Master of Business Administration

Course details

The Aberdeen University January intake MBA is a one year full-time management programme which covers all the main disciplines of business management and allows students, if they wish, the opportunity to specialise their MBA degree in the field of Human Resource Management.

MBA students are able to take leading edge modules during our intensive summer school, which is run by visiting scholars, as well as our own expert staff at the University of Aberdeen Business School. In drawing upon the international expertise of research-active staff, the programme promotes the development of cross-disciplinary knowledge in preparing students for effective management careers in both the private and public sectors.

Syllabus

• Strategic Marketing: Marketing management and strategic planning. Marketing in a range of organisational settings, including consumer, industrial, service and voluntary sectors. Systems perspective on key marketing techniques. Relationship between marketing and other management functions in modern organisations.
• Managing People at Work: Management of people as a key element for organisational success. People as the most complex of all organisational resources to manage. Theoretical and practical issues of people management in the contemporary competitive economic environment. Managing Change and Innovation - This course will enable students to understand the context of innovation and change by examining a number of key topics, including the development of new products (goods and services), developing the business case for innovation and delivering change.
• Leadership & Decision Making: investigates the underlying theories which underpin the popular views about Leadership. It will examine the trait and situational theories, among others, so that students begin to recognise the basic assumptions which are used by writers in professional journals and quality broad sheets alike.

Summer School

Students are required to undertake three elective modules. There are a selection of electives run each year, examples of which are: Essential Human Resource Practices /Internationalisation /International Marketing /E-Commerce.

There is then a compulsory module in New Venture Creation

The aim is to equip students with an understanding of key aspects of new venture creation, including business planning, pitching new ideas to investors and managing growth. This is a capstone course, by bringing together a range of different concepts.

Final Semester

• Accounting and Finance for Managers: Provides an understanding of accounting information and financial reporting and introduces key aspects of financial analysis and enable students to undertake: interpretation of accounts; ratio analysis and user-group specific tools, e.g. Z scores and credit ratings; accounting information and the stock market; forecasting and valuation.
• Operations Management: Introducing the core concepts in the management of operations producing products and services. These include the management of capacity and inventory, production planning and control, project management and the management and improvement of quality.
• Business Economics: This module will equip students with the basic knowledge of business economics and examine the ways in which economic theory may be applied to solve real business problems, focussing on aspects of economics vital to a student of business. This module aims for students to be comfortable with the tools of economic analysis as applied to the international, economic and business environments in which modern day businesses and policy makers have to operate.
• Business Strategy: Drawing mainly on microeconomics theories and applications in order to introduce students to theories, concepts and techniques of analysis that are close to many typical business situations.

Assessment

Most modules are assessed by examination and coursework.

Requirements

The minimum requirement is a good first degree (equivalent to a British second-class Honours degree) or above in any discipline. References are not required in order for applicants to submit an application. They are not usually required in order for a decision to be made but in certain cases applicants may be asked to provide a single academic reference at the request of the academic selector.

The English Language Requirement for all College of Arts and Social Sciences Masters programmes is an IELTS of 6.5 with 6.0 in the writing and reading (or equivalent PTE or Cambridge Advanced or Cambridge Proficiency. TOEFL iBT can be submitted for EU/non Tier 4 applicants only).

Please note, students who accept an offer of a place will be asked to pay a deposit to secure their place. This deposit is later deducted from the tuition fees payable at registration.