon traditions and networks in an evolutionary
manner. But can this approach be sustained in the future? In fact, it is
only by making comparisons with American and European business that it
is possible to assess the response of Asian business to these
challenges. And finally, the course will examine the relationship
between Asian business and the state.
This course focuses on North American
business. It focuses on the American Corporation and in understanding
some key processes within the firm. The characteristic institution of
today’s market economies is the large business corporation. This
institution first emerged in its modern unitary form in the United
States. It is the names of Ford, General Motors, Coca-Cola, JPMorgan
which resonate through the 20th century and on into this century. This
does not mean that the typical North American business is organised as a
corporation. It is not. In the United States the individual
proprietorship or partnership is the typical organisational form. In
1990, of 20 million non-farm businesses, there were 16.3 million
proprietorships or partnerships (81.5%) and 3.7 million corporations.
However, size matters; the corporations accounted for 90% of the sales
and receipts reported by all business firms. Since the 1890s political
debates about “monopolies”, the significance and future of the American
Corporation has been a feature of academic debate. Power and efficiency
have been the constant threads of debate ever since. They also form the
main themes of this course.
European
business is an increasingly important topic for those who are interested
in economic affairs and the integration process of the European Union.
The creation of the single market has been a complex but increasingly
important process, which has had long lasting effects on business
sectors and geographical regions of Europe. With the collapse of former
communist regimes in central and Eastern Europe, the biggest wave of
enlargement is on the agenda. Now a united Europe stretching from the
Atlantic to the Middle East is becoming a reality. This process,
however, has many challenges and bottlenecks. Nevertheless, anyone who
wants to do business or even live in Europe needs to understand not only
individual country cultures and procedures but a supranational and
intergovernmental body: the European Union. This supranational and
intergovernmental character of the European Union has been the source of
rules, legislation and institutional building in Europe. It is too early
to name this emerging new Europe as a Federalist state or a full
supranational union due to complexities of the integration process based
on the principle of preserving governance principles, many languages and
local traditions. The emergence of a united Europe is also a new
phenomenon whose institution building began only after the Second World
War in the shadow of the realities of the bipolar world led by the USA
and the USSR.
This course
builds upon your earlier course in International Business Strategy. The
course focuses on the process of foreign investment, the management of
large international corporations, and on the relationship between
governments and business. So while the course is broad, the underlying
theme is the appreciation of the myriad of problems and opportunities
faced by businesses operating on an international stage.
Professional electives
Note: The professional
electives are designed to deepen students' knowledge of key management
tools in the area of business analysis, management control systems, people
management and finance, and to enable students to pursue interests in a
range of professional areas of interest.
This elective is
designed to broaden and deepen students’ understanding of international
business. The combination of accounting, economics and political economy
within the ‘Value Added’ and more conventional frameworks provide the
basis on which you will analyse, understand and interpret corporate
structure and behaviour. The course aims to develop your understanding
of key concepts and techniques that will allow examination, analysis and
interrogation of both the internal (eg. labour share of value added) and
external characteristics (eg. vertical integration) of a business.
Current topical debates are also introduced to allow students to
contextualise understanding of international business and to provide
options for improving corporate competitiveness.
Global financial markets is concerned with
the nature of the capital securities which are traded on the
international money and capital markets and with the operation of those
markets themselves. Over the last 20 years there has been an explosion
in the variety of securities and tradable assets, fuelled by
deregulation and paralleled by an equally explosive growth in the
technical and academic development of the discipline of finance. This
development came about because of a number of important theoretical
advances: the development of the theory of risk, the formal development
of the concept of arbitrage and, of equal importance, the development of
sophisticated information processing systems.
This course examines the role of teams in
organisations, the factors influencing their performance and how leaders
can manage organisations in the knowledge-driven economy. By the end of
this course you will understand the factors influencing group
performance and be in a position to work with and promote collaboration
among other team members. The ability to effectively manage group
decision making and conflict and to develop effective plans and tactics
for negotiation are prerequisites for any aspiring manager.
International business
economics
[8000160]
This course introduces
you to the economics of business enterprise through a strategic
framework that incorporates both traditional and modern approaches to
the firm. Combining real-world examples with economic methodology this
course explores decision making within a competitive context. It takes
the economic theory of industrial organisation economics and
demonstrates its validity for individual differentiated companies. In
addition it demonstrates the major tools of microeconomic analysis and
clarifies how they operate in both a theoretical and pragmatic context.
This includes showing an understanding of elasticities, the various
forms of imperfect competition and the nature of international trade
theory in a modern context.
Face-to-face plenary
session
Plenary Group Project
[8001600]
The group project forms
an important part of the MBA schedule and experience. It comprises two
group presentations and one written group report. The presentations and
report focus on relevant management issues, functions, and organisational
outcomes. The group projects draw on practical application of theory
gained from the study of the core subjects on the MBA.
The course aims to:
-
To assist students in
understanding the linkages between the various core management functions
- Accounting and finance, Human resources management, Organisational
behaviour, Strategy, Operations management, Information Systems, and
Marketing.
-
To provide a forum in
which to discuss the practical elements of leadership and group working.
-
To provide an
environment in which distance learning students can experience the
networking aspects so important in an MBA programme.
The project
material is case study based, with each group being given a case study on
which to base their presentations and report. The first part of the
project focuses on literature review and problem identification, and the
second part focuses on case study analysis and interpretation. In both
portions of the project students are expected to gather further
information from library and web sources, evaluate this information and
use it to inform their approach to the case study assigned. There is also
a strong emphasis on group dynamics.
This is an innovative
course designed as a step-by-step guide on how to write your project.
It is based on many years of experience of helping students to successfully
complete a research project. Unlike all other courses in the MBA, there
is no examination but the course is assessed through the submission
of a 12,000 word research report.
Course outline
Starting your project:
developing and choosing a
research topic; routes to pursue a research issue; how soon should I
write? designing your research project – research purpose, research
strategy; unit of analysis; time dimension; study setting.
Progress of your project:
typical route road blocks to making
progress on your project; when to stop writing; the 65 per cent rule;
limits and objectives of the literature review, structuring your literature
review, falsification theory and the structure of a literature review.
Theory building:
how do we think; scientific understanding
and method; deduction and induction; lateral thinking; fuzzy thinking;
theory building; variables; hypotheses; what are theories for? do theories
have to make sense? Simplification; structure of a theory chapter.
Methodology:
components and structure of a methodology
chapter; methodology diary; common methodological problems; qualitative
versus quantitative research; qualitative data collection, six characteristics
of qualitative data collection; methods for collecting qualitative data;
methods for collecting quantitative data; complementarily of qualitative
and quantitative research; sampling and survey design; advantages of
sampling; representativeness and randomness; reliability and validity;
populations and sampling frames; sampling designs.
Coping with data:
statistics are beautiful;
the power of statistics; six common statistical fallacies; when is data
information? introduction to statistical techniques; data analysis;
decision framework for data analysis; statistical tools for data analysis;
use of SPSS.
Concluding chapters:
bringing data back to theory; how
not to write a conclusion; common problems of style; basic rules of
writing; the expectations of examiners.
The outcome of the Business
research course and research project is a report of 12,000 words (excluding
bibliographies or appendices and the project statement or executive
summary). You are required to submit a 500 word research plan for comment
before beginning work on your detailed research.
Using the theoretical
and practical skills developed during your studies, you are now asked
to consider a substantial business problem in some depth. As your work
proceeds, you will be able to refer to the materials, readers, case
studies and textbooks supplied to you to support your studies for the
core and elective courses. You may also be able to supplement this reference
material with further local resources – libraries, government offices
and most importantly, your employer. Access to the Internet can also
be helpful in tracing additional source material to support your research.
Your supervisor will advise you (via email, fax or telephone) at intervals
through the preparation of your report and will comment on a full draft
before you enter the final stage of preparing it for submission.
