Course overview

This module is designed to address the importance of an organisation’s mergers and acquisitions decisions. Such decisions are highly valuable and to some extent can damage value in an organisation. This highly important decision cannot be made without the critical and incisive analysis by financial and business-analysts in the mergers and acquisitions. This is taken one step further with the consideration given to private equity investments and the similarity and conceptuality of how they achieve their strategies through mergers and acquisitions.

Participants initially will be exposed to the analysis of financial statements and data using both hypothetical and real-life data. This module is meant to crystallise such early formative learning using a more advanced level of analysis to analyse and value companies in a mergers and acquisitions scenario. As such, this module has been designed to embrace the above topical areas in mergers and acquisitions and private equity.

Global capital and investment professionals must have a working knowledge of advanced corporate finance and equity instruments to carry out insightful analysis for value creation. In this module participants will be taught with a practical hands-on approach, problem solving and investigative enquiry skills in Advanced corporate finance and equity instruments. Participants will carry out critical analysis and evaluation with a view to designing and undertaking critical investigations into value claims. The aim of this module is to examine a range of topics and issues in corporate finance including capital budgeting, capital structure, cost of capital, dividend policy, long-term financing, corporate governance, corporate restructuring, and short-term financial management to equip participants with tools and techniques to undertake independent and advanced investigations in corporate finance. Emphasis will be placed on how investment and financing decisions interact with each other and how those decisions have implications on capital structure, takeovers, and corporate bankruptcy.

This module also provides participants with the technical and cognitive skills for undertaking critical analysis and valuation of simple and complex Corporate Finance and Equity Instruments, required for strategic planning, control and decision-making.

These are challenging times for the practising marketing manager. With economic uncertainties impacting marketing budgets and technological change outpacing managers’ capabilities in keeping up, there is a real need to re-evaluate the role of the modern marketing manager and to understand how to achieve efficiency, effectiveness and enhanced credibility in that role going forward.

This module engages participants in an active learning environment through exploring and examining contemporary marketing practices in organisations through interactive teaching sessions (for example, interactive lectures, team activities and workshops). Teaching sessions will include a number of marketing topics presented by academics, including practitioner guest speakers. Teaching sessions will engage participants in a series of advanced contemporary issues in marketing practices and related ethical considerations. Marketing ethics which will be discussed, and participants will critically reflect on their key learning, research and transferable employability skills. This module examines the typical remit of a contemporary marketing manager and the skills and competencies required of the job in today’s challenging environment. Using modern technology can help marketing managers better communicate with customers and make more and better-informed decisions.

The Marketing Management module provides participants with a critical understanding of key contemporary theories and approaches of marketing management practice. This module will enable the building of knowledge together with the application of the tools and techniques required to analyse different markets and factors that affect them. Participants will identify target groups and formulate appropriate marketing mixes within the marketing planning framework. The module explores the functions which embrace developing, planning, and coordinating marketing decisions to reach marketing goals and objectives required to build competitive advantages. Additionally, participants will gain an in depth and critical understanding of marketing strategy development, marketing auditing, marketing planning, service marketing, marketing management and domestic and global marketing environments.

This Procurement, Leading and Management Project Teams module allows participants to evaluate projects and develop proposals for project management in industries of interest or within their own industries. Participants will learn about the nature of project management along with appropriate approaches, skills, tools, and techniques that can be applied as a project manager. Participants will consider projects within the wider context of programmes and portfolio management and on the process aspect of the curriculum by evaluating these and formulating and presenting proposals for the application of theory and for managing a project. Participants will consider the people aspect of the curriculum by evaluating related factors and how to formulate an individual report considering a specific project scenario.

The Executing, Controlling and Closing a Project module provides a comprehensive level of key skills used by project managers to manage projects successfully together with a critical understanding of project management. The module is not specific to any one industry but covers the core principles of project management that apply in all industries and to projects of varying sizes. Participants will consider the evaluation and application of appropriate strategies for the delivery and management of projects at intra- and inter-organisational levels. An important aspect of this module is the identification and evaluation of standards used in project management, together with an analysis of the importance of planning, controlling, and closing of projects in a particular environment. This will enable participants to identify practical applications of project monitoring, control systems, and the management of control issues, such as, scope creep, risk, quality, baseline changes in the context of project outsourcing, oversight, and contract closure.

Management and Practice of Consulting: Facts, Theories and Issues, and Lifecycle module is designed to explore the relationship between top management consultant teams and their clients. This module takes a wholistic view of management consulting ranging from both the private and public sectors, best-practice consulting at the sharp end of contemporary management across all management disciplines. The module will require participants to deconstruct and negotiate a new consultancy project task, apply a range of frameworks to structure analytical thinking, apply techniques to complete the required research, and demonstrate effective presentation skills in communicating the final results to their client. The principles of effective consultancy and project management will be introduced alongside the barriers to successful intervention and how consultants manage risk. Case studies will be used to explore unique business situations and how businesses overcome and respond to challenges and the unexpected lessons they learned. The case studies are embedded within an explanatory framework that draws out common themes, relates the case studies to generic models, and discusses how their approaches can be applied in other businesses.

As today’s business landscape becomes increasingly global, organisations need leaders who can operate effectively from anywhere in the world. Securing an international advantage requires executives capable of rapidly adapting to an ever-evolving, highly competitive global marketplace, mastering cross-cultural relationships and creating winning strategies that integrate both local and global perspectives.

This Behavioural Strategy and Cross-Cultural Management module enables participants to gain a critical understanding of behavioural strategy in a complex, cross-border, multicultural environment. In this module culture is defined and reviewed in its various classifications in business (and to a lesser extent in areas such as anthropology, psychology and political science). This module also identifies and evaluates the role of culture in business theories, and discusses a variety of conceptual, methodological and practical issues relating to the measurement of culture at various levels (national, industry, corporate, individual). This module also considers the complex task of capturing and assessing the cultural encounter, presents empirical evidence, provides illustrations, and sample cultural combinations. Participants will explore the skillsets of successful global leaders and discover what it takes to build a cohesive global multi-cultural team, negotiate international deals and lead at scale.

The Managing Entrepreneurial Ventures module provides participants with an integrated strategy framework for entrepreneurs, knowledge on how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and managing entrepreneurial ventures. This module identifies the skills and competences required for an effective entrepreneur and managing entrepreneurial ventures in dynamic environments.

The module is structured around three areas: Strategic Planning and Management; Human Resource Management; and, Entrepreneurial Teams and Experience, Learning and Innovation. The building blocks put in place by this module will enable participants to develop management strategies based on SMEs and larger companies’ organisational and business requirements.

Entrepreneurial Finance module provides participants with knowledge and a critical understanding of the principles and concepts of private equity, venture finance, accounting and finance for managers working in an SME business or larger organisational environment. This module will provide a working understanding of how key financial statements are prepared, interpreted, and analysed for decision making, including points of weakness and their shortcomings. This module also aims to provide participants with a comprehensive critical appreciation of how management accounting can assist managers in financial planning, financial control and decision making.