Global Online MBA: Core modules

This primer module will introduce the basics of financial accounting, including how to interpret financial statements such as balance sheets, profit and loss, as well as cash flow. It will enable you to appreciate the usefulness and limitations of the information provided by these statements for evaluating the performance of a company.

This module introduces you to the most frequently used quantitative methods for analysing data and making business decisions.

This module focuses on sustainability from three key perspectives; corporate sustainability, business ethics and social innovation. It will equip you with a comprehensive understanding of sustainability issues, the relevance for policymakers, the role of corporations and the implications for decision-making on sustainability issues in business operations.

The objective of this module is to ensure that you have a grasp of the mathematics you will encounter on your MBA programme, particularly for the more quantitative courses.

Plagiarism is the presentation of another person’s words, ideas, judgement or data as though they were your own. Many think plagiarism is just copying other people's work, but this is only just one aspect. To succeed during your MBA you will need to understand how to ensure your work – whether individual or group assignments – follow academic regulations.

This module provides a framework for analysing financial markets and showing how they interact with the key decisions of firms. It will enable you to understand the role of assets, pricing, and the interaction between the economy and financial variables.

The module:

• Provides information regarding the two key financial instruments (stocks and bonds)
• Introduces the key derivatives markets (futures and options)
• Examines Portfolio Analysis and the risk return trade-off
• Introduces the concepts of risk and return in financial markets and the relevance of diversification
• Explores how return is related to risk through the Capital Asset Pricing Model.

Corporate Finance will extend your understanding of company valuation and investment appraisal, introducing the concept of the cost of capital and how it can be calculated. It shows how companies are financed and how to decide between different types of finance.

This module will focus on the use of accounting for financial management and reporting, explaining the techniques of financial and management accounting, and examining their relevance to the broader issues of decision-making and management control in organisations. The module gives you insights into the way that business performance is measured using financial analysis, and how strategic business decisions can be structured and analysed using accounting information.

The purpose of this module is to

• Introduce economic concepts encountered in business contexts
• Provide a framework for modelling the interaction between consumers and producers
• Study firms' pricing decisions and the principles of strategic interaction
• Understand how macroeconomic forces affect the economic environment facing firms.

This module covers themes in both macro- and micro-economics. The module starts with microeconomics, building models of supply and demand and how they interact to determine market prices. We will explore situations in which governments typically intervene to change market outcomes, such as with environmental policy. We will study price-setting by firms with market power, and strategic interaction using the approach of game theory. The module then analyses the macroeconomic backdrop against which businesses and government operate. We will show how the decisions of firms and consumers interact to generate the aggregate outcomes that macroeconomists focus on: total output (GDP), employment, inflation, and the balance of payments. The module concludes by discussing the role of monetary policy in steering the economy.

Among business disciplines, marketing is the primary contact point between a business and its customers. Nearly everybody will, at some point in their career, wear a marketing hat. Understanding marketing will help you whether you are an accountant, a consultant, a programmer, a banker, or a museum curator. Appreciating customer needs and how to marshal the resources of an organisation to meet those needs are crucial skills in today’s business world.

This module develops a general management viewpoint in planning and evaluating marketing decisions, from both strategic (e.g. market selection, firm objective, etc.) and tactical (e.g. promotion, pricing, etc.) perspectives. The module will also help you to understand how marketing decisions are affected by organisational and environmental influences.

What is organisational behaviour? Do organisations really 'behave', so to speak? Or do they sometimes also misbehave? What’s the difference?

Any time you put people into any kind of division of labour and related structures for integrating their efforts, predictable behavioural tendencies arise. Some of these tendencies make for effective organisations; others are challenges to overcome. Add in competition among organisations, changes in the environment, and competing demands from multiple stakeholders, and you have a set of problems and solutions called organisational behaviour.

This module covers major factors that shape organisational behaviour and effectiveness with the aim of developing your ability to address these factors, particularly as leaders. Specifically, we cover material that spans the three major levels at which organisational behaviour is studied:

1. The micro or individual level of analysis
2. The meso or organisational level of analysis
3. Macro levels of analysis such as industries and markets or cultures and nations.

We’ll be examining how activities at all three levels either come together or not to enable organisational performance and effectiveness.

Strategy, at its most general, refers to the purposeful allocation of resources in a competitive environment over relatively long periods of time in the pursuit of specific goals. Strategy is shaped by the underlying market conditions as well as the resources available to management (including the firm’s internal structure, systems, and culture). This integration of the external and internal perspectives provides the basic framework for strategic thinking.

The strategy module gives you a holistic view of the firm, helps to develop your ability to think beyond day-to-day business activities and challenges you to ask the right questions about a firm’s future. These skills are essential to being an effective general manager.