OBJECTIVES

ORGANISATIONS AND PEOPLE

This module investigates organisational behaviour and human resource management. Designed for working managers, those who deputise for managers, management trainees, supervisors and team leaders, it takes a very practice-based approach to studying management concepts, focusing on your own role. 

MARKETING AND FINANCE

This practical module covers topics in marketing and accounting and finance through activities and problem-solving. It takes a very practice-based approach to studying management concepts focusing on your own role.  You will find this module easier to engage with if you have studied Organisations and People first.

INTEGRATION

This module consolidates the key learning points from your previous management studies and integrate organisational, people, customer and financial based perspectives of the managerial role.

This module should be taken after completing Organisations and People and Marketing and Finance.

OBJECTIVES

AUDIENCE 

This program is suitable for aspiring and first line managers with experience of working on a team, a project or task involving one or more others; It is not suitable if you have no previous work experience (paid or unpaid) on which to draw.

AUDIENCE

The module is designed for more experienced management and leadership professionals from a wide range of contexts and backgrounds.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

ORGANISATIONS AND PEOPLE

This module enables you to critically reflect on and analyse workplace situations and your own ways of managing. It is ‘solution oriented’ to help you to not only understand work situations from a manager’s perspective, but also to help you to work out what to do, given that you may not be in charge of the organisation you work for. As you work through activities, problems and solutions, you will question the idea that there are single solutions or issues or that there is ‘one best way’. You will come to understand the constraints, choices and demands that operate and learn when to work within them and when and how you may be able to bring about change.

MARKETING AND FINANCE

The module poses such questions as: What is marketing exactly? How is it done in different contexts, including the public sector? What’s internal marketing? Who are your customers and stakeholders? How can you avoid marketing mistakes? Precisely what is your organisation exchanging with consumers and clients? How does your organisation deliver your goods and services and how does it add value?

How do you price, promote and deliver your goods or services? How do you keep your consumers and clients happy? Why is finance important? What are budgets for and how can they be used? What are costs and how can you break them down to understand them better? What is cash flow and why is it important? What’s a profit and loss account and is it relevant to non-commercial sectors?

At appropriate points throughout the module, questions of business ethics and sustainability are addressed and you are encouraged to consider these aspects carefully in the module activities you undertake.

The idea is to improve your understanding of finance so that you can improve your managerial decision making, rather than to teach you accountancy. The same is true of marketing: every manager needs to understand who the organisation is serving, and why, in order to manage employees in the organisation more effectively.

INTEGRATION

This module has three aims:

• to integrate organisational, people, marketing and financial based perspectives of the managerial role
• to practice key management skills and techniques with others
• to develop and examine the ability to understand and tackle complex and integrated management problems.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Through learning about different management functions within organisations you will develop a better understanding of how you manage and lead.   

You will gain confidence in understanding how different parts of organisations operate and in having successful conversations across these areas, including:

• organisational structure, power and politics, and change management
• managing people and organisations
• managing financial resources
• marketing management
• operations management.

This program aims to:

• develop your understanding of the core and current frameworks, theories and tools and to assess their relevance to the issues of twenty-first century leading and managing
• increase your awareness of different perspectives on, and approaches to, managing and leading in different organisational and cultural contexts
• develop your ability to engage critically with management frameworks, theories and tools helping you to select and adapt techniques and approaches appropriate to own management context, in order to shape your own management practice
• develop your awareness of the wider global context in which business and management takes place, and increase your ability to work confidently across sectoral and national boundaries
• develop interpersonal and conceptual skills that will help you to use ideas and frameworks to make sense of, and to work with, organisational complexity 
• challenge your own thinking and practice by reflecting upon it critically in the light of the ideas you encounter, and through debates with others
• enhance your ability to plan and implement change which will have real impact within your own organisational context.