What you will study
The module provides you with the opportunity to develop and learn about managing and marketing in relation to your working life and personal practice. As an aspiring organisational decision-maker, you'll gain the knowledge and tools necessary to successfully take advantage of cutting-edge theories of management and human resource management. This will be linked to the values of collective responsibility, aesthetics and ethics. You'll become empowered to create responsible growth, across a range of private sector, public and not for profit organisations, while also critically reflecting on your own potential in terms of leadership and management practice. In addition, you'll explores the ways in which marketing can be used to more effectively help organisations to be both successful and forward thinking in a business environment that is quickly moving beyond traditional geographic, cultural and organisational boundaries.
The module offers a developmental route appropriate for the first module of an MBA, which builds on and consolidates knowledge through a series of activities and text. You'll learn new concepts, and to question, reflect and apply these throughout the module, so that you learn to be challenging, discerning and critical practitioners in the changing workplace. The starting point is learning about core concepts of management in relation to historical (past) and contemporary (present) practices. Some concepts are illustrated through international examples, while also harnessing and applying your own experiences and practices. However, most importantly, the module prompts and encourages you to imagine alternative possibilities for what managing (as a verb) might look like. This is particularly salient in the context of current predictions suggesting that our working lives could change dramatically in the near to mid future.
Three themes provide a coherent and strong conceptual narrative to the module. These overarching themes provide a way of relating different and disparate knowledge to a conceptually organised framework. The first theme is Representations and Realities which deals primarily with ambivalence, ambiguity and the conflicted tensions/struggles that might result from the everyday practice of managing. Representations could be theories, discourse, or the taken-for-granted common sense understandings of a topic, that sharply contrast with what happens in practice/our lived experience of everyday work. The second theme, Traditional and Contemporary, provides an opportunity to show how the world of work, and academic ideas, are constantly reshaping. This theme complements representations and realities, allowing you to imagine new realities and alternatives for the future, but also challenge those that have been dominant for some time. The third theme, Unitarism and Pluralism, challenges the idea that there is one best way and the assumption that when we speak of ‘an organisation’ we are talking about one harmonious and homogenous entity.
The module comprises 21 study sessions, each of which represent a week of study. You will be required to study between 12 and 15 hours per week for six months. Satisfactory participation at the compulsory residential school is required. The residential school is offered in face-to-face and online options, subject to restrictions linked to pandemic-related regulations or other factors. In the intensive face-to-face and online school you should expect to spend 6 to 8 hours a day on tasks and activities, while if you opt for the less intensive online version you should expect to spend about 1.5 hours per day on tasks and activities.
Please note that if you start this module in November, the school is likely to be towards the end of the following February/early March. If you start in May, the school is likely to be towards the end of August. (Dates are subject to change).