MSc Business Management (with Pathways)

This module provides you with the tools contemporary managers need to build a competitive advantage for their organisation. Managers need to be aware of different strategic approaches, the appropriateness of specific competitive strategies in different contexts and the ways to design business models. They need to decide when to build capabilities on their own, when to buy them on the market, or forge strategic alliances with other companies.   

The module is delivered over a variety of case discussions that present strategic challenges of real-world companies in different contexts. As such it intends to put you in the shoes of managers facing important strategic decisions in an uncertain business environment.  

Students are assessed with the following: 

• Multiple choice question exam that covers topics in lectures (students get 30 random questions from a question bank of 150 questions) 
• Group report – a management report which contains strategic analysis and advice for company leadership in a specific industry. 
• Individual portfolio – students will prepare for case discussions by producing a short 1-2-page report that answers specific questions and needs to be handed in before case discussion. 

Designing the structure of an organisation and appropriate systems for motivation and management control is crucial for its success. This module builds on contemporary research findings from Organisation theory, Strategic management, Social science and Human Resources research.

It introduces students to diverse ways of measuring organisation performance (both financial and non-financial). Students will learn how to design organisational structure in both small and large organisations. Special attention will be given to fostering organisational culture and designing HR systems.

Students are assessed with the following: 

• Group report – a management report which contains organisational analysis and advice for company leadership in a specific industry. 
• Individual portfolio – students will prepare for case discussions by producing a short 1-2-page report that answers specific questions and needs to be handed in before case discussion.

Good management still matters. This module intends to provide you with practical management skills in order to prepare you for the role of managers in organisations. As such it will feature a variety of lectures and workshops that will develop specific skills including (but not limited to):

• developing self-awareness
• managing personal stress
• solving problems analytically and creatively
• building relationships
• gaining power and influence
• motivating others
• managing conflict
• empowering & delegating
• building effective teams
• leading positive change.  

Teaching is based on contemporary social science and business research findings. You'll develop management skills that are applicable not only in work setting, but also in family life, volunteer organizations and local communities.  

You'll be assessed with individual portfolio of written work. You'll need to submit short individual reflections on specific management skills and provide a use case for their application.

The research project is a major part of the final year of study (30 credits) and requires you to independently conceptualise, plan, execute, and document an original empirical research investigation, culminating in an authored research report (undergraduate dissertation). The research project starts with the submission of a proposal form, where you briefly outline your proposed research projects. The research focus can be on any area of their degree programme, use a number of different research methodologies, and employ a specific population (e.g., salespersons, general or middle managers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses).

The research project is conducted under the guidance of an academic supervisor and it allows you to make an original intellectual contribution to your discipline.

Although the research project is a challenging part of the programme, many students find they benefit greatly from the experience. By the submission deadline, you will not only have developed your skills as a researcher, but also gained experience applying theory and research to areas of concern in your discipline, specifically Management, Marketing, and/or Entrepreneurship.

This module will introduce you to the arguments that address the social and environmental context of management and its responsibilities to the organisation’s stakeholders.

Through examination of misdemeanour and irresponsibility, the module will focus on the key structural and individual drivers of social responsibility and sustainability and its manifestations. Addressing the instrumental and moral debates, it will employ both normative and descriptive perspectives, that are applied across workplaces in the public, private and third sectors.

Teaching and learning comprise a balance of theory and practice: we explore the purpose of business, applying ethical frameworks and stakeholder theory, plus, we examine the role of discretion and values. The module will expose you to regulatory/legal issues, the role of board directors and contemporary debates concerning sustainability.    

Your confidence will be developed using formative weekly discussions and learning from guest speakers. This will help you work towards the summative assessment.

This module aims to inspire and develop key skills related to your creative social and environmental entrepreneurship, or intrapreneurship, thereby enhancing your career prospects and employability.

Project Management involves all aspects of defining, designing, delivering, and supporting organisational initiatives and product development. These aspects include planning and controlling for scope, time, cost, quality, HR, communications, risk, procurement, and their integration. It involves all activities from initiating projects to managing, directing, controlling, and closing them. This module will address all of these areas in a rigorous and structured way, using three dominant methodologies currently active in operational environments. It will provide students with an active skillset in project management and prepare them to pursue certification in any of these three methodologies. The curriculum will use lectures, activities, case studies, group work, role-play scenarios, and presentations. Students will be taught in a single lecture environment each week before breaking off into smaller groups for project management tools and software training in labs in five of the weeks.

This module covers skills required for effective research design and analysis of data in work environments to enable inferences about cause-and-effect relationships. You'll learn to critically evaluate the research appearing in academic and business literature. You'll gain the skills to collect, code, analyse and interpret data; to understand how to design studies to ethically test hypotheses; to use analysis software; and to present data appropriately in text, tables and figures.

Over the past three decades, the internet and digital technologies have transformed marketing landscapes beyond recognition. Indeed, they have created an entirely new marketing discipline: digital marketing. This module demonstrates how marketers navigate digital marketing environments successfully: how they implement effective marketing communication strategies, how they create successful digital business models, and how they build strong brands in digital marketing environments.

The module will ensure a solid understanding of fundamental theories on marketing communications and brand management. Based on this theoretical foundation, classroom discussions will be directed at the latest insights from an ever-growing body of research on digital marketing and digital branding. The first part of the module will focus on the idiosyncrasies of digital marketing communications. Students will learn how to develop a digital communication strategy and will be familiarised with relevant digital marketing metrics. Digital communication activities include, but are not limited to, mobile marketing, social media marketing, blogging, email marketing, and search engine optimisation. The lectures will also explain how to combine different social media (i.e., Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Instagram) in order to achieve strategic marketing objectives. In the second part of the module, the lecturer will examine different online business models including, for instance, internet retail, subscription and curated commerce, two-sided markets, freemium products, and the sharing economy. Finally, the third part of the module will identify effective branding strategies and tactics for digital marketing environments. Specifically, students will learn how digital technology has changed the nature of customer relationships with brands. The module aims to enable students to leverage digital technology for the development of compelling brand identities.

Throughout the module, students will be challenged to identify unintended negative social consequences of the growing digitalisation of consumer worlds, and to understand the dark side of social media. For example, mental health issues of users, the emergence of the “gig economy”, and the proliferation of “fake news” will be discussed. This aims to ensure that students will employ digital technology thoughtfully in their future careers.

This lecture course will introduce you to the fundamentals of consumer psychology and behavioural economics.

It will give you an understanding of the fundamental decision making processes and the factors that influence these processes. It covers topics such as prospect theory and classical economics, brain structures and information processing, heuristics and rules of thumb, and framing and influencing techniques.

It also discloses the various strategies used by marketers to differentiate their products, leverage brands, set strategic prices, reduce the effectiveness of consumer search, and it compares the effectiveness of each.

The course covers topics such as the types and effectiveness of pricing strategies, individual differences in uptake of pricing strategies, value perceptions and subconscious influences (priming), and ethical and legal issues around influencing consumer choice.

The lectures in this course will be supplemented by several assignments designed to develop and enhance practical skills, and further develop familiarity with consumer psychological methods and theories.

The objective of this module is to equip students with some of the knowledge and tools to analyse the internal and external business environment and devise marketing strategies that help to distinguish businesses from their key competitors whilst adding value to the product/service offering. The module will be divided into two section: one more theoretical and one more practice. The module will start defining the role of marketing strategy within the business strategy and the corporate strategy of the company. It will also help to differentiate the three levels, and it will highlight the relationships between these three levels of strategy. The module will then look into the process of creation of a marketing plan as a core tool for the definition of the strategy. The marketing planning process will start from understanding the market opportunities of the company, through the identification of attractive market segments, to the differentiation and brand positioning. The module will then move on the formulation of marketing strategies such as marketing strategies for new market entries, growth markets strategies, mature and declining markets strategies. Finally, students will learn how to implement and control strategy, and to measure effectively the performance of a specific strategy. In the second section, students will be required to complete a business simulation. In order to show a practical understanding of the concepts of the first part, students will be divided into teams and will be asked to complete in a simulation related to marketing strategy (i.e. Markstrat). This simulation will allow students to draw a parallel between marketing strategy and marketing tactics (4Ps). This will also allow them to apply the knowledge about other elements of marketing management that they have been studying in other modules.

Innovation is a defining feature of novelty in complex technological, sociocultural, and biological systems. Theories of innovation offer principles on which the practices of innovation are based as well as the connections between theory and practice. As the psychologist Kurt Lewin wrote there is “nothing more practical than a good theory”. Innovation theories help explain the features of systems that make them capable of innovating and how the mechanisms that create novelty help us better understand and shape our world. Building on empirical, modelling and theoretical research, Innovation Theory, introduces a diverse variety of interdisciplinary theories explaining how innovation systems are formed, evolve, and transform in particular conditions and disciplines.

Design Thinking encourages individuals to act as creative catalysts with a systemic approach to innovation challenges. It can be applied in the workplace, at home, and in any sector of socio-economic life, though the focus of this course is the application of Design Thinking to challenges and opportunities specifically related to the management of innovation. The course introduces the concepts of design thinking applied to product development but does so as an exemplar of, and entry into, how those design thinking concepts can be applied to conceptualising changes in organisational culture, structure, processes, and systems. The core set of skills in Design Thinking, from understanding your customer to defining problems, ideation, prototyping, journey mapping, iteration and testing, are introduced in the course through both theory and practice. Design Thinking involves a step-by-step process that can be activated in a linear or non-linear fashion as there are no explicit dependencies between the skills. The foundational agenda of the course is providing students with a theoretical framework and toolkit for surfacing, defining, and refining viable ideas quickly and then executing on high-impact business and social interventions with a lean human-centred design mindset aimed at solving problems and creating opportunities. In the management of innovation, this applies to everything from actionable strategies for workplace or workforce challenges to the leadership skills for developing and nurturing high-performance teams or organisations poised to innovate using, indeed, Design Thinking strategies.

Students are taught to approach real-world problems from the point-of-view of their target audience, demonstrating the kind of audience-led and lead-user that translates inventive ideas into business-ready concepts and encourages making small bets fast, constructive evaluation of failures, and exploiting and harnessing breakthroughs to propel organizational growth or social good. The course structure features 10 lectures focused on learning and applying theories of Design Thinking and two labs where students gain exposure to and experience with software tools used to augment and accelerate application of design thinking theories to real-world challenges.

The Case Studies lectures set the stage for each week of teaching and encourage student exposure to and interaction with the theory, culture, economics, and emerging technologies of the theory and practices of innovation. The case study format encourages active learning and allows the application of theoretical concepts to be demonstrated, thus bridging the gap between theory and practice. Each week features a different topic so students gain in-depth knowledge of 10 innovation topics through weekly case study demonstration and critical analysis. Each case study features an academic lecture followed by a case study presentation from a top-tier industry guest speaker at the executive level discussing challenges and opportunities related to a realworld implementation of the particular case study topic.

Entrepreneurial Finance builds thorough theoretical and practical knowledge of how to:

• raise business finance from different sources
• manage funds and relations with investors
• plan the exit strategy of the business making entrepreneurs/investors extract economic value from their investment.

In this modules, you'll be introduced to different sources of financing and financiers, and will analyse different strategies for attracting, securing and managing finance which may vary according to business model, business type and amount of financing required.

You'll learn how to use different tools for managing funds and at different stages of business development (start-up, growth, exit). Using the best available evidence, real-world examples, case studies, guest speakers (e.g., investors, banking professionals), videos, and through weekly in-class or online practical exercises and pieces of assessment, you'll apply your learning to develop strategies for raising and managing entrepreneurial finance.

This module is organised around the concepts and processes relating to the sourcing and management of entrepreneurial finance during the early stages of business development. Through in-depth readings, discussions, and more hands-on practical work, you'll learn how to value a new business venture and calculate the amount of money needed to launch/run the business.

In the first half of the module, you'll evaluate the financing options available to new ventures from internal/personal options, to more traditional external options (loans versus equity investments) and less traditional financing options such as crowdfunding, microfinance and peer-to-peer lending. Throughout this process, you'll analyse the risk-reward trade-offs of the different financing types.

You'll also critically reflect on the potential barriers to finance for different entrepreneurs/businesses (e.g., women, ethnic minorities, young people) and ways of managing them.

In the second half of the module, students will focus more on the processes around raising and managing finance. You'll learn about the different cycles of investment, legal agreements around investment, harvesting, pitching to investors, formulating a financial plan and devising a crowdfunding campaign. You'll also be introduced to some of the different tools for managing the finances of the new business venture.

What is technology and how does it evolve? How can managers stimulate technological innovation in organisations? How can managers use technology to disrupt existing markets, and create entirely new ones? These questions lie at the heart of this module. Students will learn how to appreciate the potential commercial and social implications of emerging technologies, and how to orchestrate marketing processes for the creation of new markets.

The Case Studies lectures set the stage for each week of teaching and encourage student exposure to and interaction with the theory, culture, economics, and emerging technologies of the theory and practices of innovation. The case study format encourages active learning and allows the application of theoretical concepts to be demonstrated, thus bridging the gap between theory and practice. Each week features a different topic so students gain in-depth knowledge of 10 innovation topics through weekly case study demonstration and critical analysis. Each case study features an academic lecture followed by a case study presentation from a top-tier industry guest speaker at the executive level discussing challenges and opportunities related to a realworld implementation of the particular case study topic.

The objective of this module is to provide an introductory overview to the theory and practice of personnel assessment and selection. A guiding principle of the module will be the scientist-practitioner perspective, with particular emphasis on the value of scientific, theory-driven research for understanding and addressing pragmatic problems. This module provides the knowledge requirement for the DOP core curriculum domain of ‘Psychological Assessment at Work’.

This module is designed to provide you with a thorough understanding of leadership and talent in organisations. You'll learn about methods for assessing leadership potential and talent, along with approaches to enhancing leadership ability and talent. The course will also cover use of technology in leadership development and talent management. By using case material and practical examples, you'll be introduced to the importance of theory and research-based practice in these fields.

This module aims to provide you with an introduction to the ways in which individuals learn and develop within organisations. We'll begin with a discussion of how people learn, training design and delivery and the organisational context in which all of this occurs. Following this, a specific application of training, namely Stress Management Training (SMT), is explored in detail. Next, training is contrasted with a contemporary form of development activity known as coaching. Finally, these different forms of development are discussed within the context people’s careers, and the ways in which career counselling can be used to help people navigate their professional lives are examined.

This module introduces you to a wide range of practical business skills. It is delivered as a series of four-hour workshops, where you will need to choose 5 topics that meet your specific interests and goals. The program of workshops is curated each year to include relevant skills sought after by employers.  

After each workshop, you need to submit a deliverable (written report, presentation or another type of submission) that demonstrates skills acquired. 

Examples of workshops: 

• Delivering compelling presentations 
• Visualising data in management reports 
• Business negotiations 
• How investing institutions work 
• Writing for management reports 
• Understanding financial statements 
• Applied financial planning 
• Professional communication 

Over the past three decades, customers have gained centre stage in marketing education and practice. Establishing close and intimate relationships with customers is considered to be key to marketing success, and customer equity has become an important marketing performance indicator.

The advent of digital technology and social media have had a major impact on the nature of customer relationships. Today, companies are seeking to engage the customer by creating interactive, participative marketing landscapes which will be the focus of this module.

Based on a solid understanding of traditional customer relationship management and contemporary customer engagement theories, this module discusses the creation of customer experiences from two perspectives.

First, the module will teach students how managers involve customers throughout the marketing process. Existing technology allows customers to participate in product design (for example online product customization), pricing (for example pay-what-you-want), and marketing communications (creation of viral online content). 3D printing may revolutionize the distribution of material goods, with customers designing products online and printing them at home.

Virtual Reality will add further customer touch points to our existing marketing landscapes in the near future. Specifically, Virtual Reality has the potential to transform retail environments and create entirely new marketing communication channels. Furthermore, companies are increasingly engaging customers in brand building, especially via brand communities. The merits as well as the limitations of participative customer experiences will be discussed in this module. Also, the potential impact of other emerging technologies on the customer experience will be examined.

Second, this module focuses on customer involvement in the innovation process. Companies are increasingly involving customers directly in the development of novel products and services. On the one hand, this occurs via crowdsourcing efforts and product idea competitions. On the other hand, selected customers may work directly with engineers and managers during the innovation process. Furthermore, customers often innovate on their own, which is well-documented in the lead user and market creation literature. The module demonstrates how managers can create fertile grounds for successful customer co-creation of new products and services. Also, it will debate the value and limitations of customer engagement in companies’ innovation efforts.

This module aims to introduce students to consumer culture. This module departs form psychological and traditional perspectives on consumer behavior in looking at consumers from a social, cultural, and anthropological point of view. The assumption is that brands are cultural icons and as such they have meanings that go beyond their economic value. As such, this module will look at products, services, branding, retailing, and advertising from sociological, anthropological and cultural perspectives. The module intends to challenge students’ existing understanding of marketing and consumer behaviour, and to develop a critical view on contemporary marketing issues.

This module provides the knowledge requirement for marketing and advertising. The module will provide a critical understanding of what consumers buy, how they buy (i.e., buying patterns), and why they buy the way they do (i.e., why we see these patterns). This knowledge in turn will enable you to improve marketing and advertising strategies of organisations both on large scale and small-scale projects. By using theory, case material and practical examples, you are introduced to the importance of theory and research-based practice in these fields.

Throughout the module you will develop a contemporary, cognitive toolkit for researching, analysing, and understanding buyer behaviour. You will contrast this current approach with traditional models of marketing and advertisement. Finally, you will learn to apply this knowledge for organisational strategy initiatives (e.g., launching a new marketing campaign). This module brings together a wide range of approaches to buyer behaviour, marketing and advertising, both on organisational and project-by-project levels. You will also be offered an opportunity to apply your learning to analysing case studies.

Digital Research Methods examines current digital research technologies, the process of conducting research and evaluating results, techniques for conducting advanced research of online and offline social life, and tools and techniques for finding and analysing big and small data. It covers qualitative and quantitative approaches to dealing with data and analysis. It aims to create hybrid social researchers capable of moving seamlessly across online and offline spaces to access and analyse data.

The module aims to provide an introduction to individual and organisational health and the ways in which organisational environments can be designed to facilitate this. The module begins with a discussion of the antecedents of individual and organisational health and wellbeing, and also discusses the likely symptoms of when health and wellbeing are poorly managed by organisations. The ways in which this process can be mitigated is then discussed in light of the impact of individual differences as well as the impact of health and safety management systems. After this, the module broadens out to discuss the organisational context for health, wellbeing and performance in more detail through the design of work, organisational structure and culture, and planned change for improving organisational effectiveness.

This lecture course will introduce you to the fundamentals of consumer psychology and behavioural economics.

It will give you an understanding of the fundamental decision making processes and the factors that influence these processes. It covers topics such as prospect theory and classical economics, brain structures and information processing, heuristics and rules of thumb, and framing and influencing techniques.

It also discloses the various strategies used by marketers to differentiate their products, leverage brands, set strategic prices, reduce the effectiveness of consumer search, and it compares the effectiveness of each.

The course covers topics such as the types and effectiveness of pricing strategies, individual differences in uptake of pricing strategies, value perceptions and subconscious influences (priming), and ethical and legal issues around influencing consumer choice.

The lectures in this course will be supplemented by several assignments designed to develop and enhance practical skills, and further develop familiarity with consumer psychological methods and theories.

This module provides the knowledge requirement for marketing and advertising. The module will provide a critical understanding of what consumers buy, how they buy (i.e., buying patterns), and why they buy the way they do (i.e., why we see these patterns). This knowledge in turn will enable you to improve marketing and advertising strategies of organisations both on large scale and small-scale projects. By using theory, case material and practical examples, you are introduced to the importance of theory and research-based practice in these fields.

Throughout the module you will develop a contemporary, cognitive toolkit for researching, analysing, and understanding buyer behaviour. You will contrast this current approach with traditional models of marketing and advertisement. Finally, you will learn to apply this knowledge for organisational strategy initiatives (e.g., launching a new marketing campaign). This module brings together a wide range of approaches to buyer behaviour, marketing and advertising, both on organisational and project-by-project levels. You will also be offered an opportunity to apply your learning to analysing case studies.

This module provides you with a thorough understanding of the unique practices associated with successful luxury brand management. You'll probe the essence of luxury brand management, and explore the diversity of meanings associated with luxury across different markets, as well as the impact of social networks and digital developments.

In the contemporary luxury market, companies have to be connected with customers in increasingly creative ways. Luxury has to distinguish itself through distinctive approaches to retail, information technology and marketing. Luxury provides the opportunity to stay close to one’s customers and to provide the things that they want. Luxury has traditionally been seen in a tangible way, especially with regard to fashion goods, but an emerging field on inquiry is the growth of experiential luxury and the expansion of luxury management skills into new areas such as tourism and hospitality, museums and art galleries, and theatres. The distinctive features of luxury brand management arose from a combination of theory and practice, and consideration is given to emerging future trends. You'll explore geographical and regional perspectives within their historical contexts with regard to the luxury sector or knowledge domain with reference to the development of luxury brands in Europe, and to the use of luxury items in Asian and African court-based societies. You'll examine, in particular, the rapid emergence of Japan as a major consumer and developer of luxury brands and how its own distinctive practices in retail, notably the close relationship between customer and retailer, became influential.

In this module, you'll probe the essence of luxury brand management and explore the differences between mass, premium and luxury brand management strategies. You'll gain a strategic perspective on the dynamic characteristics and opportunities associated with luxury brand management in a global context and examine the main forms of management in relation to the luxury goods and services industry. You'll learn industry perspectives on luxury in relation to new venture creation and product development. There is a focus on the practicalities of management and an examination of the human resource management issues relevant to this sector. We'll discuss corporate social responsibility and environmental issues relating to luxury brand management. You'll consider the different methods required in the management of branded luxury goods and the provision of luxury experiences and their underlying rationales.

This module will provide you with an understanding of the role of the luxury brand manager in relation to intellectual property (IP) legislation and the contexts in which legal advice should be sought.

You'll be introduced to contemporary theory and practice in policy-making and industry by bringing in occasional speakers from ICCE’s networks in the industry. IP refers to intangible assets created by the mind. IP is often afforded time-limited, legal monopoly protection. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) refer to the legal rights, including trademarks, copyright, design rights, patents and, in some cases, trade secrets, that grant the right to control the use of intellectual efforts.

While the importance of IP legislation is recognised by the vast majority of countries, the level of enforcement of IP laws varies. Reference is made to the British legal context, but the emphasis is on international legislation as the student body is likely to be diverse in terms of nationality. There are many historical and contemporary examples of IP infringement, including both commercial and artistic, and sometimes IP infringement is encouraged by brands and artists.

This module takes a critically analytical approach to festivals, and the planning, organising and marketing thereof. London hosts a broad range of festivals, making it the perfect location to study this topic but the module will also discuss art festivals from an international perspective, making use of examples of festivals abroad as well as local festivals that are celebrating different cultures and manifesting international traditions from around the world. 

You'll develop a critical understanding of key practical elements of festival and events planning and management through lectures and guest talks and/or workshops led by industry professionals.

The Festival Management syllabus will include many practical elements such as feasibility studies, licensing agreements, budget overviews, health and safety regulations, risk assessments, market research, marketing plans, organisational charts, evaluation strategies, action plans, planning schedules, run sheets, and contingency plans.

A large amount of data is available in electronic resources, both offline and online. This module will give a broad introduction to techniques for gathering data from electronic sources, such as databases and the internet. It will cover both fundamental ideas and the use of some of the most important currently available tools. The module will also present tools and ideas for more effectively using the internet to communicate, visualise and generate news stories.