Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration

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.

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

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.