Management MSc

The Fundamentals of Management module focuses on the fundamentals of why organisations exist and what organisations ‘do’. You'll cover core aspects of the management of a company such as strategic decision making, marketing, accounting and finance, operations and human resource management. The module provides an opportunity to develop a high-level overview of the landscape of organisations and learn about the skills required by managers in modern organisations.

The Fundamentals of Leadership module focuses on understanding leadership in organisations. You will have an opportunity to develop an appreciation of the ‘softer’ side of business such as people management, communication, leadership skills, diversity and performance management. We will encourage you to reflect on developing your own leadership skills and style and developing your own leadership solutions.

In today’s highly mobile and interconnected world of business, you will undoubtedly find yourself working with culturally diverse teams, partnerships and customer bases. It is therefore essential that you are able to offer future employers, colleagues and other stakeholders an adaptable interculturally aware and responsive approach. In the light of that, this module fosters transferable skills fundamental to global employability. Your professional and personal development will be guided through the application of the eight CIPD Behaviours, University of Huddersfield’s target Graduate Attributes, and key Intercultural Effectiveness skills and mindsets.

As you develop professionally through your subject studies you will increase consciousness of your individual cultural make-up and the impact of this on behaviour, relationships and worldview in order to navigate beyond the borders of your own culture. You will develop a conscious approach to effective global practice, responding positively to difference, and constructing strategies to deal with intercultural workplace encounters.

The rise in importance and complexity of financial management in an international environment poses a great challenge for financial managers in multinational corporations. The increasing integration of global products and financial markets around the world requires financial managers working for multinational corporations to consider exchange rates, international capital and debt markets, and economic and political risks to achieve shareholder wealth maximisation. This module is intended to provide you the tools needed to understand the global financial markets and the challenges and opportunities these bring to the financial managers of the multinational corporations.

“The only thing that is constant is change” (Heraclitus). All businesses face a world of ever changing technology and ever increasing customer demands. Throughout your career you undoubtedly be involved in change of some description. This module will facilitate the development of the transferable skills and understanding you will need to face the challenges of near constant change with resilience. Starting with a strategic overview of productivity improvement you will develop the skills needed to lead, as well as take part in, productivity improvement, product development, process improvements, service design, and innovation initiatives.

This module is designed to help you develop a curious and enterprising mindset. It gives emphasis to curiosity, creative thinking, future thinking, vision and imagination – the precursors to identifying and developing opportunities for professional development, innovation and new venture creation. These skills and mindsets are relevant to business set up as well as freelance careers and employability. You'll gain knowledge and aim to develop behaviours and attitudes to help you interpret a range of problem situations and opportunities, leading to creative and innovative responses in the form of doing things differently and/or doing something new.

This module explores the links between people management practices and positive organisational outcomes and how these are achieved in different types of organisational contexts. Focusing on leadership, flexibility and change management, the aim being to help students become effective strategic managers as well as effective HR specialists, managing others fairly and effectively and increasing levels of engagement, commitment and performance.

This module aims to provide you with an understanding of key management accounting issues and applied methodologies in contemporary business practice, focusing on the role of management accounting in providing information for operational and strategic decision-making, planning, control and performance management. You will have the opportunity to examine the blend of cost analysis and managerial judgement required to make sound economic decisions and cover topics in cost management, budgetary control, and short and longer term financial decision making, particularly in the manufacturing sector.

This module provides an introduction into the strategic management theories and its practical application. It will cover: mission and goal formation, stakeholder theories, corporate governance, and business ethics, in addition to these topics, this module will equip you with the strategy toolbox that includes: external and internal analysis, corporate level strategies and business level strategies, strategic decision making and at the end overall evaluation of strategy implementation and evaluation.

With many industries generating huge volumes of data almost continuously the challenge for these industries is understanding how this data can be utilised for developing organisational value. This module introduces the field of Big Data, sources, management and visualisation. The module will evaluate and consider a range of features in the area, and provide opportunity to work with multiple online and offline data sets, investigate ethical issues around the data and explore different data collection strategies. Experience in these areas gives a holistic overview of organisational challenges and an informed perspective in decision making through the utilisation of big data.

This module will review the principles and applications of information systems and business intelligence in different types of businesses and organisations. The role of information systems and business intelligence in modern operations and supply chains will be reviewed and discussed. The most recent advances in technology, their applications and implications in managing businesses will be discussed. Different types of information and enterprise systems and software will be reviewed and discussed in this module. Issues to be considered in the implementation and use of these packages will be highlighted.

Businesses around the globe are becoming more aware of their role in helping to build a more sustainable future. Consequently, this module will aim to provide you with an integrative understanding of the role of business in overcoming the challenges of sustainability. Utilising both theory and practice-based frameworks related to business responsibility, corporate sustainability and sustainable development, you will have the opportunity to identify, and assess the challenges associated with the responsibilities of business. You will also be introduced to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a view towards examining how businesses could collaborate to achieve these.

This module has a twin objective that will introduce you to the new automated, connected, digitised and mobile business arena of the future. On the one hand, it presents selected examples of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) applications from a human factors perspective trying to identify social, economic and environmental impacts and human-machine interaction complexities and concerns. On the other hand, it will cover how digitised and autonomous technology will revolutionise mobility. Transport considerations and the agenda of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, the prime example of A.I., will underpin the content of the module.

As more and new corporate and trading actors emerge onto the global commercial scene, questions as to the relationship between business and human rights increasingly raise profound and intriguing problems of law and policy. This module, alert to historic developments, and drawing on principles of international law, investigates how national, regional and international initiatives to regulate the ever-changing dynamics of financial and cultural globalisation, are affecting respect for human rights in contemporary society. Your study will focus on some of the key dilemmas and opportunities arising from shifts in power dynamics towards non-state actors, enquiring as to how the UN’s negotiation and legal frameworks are adapting for the purpose of protecting rights and ensuring the viability of trading networks in the 21st century.

This module aims to provide you with foundation concepts of research methods to prepare you to conduct your own research. It will introduce you to different types of research approaches available to researchers, how to formulate good research questions, how to review academic literature in the research process, how to select the appropriate data collection techniques, how to carry out the data analysis and write-up. The module should provide a solid basis for you to develop your skills further in your own research project.

The Individual Research Project provides an opportunity to pursue your own interests and engage more deeply with your subject by completing an in-depth piece of research work using relevant research methods. Working autonomously, but under the guidance of a supervisor, you will make choices about the most appropriate methods and then conduct your own research project. Through the Individual Research Project, you will have the opportunity to greatly enhance your own knowledge and skills. The research will be presented in written format using academic conventions recognised in your field.

This module prepares you for the Group Consultancy Project. It introduces the theory underpinning the process of consultancy in organisations. The module will analyse various models of consultancy and you will be given an opportunity to explore different stages in the consultancy cycle including: the purpose of consultancy in business context, project scoping and contracting, information gathering, analysis and report, action planning, implementation, review and exiting.

The Group Consultancy Project provides you with the opportunity to engage in a ‘real world’ live client brief. You will work in small teams and will be expected to engage in the process of scoping the project with the business client, undertake the necessary information gathering, analysing the information and make recommendations to the client. As part of this module, you will also need to evaluate how principles of ethics, sustainability and responsibility influence your professional decision making.

The module provides you with the opportunity to take the practical steps to initiate a new venture or facilitate growth and innovation in an existing venture. The focus is on developing an understanding of business practicalities through action, reflection and case study. The module encourages you to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes for practice, recognising that you may be at different stages and working on different issues at the same time. Supervision and action learning sets provide flexible support to enable self directed learning to facilitate start up and business development initiatives with existing businesses.

The module will encourage you to develop your entrepreneurial mind-set, and help you understand the challenges and opportunities of starting and running a new venture. Your entrepreneurial skills and abilities will be guided through the application of different entrepreneurial tools and techniques – as well as practical exercises - that should enable you to assess your own entrepreneurial readiness, while preparing for the risky, uncertain and challenging environment of creating new ventures.