Master of Business Administration Modules - University of Wales, Newport

Dissertation

The dissertation is the culmination of the Master's programme and will represent a major piece of independent research. The module is intended to provide students with the knowledge and understanding of the research process. The research will investigate a management issue which has both relevance and is of significant to the student The development of the written dissertation will require the student to apply acquired research skills in order to investigate the area of interest concerned. Further more the dissertation process will require the student to construct a high levelled structured argument based upon their research objectives.

Strategy & Environment

All organisations exist within an increasingly complex environment over which they can exercise little or no control. Successful managers are expected to anticipate and respond to environmental turbulence - capitalising on emerging opportunities, minimising the impact of adversity and managing the process of realignment and change. This module explains the relationship between organisations and their environment. It provides students with the tools and techniques to analyse the environment at regional, national and supra-national levels and explains the limitations of such analyses for diagnostic or predictive purposes.

All organisations respond to their environment by developing a strategy for delivering the organisations aims and objectives. This module introduces the concepts of strategic planning at corporate, tactical and operational levels.

Operations Management

Managerial work is complex and fragmented in its nature. The very term implies a range of behaviour from administration to leadership and job descriptions and roles for managers may differ. This module examines the various ways in which Operations are managed within the workplace including techniques, relationships and demands. All of this takes place within the cultural and structural framework of the organisation in the current context of change for continuous improvement. As competition increases and resources become scarce there is significant benefit to be gained from the understanding of how Operations can and should be managed including techniques, relationships and demands.

This module is designed to enable such understanding and to facilitate the development of skills under three broad headings:

• The Nature of Operations Management.
• The Workplace Environment and Managing Change.
• Customers, Quality and Continuous Improvement.

Managing People

The aims of this course therefore are to provide an introduction to core concepts of the way people are managed in organisations and how such effective processes aid and support the structure and culture of the organisation.

To that end it will offer opportunities for study by prospective managers as well as experienced ones, to consider the history and development of management thinking and theory, using modern ideas to assess and evaluate their own personal management development.

Managing Information

The purpose of the module is to provide a holistic understanding of the role and function of information in the decision and communication processes of organisations. It seeks to integrate the areas of statistics and accounting into an information and decision-making model of organisation. Thus, the techniques and methods of statistics and accounting are viewed as devices for transforming data into information for managerial decision-making. In line with this perspective, the emphasis will not be on calculation aspects of the techniques, but on how the interpretation of the given results can inform this decision-making. Statistical or accounting computations will be required, but questions will mainly focus on the interpretation of statistics or financial statements.

Managerial Problem Solving

The overwhelming majority of managers will carry out their 'role' within an identifiable organisation (context). The manager in this context is more than ever concerned with 'change' and the increasingly high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability, which have become characteristic of the complexity of organisational 'life'. In this fast-moving situation demands are placed upon the manager to be an effective 'problem-solver' and 'decision-maker'. As a consequence the manager has to differentiate topic (problem type) areas, in relation to differing perspectives, and then select relevant approaches and/or techniques.

Thus this module will provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the conceptual frameworks and theories that aid the process of managerial problem solving within the dynamics of organization life. The content will provide a perspective and a set of conceptual tools that enable a better understanding of complex nature of organizational dynamics. In doing so it will influence the approach taken by the students (as managers) to develop and change process, systems, structures and strategies for improved organizational effectiveness

Complexity

Modern organizations can be understood as complex adaptive systems. This understanding leads us to new insights about managing complexity, particularly the role of information and knowledge in the task. The purpose of this module is to explore these new insights. The module will discuss prominent management implications of complex management theories with particular attention to the fundamental unknowability and unpredictability of the world, the importance of nonlinear relationships in defining reality, and the role of self-organization, emergence and co-evolution in organizational dynamics.

The module will emphasize sense making, learning, improvisation, thinking about the future and designing as substitutes for traditional activities of command, control, prediction and planning when managing complex systems

Innovation

This module aims to introduce students to concepts concerned with the management of innovation. The speed of change and the associated complexity facing organisations in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries has meant that managers are increasingly having to develop strategies and solutions which would have been considered unthinkable a few years before. In other words managers have more than ever before to come up with creative ideas that can be developed into successful innovations. While clearly this imperative can be related to new products and services, a crucial dimension is the harnessing of the creative abilities of employees such that the tacit knowledge they possess can be utilised to best affect. The challenge is then to develop strategies, structures, systems and cultures/climates which enable the organisation to succeed in achieving (their) interpretation of organisational 'effectiveness' and 'competitive advantage'.

Financial Management or Strategic HRM or International Management or Strategic Marketing

Financial Management

Finance represents a key resource in business. Its acquisition and use are therefore fundamental concepts for the business student. This module builds upon the finance content of core modules and provides the opportunity for students to explore financial topics in more detail.

Strategic HRM

The module aims are to:

• Provide students with an overarching appreciation of the contribution the HRM function can make in assisting organisations meeting their organisational objectives;
• To examine the broad range of HRM practices such as resourcing, employee relations, rewards and learning and development;
• To understand and critically evaluate the role of line managers in contributing to HRM objectives;
• To evaluate the contribution effective HRM interventions can make to organisational change and culture.

International Management

Organisations and businesses are finding it harder and harder to compete with the onslaught of innovative quality products and services at very keen prices that global corporations are able to offer, taking advantage of their scale, resources and talents positioned around the world.

It has therefore become imperative for companies and their managers to acquire the necessary global awareness and managerial skills to be able to make sense of the nature and drivers of global competition, appreciate and evaluate the range of possible options in order to respond effectively.

Strategic Marketing

It has been argued that managers today have to operate within the 'new' economic era. Gone are the certainties of the past (if ever they existed). The new economic era is characterised by the need for organisations to adapt quickly to market and consumer changes, to maximize opportunity within emergent sectors of the post-modern behaviours of customer groups. This module therefore exposes students to the ambiguity that is found in market place and market space of today. Therefore the module takes a strategic approach to issues facing or likely to face organisations' in the near future.

Students will be presented with the opportunity to develop their insights into the changing marketing environment, based on their existing knowledge gained from previous stages of the course. They will be able to assess the potential impacts of dynamic and complex environments and assess the likely future changes these may have on markets and the role marketing plays within them. Students will be able to challenge existing marketing assumptions and provide alternative solutions to aid the marketing decision making process of their organisations. The module will show the central role of marketing in creating competitive entrepreneurial companies and provide the opportunity for students to search for alternative and creative approaches to marketing and its role in organisations of the future.