Master of Business Administration

This module will approach leadership by identifying practices that researchers and practitioners have shown to be the most effective. Through these processes, students will gain a broad range of skills.

This module examines how leaders can most effectively use the resources of their team members to achieve business outcomes. The module develops managerial and leadership competencies, focusing on how key improvements in the general strategy and techniques of managing people can produce outcomes more significant than isolated improvements to employee performance. The module provides students with concepts to support them across their careers as they continue to develop effective delegation, management strategy, and engagement with people inside of an organisation.

Specific topics covered include managing a diverse workforce; self-leadership; perception pitfalls; decision making; conflict resolution; emotional intelligence; improving performance; team structure.

This module explores basic economic principles (theories and applications) that are relevant to a variety of businesses. The module emphasises an economist's mindset and amassing the tools necessary to do so, including the study of microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Throughout the module, students will examine the underlying economics of successful business strategy: the strategic imperatives of competitive markets, the sources and dynamics of competitive advantage, managing competitive interactions, and the organisational implementation of business strategy.

Additionally, the module focuses on case discussion and analysis and provides a foundation for consultants, managers, and corporate finance generalists.

The role of marketing management in organisations is to identify and measure the needs and wants of consumers, to determine which targets the business can serve, to decide on the appropriate offerings to serve these markets, and to determine the optimal methods of pricing, promoting, and distributing the firm’s offerings. Successful organisations are those that integrate the objectives and resources of the organisation with the needs and opportunities of the marketplace. The goal of this module is to facilitate student achievement of these goals regardless of career path.

This module addresses how to design and implement the best combination of marketing efforts to carry out a firm's strategy in its target markets. Specifically, this module helps to develop the student's understanding of how the firm can benefit by creating and delivering value to its customers, and stakeholders, and develop skills in applying the analytical concepts and tools of marketing to such decisions as segmentation and targeting, branding, pricing, distribution, and promotion.

Ethical dilemmas are frequently encountered in the workplace, in every function of the organisation, and at every level. Knowing how to deal with ethical issues is critical in being able to be an effective leader. Additionally, the range and complexity of ethical issues have increased in recent years, as well as expectations of responsible corporate conduct; knowing how to deal with such concerns is an important part of management today.

In this module, students examine how organisations, and individuals within them, can deal with ethical issues and dilemmas at the collective and personal levels. Throughout the module, students will gain skills related to elements of ethical decision-making, the psychological aspects related to business ethics, and ethics in the global marketplace. The module will focus on how business leaders can make ethical decisions, skilfully manage ethical issues in the workplace, and help encourage ethics in a variety of organisations.

Managers require a broad array of negotiating skills to implement business solutions – this requires advanced knowledge of negotiation models, the competence to select the right strategy, and the tactical skills to achieve desired outcomes through negotiation

In addition to studying key negotiation theories, the module develops skills in negotiation, providing students with the opportunity to test and improve their abilities through discussions that model negotiation scenarios, through the use of case studies, and through reflection and feedback.

Students will review and test various approaches to negotiated conflict resolution (at small personal scales and large organisational scales). The module builds competencies in developing an effective professional and personal style of negotiation.

This module examines how leaders can most effectively use the resources of their team members to achieve business outcomes. The module develops managerial and leadership competences, focussing on how key improvements in the general strategy and techniques of managing people can produce outcomes more significant than isolated improvements to employee performance.

The module provides students with concepts to support them across their careers as they continue to develop effective delegation, management strategy, and engagement with people inside of an organisation.

In this module, students will develop specialised and multidisciplinary capacities to generate creative solutions and alternatives to existing business issues by refining their ability to lead processes that stimulate and manage creativity in a business.

Students will reflect critically on templates and methods for designing, implementing, and assessing processes that introduce creativity to real work situations. The module will engage with both the theoretical frameworks and practical methods or tools for cultivating practices of creativity in response to real business challenges.

Ultimately, the module cultivates skills for autonomous managers to lead creative projects, people, and ventures, and to oversee the processes that keep them on track.

In this module, students will gain the capacity to appropriately apply a broad repertoire of communication skills in business, professional, and social contexts.

Throughout the module, students will critically analyse managerial communication skills required for leadership in a wide variety of industries. It considers the varied means of communication including writing, speaking, and calling, and generally appearing professional. The communication requirements of different contexts are studied, including informational, persuasive, and relational forms of communication.

This module enables students to develop the skills and concepts needed to ensure the ongoing contribution of a firm's operations to its competitive position. It helps them to understand the complex processes underlying the development and manufacture of products as well as the creation and delivery of services. Throughout the module, students will receive a comprehensive overview of technology utilisation to drive a competitive advantage for company operations. Students explore various technology solutions for business process automation, including value proposition analysis across organisation functions.

Specific topics addressed include process analysis; cross-functional and cross-firm integration; product development; information technology; and technology and operations strategy.

Additionally, students will analyse how technology can be leveraged to improve product development during the four lifecycle phases. The module provides a detailed overview of the impact of technology on various operating models such as manufacturing, supply chain management, customer-facing, product development, and support functions.

Increases in product variety and customization in the past few years have posed challenges to firms in terms of delivering products to customers faster and more efficiently. With the prevalence of the usage of the Internet for business, electronic business transformations are occurring in every business. One of the fundamental enablers of electronic commerce is effective supply chain management. Thus, supply chain management has become the focus of attention of senior management in the industry today.

This module considers management of a supply chain in a global environment from a managerial perspective. The focus is on analysis, management, and improvement of supply chain processes and their adaptation to the electronic business environment. The module focuses on six topics: Inventory and Information Management; Distribution and Transportation; Global Operations; Supplier Management; Management of Product Variety; and Electronic Supply Chains. Several new concepts including Prognostic Supply Chains, Build-to-Order, Collaborative Forecasting, Delayed Differentiation, Cross Docking, Global Outsourcing, and Efficient Consumer Response will also be discussed. At the end of the module, a student will have the necessary tools and metrics to evaluate a current supply chain and recommend design changes to supply chain processes

This module encompasses statistics, decision analysis, and simulation modelling.

Throughout the module, students will strengthen their capacity to lead individuals, teams, and organisations in processes that generate data-driven solutions to problems, data-driven insights into customer behaviour, and data-driven decision-making. This module provides the foundations of probability and statistics required for a manager to interpret large quantities of data and to make informed decisions under conditions of uncertainty, with incomplete information, and in both structured and unstructured settings. Theoretical topics include decision trees, hypothesis testing, multiple regression, Monte Carlo simulation, and sampling and estimation.

Financial reports contain important information about a company's past, present, and future. The ability to read these reports provides valuable insights into an organisation's strengths and shortcomings.

This module is designed to prepare students to interpret and analyse financial statements for tasks such as credit and security analyses, lending and investment decisions, and other decisions that rely on financial data. Throughout the module, students will explore in greater depth financial reporting from the perspective of financial statement users. Students will develop a sufficient understanding of the concepts and recording procedures and therefore will be able to interpret various disclosures in an informed manner. Additionally, students will learn how to compare companies financially, understand cash flow, and grasp basic profitability issues and risk analysis concepts.

Social Entrepreneurship is a dynamic business field that examines the practice of identifying, starting, and growing successful mission-driven for-profit and non-profit ventures. This module provides students with the skills to develop in-depth insights into economic and social value creation across several areas, including poverty alleviation, energy, health, and sustainability. Through case studies, lectures, and discussions, students will learn to think strategically and act opportunistically with a socially-conscious business mindset.

Topics addressed throughout this module include problem/opportunity assessment, resource acquisition, and social and financial returns on investments. Students will critically assess various social and organisational models that directly affect diverse populations throughout the world.

The Digital Action Programme for Business Administration provides a capstone course in which students deepen and apply their learning through a 'Digital Action Programme' (DAP). In the DAP, students are grouped into cohorts (typically five students) and must work both individually and together on a specific, real, contemporary business consultancy problem related to their specialisation (Data Analytics; Marketing; Finance; International Business; DEI), normally proposed by a cooperating organisation (corporation or non-profit), which results in a comprehensive solution proposal.

This provides students with a real-world business consultancy engagement, and the opportunity to produce, both individually and as a team, a substantial piece of relevant, scholarly, and actionable research, to be presented directly to stakeholders in the cooperating organisation.

Over the course of the DAP, students fulfil the learning objectives: each student demonstrates their comprehensive knowledge and understanding of key business processes; each student uses multidisciplinary approaches to perform critical analyses of real business issues in situations of uncertainty and incomplete information in order to develop an actionable solution; each student practises teamwork, exercises their leadership skills, and reflects on their own performance and the performance of their cohort; and each student communicates to members of their cohort, the cooperating organisation, and faculty members from Woolf. Students are required to demonstrate autonomy, individual scholarly acumen, self-reflection in their engagement with peers, role adaptability within their cohort, and teamwork while engaged in the DAP. The goal of the DAP is (1) to fulfil the learning objectives and (2) to produce a project portfolio related to the area of specialisation containing an analysis of the business problem and the proposed solution.

DAP Roles and Responsibilities (a)Individual students Students are required to take responsibility for their own work, they must act autonomously on the basis of their prior learning and experience, and they must individually generate key research results that contribute to the DAP.

Each student must individually contribute through assignment submissions, which are marked on their individual merits. The final mark on the course (as described below) consists of 50% for the individual research submissions, and 50% for the cohort's final project taken as a whole. The final project contains individual contributions related to the student’s specialisation, but requires teamwork, and is graded as a whole in terms of its fulfilment of the learning objectives.

Thus 15 ECTS worth of the course is based on individual work, and 15 ECTS is based on the collaborative work of the Cohort.

(b)Cohorts Cohorts are groups of about 5 students that are assigned to address a single business problem, on which they commit to working both individually and as a team. Cohort members are selected based on their area of specialisation. All cohorts must agree to a cohort charter, which outlines the roles and responsibilities of the team. The cohort charter must include the following topics: timeliness; comprehensive designation of areas of responsibility, including gathering meeting agenda items, chairing meetings, meeting note-taking, and being the point of contact for the cooperating organisation; a schedule of rotating leadership positions across the modules units, and a commitment to professional teamwork that prioritises the goal of the DAP. Cohorts are encouraged to address issues that arise within the group together. However, should intervention be necessary, their Woolf teacher will be available to resolve any problems or conflicts.

(c)Teachers All cohorts are assigned a Woolf teacher to facilitate three cohort tutorials for each unit, and all cohorts are assigned a designated contact person from a cooperating organisation.

The role of the teacher in cohort tutorials is to ensure that students are achieving the learning objectives and that the cohort is on course with their program roadmap. As the DAP progresses, students are expected to increase their management over the tutorial meetings, including setting the meeting agenda.

(d)Cooperating organisations Cooperating organisations must register and be verified with Woolf, provide an initial portfolio of basic information on the company, provide a designated contact person, and agree to the standard 'cooperating organisation framework' –which commits them to attend a minimum number of meetings with a cohort, and they are encouraged to provide students with access to the executive members of their organisation.

Additionally, it is expected that cooperating organisations provide an environment where students can engage with a variety of employees and departments where collaboration and communication are used to complete business tasks.

Students will work with the cooperating organisation on a relevant and specific, real, contemporary business consultancy problem. As such, the organisation should offer support when needed and provide a supervisor what is in direct contact with the student and Woolf faculty members. At the conclusion of the experience, the supervisor will provide a report to Woolf faculty addressing the outcome of the project and if the consultancy problem was resolved.

In cases where relations with a cooperating organisation become untenable for any reason, and the cohort is unable to continue with the relationship, then cohorts will be provided with the choice of (a) continuing their DAP without further input from the cooperating organisation, (b) switching to a new cooperating organisation, or (c) selecting a contemporary business problem on the basis of publicly available information and in agreement with their teacher.

DAP Timeline of Assignments Each unit of the module normally requires about 75 hours of work from each member of the cohort. Individuals must complete their projects on schedule –neither early nor late –and in response to the requirements of their project; cohorts have the opportunity to adjust the amount of time dedicated to each unit.

The cohort meetings are an opportunity for the instructor to check in on the team's progress; they are a key checkpoint for individual submissions, and they provide milestones in the progress of the DAP. Before every cohort meeting, each student is required to submit a status report on individual and team performance.

At the end of the DAP, every cohort submits a Final Report, Final Presentation, and Final Reflection on their experience.

The Final Report consists of the following components:

1. Title, abstract, and table of contents

2. Industry and competition report

3. Report on the cooperating organisation

4. Report on the business problem

5. Report on the potential solutions analysing their merits and weakness

6. Recommended solution with an implementation plan

7. Full financial model

8. Bibliography

Items 2-7 (which may be adjusted in coordination with the cohort teacher), each have a Directly Responsible Individual (the DRI), who undertakes all the research for the section of the Final Report. Each DRI must elicit feedback and review from other members of the cohort, who must contribute feedback to every other section of the report.

The Final Presentation is typically a slide deck between 20 and 40 slides, and it is a fully collaborative project.

The Final Reflection is a reflective analysis on the DAP experience, and it must contain an individual report from each member and a joint concluding statement.

The course concludes with each member providing a peer review of their cohort peers, including strengths and areas of improvement.

The timeline of the course assignments is set by the cohort at the start, and adjusted in consultation with the teacher as the DAP progresses. The outline of assignment submissions is as follows:

Unit 1 ●Standard cohort charter discussed, revised, and agreed ●Project timeline with designated areas of responsibility

Unit 2-3 ●Draft title and abstract for the final report ●Industry information gathering ●Draft report on the cooperating organisation ●Draft report on the industry landscape

Unit 4-5 ●Problem and opportunity diagnose ●Creative generation of varied potential solutions

Unit 6 ●Evaluation of potential solutions ●Preliminary financial models of potential solutions

Unit 7-8 ●Recommended solution ●Implementation plan

Unit 9-10 ●Final Report ●Final Presentation ●Final Reflection and cohort debrief ●Peer evaluation