Master of Business Administration in Executive Leadership

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.

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.

In this module students will gain the capacity to understand how firms work in a global context, incorporating a broad, future-oriented, systems-based approach that incorporates data, information and insights from diverse perspectives and sources. This module is designed to convey the key concepts of strategic thinking and how they fit into the larger context of management strategy and decisions. Students will be presented with both the practical “how” and the fundamental “why” in the light of contributions from behavioural science, economics, and statistics.

In this module students will deepen and extend their ability to create and maintain high-quality relationships with people who come from a wide range of backgrounds and possess different points of view in order to create and execute processes that produce successful outcomes and results.

This module teaches business managers and leaders to reflect critically on concepts from the behavioural sciences that can be applied to a fast changing business environment to improve their abilities to lead and manage in organisations.

Behavioural frameworks for individuals, teams, and organisations are evaluated critically and discussed in the context of real-world cases. Tutorial groups provide practice in problem-based teamwork, communicating in specialist and non-specialist registers, and in applying the frameworks in practice.

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.

In this 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, and sampling.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

This module is designed to provide students with the skills and knowledge to influence and lead social impact in business and impact contexts. By the conclusion of this module, students should have a strong foundation in social impact and social change, including approaches to funding impact, scaling programmes, and interventions, public-private partnerships, corporate engagement, impact investment decision-making, blended capital, and approaches to intentional impact.

The module will pivot around multiple case studies addressing social issues through which students learn and test social impact frameworks and concepts. Once students have gained a mastery of perspectives and methodologies necessary to consider and address a social issue from the ground up, they will next learn to identify and utilise effective measures of outputs and progress and explore the core levers and potentials to change outcomes for people, communities and market systems.

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.

In this module, students learn about the complex responsibilities facing business leaders today. Through cases about difficult managerial decisions, the course examines the legal, ethical, and economic responsibilities of corporate leaders. It also teaches students about management and governance systems leaders can use to promote responsible conduct by companies and their employees, and shows how personal values can play a critical role in effective leadership.

Additionally, this module is designed to deepen and extend students' conceptual and practical understanding of leadership in organisations, extending beyond the application of knowledge in practical judgements that achieve business outcomes, to embrace wider social and ethical considerations. The course is experiential and multidisciplinary, requiring participants to reflect on the social and ethical responsibilities of leaders in relation to their own experiences. It is designed to help students discover insights about themselves as leaders, fostering the development of self-awareness, including strengths and opportunities for personal growth.

Upon completion of this course, you will gain a deep understanding of how business analytics supports data-driven decision-making in an evolving business landscape. You will explore key analytics frameworks, learning how organisations leverage data to navigate uncertainty and drive strategic growth. Through practical applications, you will differentiate between various data-driven techniques and examine their real-world implementation across industries such as banking and healthcare. Additionally, you will critically assess the challenges and ethical considerations of integrating analytics tools into business processes, equipping you to apply these insights effectively in your organisation.

Upon completion of this programme, you will develop a customer-centric and future-oriented marketing mindset to promote sustainable growth in your organisation, or organisations you might work with in the future. Additionally, you will delve into the foundational topic of finance and economics-valuation. You will gain a comprehensive understanding of how key concepts are applied in financial decision-making and investment strategies.

Upon completion of this programme, you will develop fluency in the fundamental frameworks and analytical tools needed to effectively assess an organisation's strategic landscape. Through a blend of theoretical exploration and practical application, you'll gain the ability to develop insightful strategic recommendations for organisational success. Additionally, you will develop the knowledge and skills to analyse and improve how work is performed in your organisation.

This course provides a strategic and practical foundation for leading digital transformation in contemporary organisations. It equips learners with the tools to evaluate emerging technologies, manage digital disruption, and deliver successful transformation initiatives. Key frameworks help participants assess the risks and opportunities of adopting technologies such as AI, cloud computing, IoT, and blockchain, while distinguishing hype from real value. Drawing on Oxford research, the course explores critical success factors for implementation, including stakeholder engagement, communication, and trust-building. A significant focus is placed on cyber risk and resilience, with learners developing the skills to identify vulnerabilities, assess impact using the CIA triad, and lead with a cybersecurity mindset. The course also prepares learners to communicate risk effectively with senior leadership and align digital innovation with organisational strategy and values. Through scenario-based learning and applied exercises, participants build confidence to lead change, foster organisational resilience, and ensure that digital transformation efforts create long-term value and impact.

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 containing an analysis of the business problem and the proposed solution.