MBA Strategic Planning

Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University

Edinburgh Business School (EBS) is the graduate school of business of Heriot Watt University. EBS enjoys a worldwide recognition in its MBA programme. Heriot-Watt University, founded in 1824, is one of the most established University in the United Kingdom (UK). It was awarded the Royal Charter in 1966, the highest level of accreditation for educational institutions in the UK.

EBS has generated over 9,000 MBA students in the last decades and has student networks across 150 countries. In recognition of its success, the program was awarded the 1994 Queen's Award for Export Achievement, an award that it received for the second time in 1999.

For MBA Strategic Planning(7 core modules from List A + 4 elective modules from List B)

Program Options

1. Full-time MBA

2. Part-time MBA

Entry Requirements

• A Bachelor Degree, OR
• Professional qualification (Eg. ACCA, CIMA, AIA, CIM etc.) OR
• Access Route (Pass in 3 modules at least 1 must be a core module)

Assessment

Each module is assessed by a 3 hour written examination. Students are permitted a maximum of two examination attempts for each module.

All scripts are graded by Heriot-Watt University examiners and are subjected to review by external examiners from other leading UK Universities.

Fee Structure

All prices are subject to prevailing Goods & Service Tax (GST) of 7%

Examination Period

Exams are held every June and December each year. (Registration of exam closes 1st March for the June Exam and 1st September for the December exam.)

Achieving Milestones Along The Way

Intermediate postgraduate awards can be collected en route to your final MBA degree. Edinburgh Business School offers the awards shown in the diagram.

• Certificate of Achievement awarded - For every module passed
• Postgraduate Certificate in Business awarded - Passed 3 modules (include 1 core)
• Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration awarded - Passed 6 modules (include 1 core)

CORE MODULE SYNOPSIS FROM LIST A

Accounting
The thrust of the Accounting course is managerial in nature. A successful manager needs to cut through the information system to reach the accounting numbers that really matter, i.e. those that could influence a decision. But first the manager must understand how these numbers are put together before being in a position to spot which ones are critical. The course will provide you with the background and the cutting tools. The mystique surrounding accounting will be removed!

Economics
The objective of the microeconomics section is twofold: to spell out the strengths and weaknesses of the free enterprise system in a politically unbiased fashion and to highlight the economic principles and tools essential for rational decision making in a company. Major microeconomics topics include: economic concepts, issues and tools; the price mechanism; demand; productivity, costs and supply; markets, economic efficiency; organisation of industries; public goods and externalities; income distribution; international trade and exchange rates. The objective of the macroeconomics section is to clarify the national and international economic environment within which firms operate. It is concerned with inflation, unemployment, exchange rates and the potential impact of monetary and fiscal policies. Major macroeconomics topics include: national output, expenditure and income; potential, real and money gross national product; fiscal policy and the multiplier; investment expenditure.

Finance
The principal objective of the course is to capture the most important modern ideas in corporate finance. It has been structured as a logical progression of ideas, starting at a rudimentary level and progressing to an advanced level of financial sophistication, Finance is a theoretical subject with important applications to decision making. It establishes the link between company decision-making and the operation of capital markets.

Marketing
The course deals with the marketing management process, focusing particularly on the steps in the analytical and decision - making process involved in formulating, implementing and controlling a strategic marketing programme for a given product-market entry.

Organisational Behaviour
The objective of the course is to provide students with an understanding of the importance of individual differences, work attitudes and their antecedents and consequences, and the role of process and content theories of employee motivation and performance. These are the fundamental aspects of human behaviour in work settings.

Project Management
Project Management tools and techniques are amongst the most widely used in managing change. Whether a bunch of materials and resources are being changed into a house or some other construction, a cultural change initiative is being undertaken, an IT system is being developed and implemented or a wide range of other changes are being pursued, project management tools and techniques are likely to be employed to provide control and completeness from inception through to implementation. The aim of this course is to provide participants with an understanding of the main elements of project management. It will consider the organisational and people issues surrounding projects and will give a practical insight into project management tools and techniques. Finally, the course will look at the functional and general management skills and knowledge required by successful project managers today.

Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning is a process which involves setting company objectives, choosing among alternative courses of action, allocating resources and evaluating outcomes. While Strategic Planning is an evolving subject, it is firmly based on the concepts and ideas developed in other compulsory courses. The course aims to demonstrate how these ideas and concepts can be applied within a Strategic Planning framework; while there are no 'correct' answers to strategy issues, the Strategic Planning approach provides a structure within which complex problems can be resolved.

ELECTIVE MODULE SYNOPSIS FROM LIST B

Competitive Strategy
This elective is about strategic choices. It looks at alternative directions (such as vertical moves, new markets and technologies, international expansion) and alternative means for pursuing these directions (such as internal expansion, acquisition, alliance). Competitive Strategy develops a set of analytical approaches and tools to help formulate and evaluate these strategies on a topic by topic basis. The objective of this elective is to provide a unified and integrated framework to assist in the process of strategy formulation

Making Strategies Work
Today, a key preoccupation of the CEOs of most organisations is how to make their intended strategies work in practice. There is no shortage of good strategic planning. However, the issues surrounding how to implement strategies are less well known. To make the planned strategy work a series of complex monitoring and control tools are required to keep the implementation of the strategy on course.

Mergers & Acquisitions
As companies grow, develop, and enter new markets choices have to be made on the mode of expansion. The reasons for company expansion, the financial techniques involved in mergers and acquisitions, and the integration of often diverse organisations are typically treated as parts several different disciplines. This course integrates these elements. The focus is on providing the intellectual framework to assist the understanding of the diverse reasons for success and failure and techniques for implementing organisational change in this context.

Quantitative Methods
In order to make decisions it is necessary to have access to information. In the world of business, that information will often be in numerical form. The objective of this course is to enable students to make good decisions and to be able to organise and understand numbers. This is what statistics is about, and why it is important for managers to understand.

Strategic Risk Management
The issue of how to manage an organisation's strategic risks is high on the management agenda. At present there are no widely accepted methods for calculating and managing these risks, although some large organisations are now in the process of trying to develop Enterprise-Wide Risk Management systems to cope with this. However, such efforts are at a relatively early stage of development. The overall objectives of the strategic risk management course are to introduce the ideas behind risk assessment and management in general, provide a model for reducing strategic risk through planning, and to provide a general introduction to operational risk which can be a major component of strategic risk.

Updated Jan 2008

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