Postgraduate Business Studies 2021-2022

This course provides an opportunity to explore and develop an understanding of your own leadership behaviour. Through workshops, group activities and discussions we investigate how personality, past experience, current situations and culture shape the way each of us behave in a leadership role. Using this information as a starting point we then explore how different leadership theories and approaches can be used as frameworks for developing a deeper understanding of leadership behaviour. You will also have an opportunity to try out a range of practical tools and techniques to assist you in the development of your own approach to leadership.

This theoretically informed and practical course aims to explore the key concepts and theories of consumer behaviour. At the end of the course students will have an understanding of:    

- The activities individuals undertake when obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and services

- The consumer as an individual: Understanding motivations, psychographics, demographics and cognitive processes.

- Social and group aspects of consumer behaviour: The role of friends, family and reference groups.

- This will be achieved through a combination of lectures, seminars and directed private study.

Human Resource (HR) Essentials course serves as the first course in the program to provide students foundational understanding and knowledge of HR, and functions as a sound basis for other courses in the International Human Resources Management Programme. The course is focused on introducing HR theories and the application of theories and ideas into practice. In this course, students engage in a range of theories taught by lecturers as well as interactive exercises such case studies and evaluation of journal articles, through which they can reflect on and critically evaluate different HR theories. In this way students develop cognitive skills by actively and critically reflecting on practice, and practical transferable skills through assignment and in-class activities and exercises.

This course serves as an introduction to the employment relationship.  Students will learn the history of the field and how different employment relationships are established in different institutional, legal and national contexts.  The focus will be on the interactions of workers and employers and the factors that shape that relationship.  

This course provides students with an introduction to international financial markets and an evaluation of the institutions, instruments and participants involved in the financial industry. The mainstream markets to be evaluated include the equity, money, bond, futures, options and exchange rate markets. The subject systematically reviews each of the mainstream financial markets and investigates the various institutional participants and the different types of financial instruments offered.

The course will apply theoretical and practical content to explore the key concepts of marketing management to provide students with an understanding of planning, coordinating and controlling marketing activities. It aims to take students understanding beyond what has been labelled as a transaction-based approach to a relationship-based approach. As such the aim is to provide students with an understanding of the role of marketing in establishing, developing and maintaining relationships for mutual gain. This will be achieved through a combination of lectures, seminars, simulations and directed private study.

This course is designed to provide a detailed review of core issues surrounding supply chain and operations management. The course reflects on the strategic importance of supply chain and operations processes. Learners will examine the nature of supply chain and operations processes for various organisations and consider the latest international developments from a broad spectrum of commercial sectors. In this way, learning outcomes will be increased and more easily transferred to the workplace.

This course is only for MSc International Business Management (MSc IBM) graduates from the University of Aberdeen. The aim of the Professional Practice Journal (PPJ) is to provide an opportunity for MSc IBM graduates to reflect on the skills, knowledge and understanding obtained in both their MSc IBM courses and their additional MBA courses in light of their own workplace experiences.

Completing the PPJ requires students to consider theories, models and frameworks reflecting on how these apply to workplaces that they have experienced and are experiencing. The process for review requires students to take a particular theory, model or framework and first complete a review of the relevant literature, detailing assumptions, elements and dimensions, and empirical evidence with regard to application etc. The second requirement is to comment on how the selected theory, model or framework is positioned against an alternative (competing) theory, model or framework. This selected literature then sets up the ’lens’ by which the workplace and their experience of it can be analysed by students.

The outcome for each reflection should be a critical appraisal of the applicability of the theory, model or framework and consideration of how this will affect them as either an employee or a manger in an organisation.

Business Strategy covers a broad range of topics that come under the general heading of “Business Strategy” / “Strategic Management”. The course introduces participants to concepts, frameworks and models that are useful in providing explanations of how companies operate with respect to goal setting, understanding their competitive landscape, assessing opportunities,  managing own capabilities, coordinating their activities with other companies, and competing to create value for customers. The course is interactive in nature, applying a learning-by-doing method involving students taking on roles as part of a series of simulation exercises. 

The Value and Markets course is designed to allow participants to investigate key theories that underpin views about marketing. On the course delegates will be introduced to different approaches, theories and techniques utilised in marketing planning and marketing management. For example, delegates will be introduced to topics including; the characteristics of buyers and buyer behaviour (decision processes and roles), the marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion), services marketing, implementation and control, relationship marketing and international marketing.   

The course aims to provide students with an understanding of Issues in International Management as viewed from a number of diverse perspectives eg Coaching; Oil & Gas; Entrepreneurship; Technology; Accountancy & Finance

FinTech stands for Financial Technologies: technologies used and applied in the financial services sector, chiefly used by financial institutions themselves on the back end (back-office) of their businesses. But more and more, FinTech is coming to represent technologies that are disrupting traditional financial services, including mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising, and asset management. This course will mainly focus on how Big Data and AI as subsets of FinTech impact business.

The focus of this course is not people but processes, not outside the organisation but within. Operations transform materials, information and customers to create goods and services using staff and facilities. We study process types and focus particularly on projects. We see how capacity and inventory reconcile demand and output and explore location, supply chains, quality, risk and resilience. About 40% of the course is on projects and project-management techniques. Prepare for both critical discussion of theory and application (operationalisation), including calculation.

This credit bearing course is offered to part-time students on the MBA and MBA (Energy Management) programmes an opportunity to conduct an in-depth investigation and to improve practice through a capstone action-learning project.

Projects drive changes in organisations. A successfully implemented project can move an organisation from one state to another to achieve a specific objective. Projects are undertaken at all organisational levels and can involve multiple business units from multiple organisations. Therefore, effective project implementation is not straightforward. Executives thus need to ensure that the projects’ deliverables can create intended business values for a variety of stakeholders.

Business cannot be conducted without some form of communication between the participants involved. This course examines a wide variety of different types of interpersonal communication in different types of business contexts and, by so doing, provides students with a detailed and practical overview of this vitally important subject area.

This course ensure students understand why companies behave the way they do with respect to financing choices and how this interacts with financial markets, with particular reference to the petroleum and energy industries.  The course covers Investment Appraisal Techniques Employed in Petroleum Industry, Risk Analysis, Portfolio Theory and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)

Senior managers and executives are required to interface with accounting and finance staff and services on a frequent basis to understand and manage the strategic, monetary and performance dimensions of the organization. Operational performance, monetarisation challenges in global business, financial risk, fiscal regimes in international business, strategic partnerships and alliances, investment decisions and portfolio analysis are key areas that require understanding and decision-making in inter-professional and multi-cultural teams and contexts.

This course considers human resource management as the focal point of developing and managing human asset capability in relation to the strategic direction of an organisation. An organisational development agenda is woven through this module to provide students with an understanding of the shortcomings of classical human resource management alongside critical and practical perspectives of how strategic human resource management can drive a more purposeful and value-adding core function of business.

This course aims to critically analyse the major organisational and external contexts within which organisations operate across the range of business sectors in which Human Resource professionals work.  Course members will evaluate the impact of the business environment and a range of stakeholders on organisation’s choices and strategies.

The course will apply theoretical and practical content to explore the key concepts of marketing management to provide students with an understanding of planning, coordinating and controlling marketing activities. It aims to take students understanding beyond what has been labelled as a transaction-based approach to a relationship-based approach. As such the aim is to provide students with an understanding of the role of marketing in establishing, developing and maintaining relationships for mutual gain. This will be achieved through a combination of lectures, seminars, simulations and directed private study.

Innovation is at the forefront of much of the current economic and political debate to improve the competitiveness of economies and firms. This course will focus on the role of new product development in enabling firms to generate competitive advantage, and the types of problems faced by firms in their innovation management. In particular this course blends the perspectives of marketing, design and manufacturing into a single approach to product development. It provides students with an appreciation for the realities of industrial practice and introduces sets of product development methods that can be put into immediate practice on development projects.

This course focuses on personal development and the high-level skills needed to manage complex team communication, analysis, negotiation and leadership challenges. Practice-based sessions offer an opportunity to self-evaluate and create personal development plans. Good practice is critiqued to help set targets and standards for executive performance, particularly in relation to effectiveness in challenging work scenarios.

This course provides students with an introduction to international financial markets and an evaluation of the institutions, instruments and participants involved in the financial industry. The mainstream markets to be evaluated include the equity, money, bond, futures, options and exchange rate markets. The subject systematically reviews each of the mainstream financial markets and investigates the various institutional participants and the different types of financial instruments offered.

This course is designed to provide a detailed review of core issues surrounding supply chain and operations management. The course reflects on the strategic importance of supply chain and operations processes. Learners will examine the nature of supply chain and operations processes for various organisations and consider the latest international developments from a broad spectrum of commercial sectors. In this way, learning outcomes will be increased and more easily transferred to the workplace.

The course aims to provide participants with a critical understanding of the nature and articulation of the marketing function within modern organisations, and an appreciation of the relative contribution of specific marketing tools to the development of a market orientation.

On completion of the course students will be able to:

1. Critique the key principles and concepts of marketing.

2. Evaluate the role of marketing to modern organisations in private and public sectors.

3. Understand the integration of the marketing function with other organisational functions.

4. Assess the role of identified marketing techniques

Whether you are intending to manage other people or be responsible for HR functions in a company, this course is intended for you.

You will learn the theories that are the basis for good practice, the skills that are required to put them across and the employment law which governs what we are expected to achieve with our people

This course is run by tutors who have been experienced managers themselves and it will prepare you to pursue a career in management confident and competent to carry out what is expected of you

The concepts of change and innovation have never been more topical, especially given the commercial context of fierce business competition, shorter product life cycles and more demanding customers.  Increasingly, long-term commercial success is based on an ability to manage change, to act creatively and to promote innovation.  These processes interconnect and overlap and often present major challenges to modern organizations.  We address these issues through providing detailed case illustrations ranging from the workplace to the wider business market.  Learning is encouraged through interaction, reading, investigation, video and case analysis, and critical discussion. 

The concepts of change and innovation have never been more topical, especially given the commercial context of fierce business competition, shorter product life cycles and more demanding customers.  Increasingly, long-term commercial success is based on an ability to manage change, to act creatively and to promote innovation; These processes interconnect and overlap and often present major challenges to modern organizations; We address these issues through providing detailed case illustrations ranging from the workplace to the wider business market. Learning is encouraged through interaction, reading, investigation, video and case analysis, and critical discussion.

The concepts of change and innovation have never been more topical, especially given the commercial context of fierce business competition, shorter product life cycles and more demanding customers.  Increasingly, long-term commercial success is based on an ability to manage change, to act creatively and to promote innovation; These processes interconnect and overlap and often present major challenges to modern organizations; We address these issues through providing detailed case illustrations ranging from the workplace to the wider business market. Learning is encouraged through interaction, reading, investigation, video and case analysis, and critical discussion.

FinTech stands for Financial Technologies: technologies used and applied in the financial services sector, chiefly used by financial institutions themselves on the back end (back-office) of their businesses. But more and more, FinTech is coming to represent technologies that are disrupting traditional financial services, including mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising, and asset management. This course will mainly focus on how Big Data and AI as subsets of FinTech impact business.

This credit bearing course is offered to part-time students on the MBA and MBA (Energy Management) programmes an opportunity to conduct an in-depth investigation and to improve practice through a capstone action-learning project.

Projects drive changes in organisations. A successfully implemented project can move an organisation from one state to another to achieve a specific objective. Projects are undertaken at all organisational levels and can involve multiple business units from multiple organisations. Therefore, effective project implementation is not straightforward. Executives thus need to ensure that the projects’ deliverables can create intended business values for a variety of stakeholders.

Through a combination of lectures, tutorials, workshops, debates and in-course assessment, this course encourages students to critically reflect upon: Social theory and its relevance to marketing communications; Concepts and contemporary thought within the practice of marketing communication; expressive practice.

This course is about business development and the application of new business models. Increasingly companies have to radically rethink the way they do business if they are to remain competitive. To do this organisations need to be prepared to analyse and challenge their current business models. Through a practical business development project and the analysis of case companies you will be encouraged to explore the tools, techniques and theories used by successful business developers. The course will be especially useful for those interested in strengthening their skills for identifying and evaluating business opportunities.

Managing human resources is important for survival and prosperity of organizations and economies, and has implications for individual attitudes and well-being.  Managers are expected to contribute to the delivery of the human resource strategy, supported by expert advice and guidance. This module explores the key concepts underpinning the management of human resources and their practical application in organisations today.  Focus on four important themes:

·        Recruitment and selection

·        Equality and diversity

·        Flexible employment and work-life balance

·        Talent management

You will be encouraged to share your views and experiences through class discussion and debate. 

International Business is a wide-ranging subject that includes economic, political, cultural and technological facets. The aim of this course is to provide an introduction to the complexities of international business management by examining how the global environment and our understanding of these affect management within an international context.

HRM underpins all that we seek to achieve when working with other people. It includes employment law, personal skills, and the knowledge to assess what is the right approach to the many challenges that face managers every day. This course is run by tutors who have that knowledge, skill and experience. It includes fine tuning your skills in role play which extend through presentations, interviews, and negotiation to achieve success. At the end of the course you will feel confident to face the challenges of management, and convince a prospective employer of your competence and ability.

This course introduces students to what is involved in undertaking business research in practice. Within lectures, tutorials and workshops students will develop an understanding of: Information retrieval and critical analysis; Philosophical issues in the construction of knowledge; Accessing and gathering quantitative and qualitative data; Data analysis; Student/Supervisor expectations.

This course provides an opportunity to explore and develop an understanding of your own leadership behaviour. Through workshops, group activities and discussions we investigate how personality, past experience, current situations and culture shape the way each of us behave in a leadership role. Using this information as a starting point we then explore how different leadership theories and approaches can be used as frameworks for developing a deeper understanding of leadership behaviour. You will also have an opportunity to try out a range of practical tools and techniques to assist you in the development of your own approach to leadership.

This course aims to critically analyse the major organisational and external contexts within which organisations operate across the range of business sectors in which Human Resource professionals work.  Course members will evaluate the impact of the business environment and a range of stakeholders on organisation’s choices and strategies.

This is the capstone course that utilises a challenging, complex and exhilarating computer simulation. It is designed to provide students with a critical understanding of the process of internationalisation and the ability to effectively analyse and interpret many of the decision-making processes relevant to international organisations and global strategy. It brings together all of your previously acquired knowledge and understanding to the task of developing a broader appreciation of the operational and strategic challenges facing international organisations operating in today’s rapidly changing and complex environment.

The simulation combines global logistics, marketing, human resource management and finance to create a competitive group scenario.

The business-society and business-environment interfaces form the focal points of study in this course. Looking at both theory and philosophy in ethics, corporate responsibility and governance, the course introduces a range of conceptual models to help evaluate, analyse and critically re-shape organisational culture, processes and resources. Students will debate political economy, social and environmental impacts, co-creation and value propositions within a reframed version of a contemporary enterprise.

Senior managers and executives are required to interface with accounting and finance staff and services on a frequent basis to understand and manage the strategic, monetary and performance dimensions of the organization. Operational performance, monetarisation challenges in global business, financial risk, fiscal regimes in international business, strategic partnerships and alliances, investment decisions and portfolio analysis are key areas that require understanding and decision-making in inter-professional and multi-cultural teams and contexts.

This course will cover the main issues in project management: scope, quality, risk, time and cost. You will learn about project management methodologies and how to use standard project management techniques such as PERT/CPM and Gantt charts. You will learn how to schedule, manage and allocate resources and activities with the help of project-management software. You will also learn how to  manage risk, how to recover from project failure and how to manage time, quality and cost and appreciate the tradeoffs among them.

This course is designed to provide students with a capstone opportunity to apply theories, concepts and reflective, practice-based learning to a training and consultancy project. Underpinned by reference to established research methods and set within an action research frame, students are supervised through the process to produce an impactful project aimed at analyzing a problem and making recommendations for improving performance.

Key elements of professional competence are strategic awareness, a business orientation and a concern with adding value through human resource (HR) practice. Qualified professionals should be able to research relevant topics and write reports that can persuade key stakeholders in the organisation to change or adopt a particular policy and practice. This module provides the opportunity for learners to demonstrate the ability to diagnose and investigate a live, complex business issue from an HR perspective, to locate the work within the body of contemporary knowledge, to collect and analyse data, to derive supportable conclusions and to make practical and actionable recommendations for change,
improvement or enhancement of current practice. The applied nature of the report requires a critical evaluative approach, empirical investigation and analysis and a combination of academic research and business report writing skills. It requires reflection on the implications for professional practice from an ethical, professional and continuous professional development standpoint. 

This course provides students with an introduction to international financial markets and an evaluation of the institutions, instruments and participants involved in the financial industry. The mainstream markets to be evaluated include the equity, money, bond, futures, options and exchange rate markets. The subject systematically reviews each of the mainstream financial markets and investigates the various institutional participants and the different types of financial instruments offered.

This module introduces students to big data, analytics and visualisation linked to business applications. The module also enables students to solve a variety of complex data-driven business problems using computer software tools, examples R and Gephi. The focus of the module thus is twofold: 1) building relative theoretical understandings, 2) and practice analytics for data-driven decision making for business operations and problems.

This course provides an introduction to evidence-based decision making. It is designed based on the premise that executives can make better decisions when they believe in evidence and have the skill to use it. The course helps students to make better personal and professional decisions. In particular, the aim of this course is to enable students to solve real-world business problems or to discover new business opportunities using the available data and evidence.

This course will introduce machine learning, artificial intelligence and forecasting with applications in finance and management.

The course will explore recent trends in FINTECH, which are based on data analytics and recent advances in machine learning. The course will provide an introduction to Python, which has become the dominant general-purpose programming language in data analytics and machine learning. To be clear, students are not expected to have any prior knowledge of Python or any other programming language.

This course will introduce students to the concept of dealing with both data and the security of data at scale. Traditional relational database tools may no longer prove to be the best solution once data becomes ‘big’ data. The course builds on the theoretical foundations of big data, network analysis and unstructured data from the Big Data Analytics, Visualisation and Business Applications course and adds to this a high level understanding of the comparison between traditional relational database designs and more modern NoSQL database designs. Either can be used for big data, but choosing the right one for the particular requirements that must be delivered can prove critical when dealing with data at scale. In addition, we address the requirements for proper cybersecurity and consider the impact of getting this wrong.

You will develop a critical understanding of the principal theories, principles and concepts, such as modelling techniques used in the design, administration and security of database systems. You will also learn core theoretical concepts such as relational algebra, file organisation and indexing and the circumstances in which these might not be so appropriate to suit the requirements.

At the end of this course you will be able to design and build the most appropriate database to suit the type of application to deliver your requirements and have a critical understanding of how scale impacts on database-driven applications.

This course will help to highlight, in a variety of business and non-business contexts: i) the various real-life ways in which managers’ subtle, highly sophisticated and socially organized communicative actions have a significant impact on the perceptions and performance of the employee groups/teams they supervise and work with; and ii) what communicative methods managers can employ to more effectively relay information to, obtain feedback from, motivate, persuade and, more generally, enhance the performance of their staff teams.

This course is designed to provide a detailed review of core issues surrounding supply chain and operations management. The course reflects on the strategic importance of supply chain and operations processes. Learners will examine the nature of supply chain and operations processes for various organisations and consider the latest international developments from a broad spectrum of commercial sectors. In this way, learning outcomes will be increased and more easily transferred to the workplace.

The aim of this course is to equip students with an understanding of key aspects of new venture creation, including business planning, pitching new ideas to investors and managing growth. This is a capstone course, by bringing together a range of different concepts.

FinTech stands for Financial Technologies: technologies used and applied in the financial services sector, chiefly used by financial institutions themselves on the back end (back-office) of their businesses. But more and more, FinTech is coming to represent technologies that are disrupting traditional financial services, including mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising, and asset management. This course will mainly focus on how Big Data and AI as subsets of FinTech impact business.

The aim of this Module is to provide you with a critical understanding of the complex nature of the global energy sector and to encourage students to engage in a process of multi-future thinking. You will be involved in a process of scenario development, involving mapping sector-critical challenges. The process of environmental scanning will be supported by a number of industry speakers talking about their various perspectives on the challenges facing the energy industry.

The Supply Chain Management course aims to provide delegates with a broad understanding of supply chain management and how it relates to the energy industry. Completing the course participants will: Understand how supply chains can be effectively designed and controlled in a range of circumstances; be able to evaluate approaches to the management and development of the supply chain; and discuss the characteristics of contemporary supply chains and assess their contribution to organisational effectiveness.

This credit bearing course is offered to part-time students on the MBA and MBA (Energy Management) programmes an opportunity to conduct an in-depth investigation and to improve practice through a capstone action-learning project.

Projects drive changes in organisations. A successfully implemented project can move an organisation from one state to another to achieve a specific objective. Projects are undertaken at all organisational levels and can involve multiple business units from multiple organisations. Therefore, effective project implementation is not straightforward. Executives thus need to ensure that the projects’ deliverables can create intended business values for a variety of stakeholders.

The course provides both a strategic orientation and tactical orientation:

Strategic:

§  How to align digital strategy with a wider business strategy

§  The value that (internal and external) research and analytics can bring to digital marketing decisions

Tactical:

§  Assess the quality of any website based on a range of important measures

§  Benchmark a website’s performance against online competitors

§  Investigate the potential of a business idea for a given market sector

§  Present digital marketing research and advice to a generalist audience

§  Understand the potential commercial value of social media

§  Interpret onsite analytics in support of business objectives

This course enables students to develop a nuanced understanding of a topic of their choice that is related to marketing management and to create an individual piece of research.

The ability of marketing functions to deliver data and intelligence on customers, markets and economies is changing at a fast pace and this is facilitated by fast access to trends and information via social media and the internet. Mistakes and poor practice are punished in the marketplace via dynamic media, adding new pressure and additional control dimensions to the job of the marketer. Partnering and co-creation has become a core feature of marketing activity and this often transcends national borders. Creating and sustaining value has become a complex process that depends on adaptive practices and creative processes. This course begins with a critique of the traditional, neo-classical view of marketing and develops a complex critique that synthesizes reputational challenges and fast-moving technology and media to create a deep understanding of how marketing is changing and how effective marketing can be conceptualized and implemented.

You cannot lead if you do not understand yourself or the impact you have on others. This course will help you to gain a greater understanding of your own leadership behaviours and capabilities in both a professional and cultural context. The course investigates popular theories around leadership and explores why understanding your own leadership style, competency and behaviour is key. The course is set within a strategic change frame and considers the role leaders can play and the impact they can have in envisioning organisational futures and directing resources towards delivering strategic goals.