The Lancaster MBA

In the Mindful Manager module we are concerned with your development as a high performance business manager. The module is designed and deployed as the central element of your learning throughout the MBA programme.It represents, alongside the Core Capabilities and Leading Mindfully modules, the General Management core of the course around which all the other modules revolve

Today’s business world is volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and complex; and is suffused with diverse stakeholders with competing agendas. Instead of shrinking away from this complexity, we encourage you to embrace the challenges and opportunities it offers. We strive to ensure you learn to deal with the world as it is; not how you might like it to be! Unlike other MBA programmes, we’ve recognized the importance of this.

Through The Mindful Manager – a module that’s totally unique to The Lancaster MBA - we focus on building the 'attitudes of mind' that you will require if you are to be highly effective at the most senior levels. We drive the development of your practical wisdom - your capacity to exercise quality judgement – your ability to deal with the real world of business and management.

Together with Mindful Manager and Leading Mindfully, this module forms part of the central general management core of your MBA programme. The Core Capabilities module is designed to help you to develop the skills that are vital for effective managing and leading. We focus on three things: your cognitive conduct (your ability to think critically, creatively and to consider a problem holistically), your collaborative conduct (your capacity to engage in productive dialogue and work in teams) and, most crucially, your reflectivity (reflection on one’s experiences in order to improve performance). The module provides an intense experiential learning process and continues throughout the year.

Leading Mindfully will help you to explore your understanding of leading, and will develop your capability to lead others. Taking a practical approach to the subject of leadership, this module will encourage you to become mindful of what you believe good leadership is. It will ask you to explore your values and the responsibilities of a leader, and challenge you to find ways to lead others responsibly. The module uses practical exercises, talks and discussion groups, skills development, self-awareness questionnaires, and reflective practices to help you develop your leadership capability.

At the most fundamental level senior managers should possess a high level of competence in the use of financial information, whether it is information generated for internal or external consumption. Finance 1 has been designed for non-specialists, to make you confident in discussing financial information with professional accountants and financial staff. It does so by providing a conceptual framework of accounting, enabling you to understand the theoretical reasoning behind financial reporting and decision making in practice. It seeks to give you the level of financial literacy you will need to interpret and make use of both published and internally generated financial information.

Microeconomics introduces you to the fundamental concepts of economic analysis by demonstrating their relevance to the understanding of microeconomic problems. The module provides a useful background in economic principles for use in other modules within the programme, such as Marketing and Finance. Ultimately, you will gain an appreciation of how economic analysis can be usefully applied to understand consumer, business and government decisions at a micro level.

Marketing is a crucial knowledge area for aspiring top management executives. It is not simply a promotional arts and crafts toolbox, but is rather the whole business as seen from the customer’s point of view. Marketing is, as we say here at Lancaster, the ‘business of business’ - the core commercial process of ‘going to market’. This module enables an appreciation and understanding of the conceptual, descriptive language of marketing. Such learning will enable you to understand your marketing colleagues and the so-called experts of the consultancy world. You will consequently be able to insightfully and confidently critique their arguments and add to the dialogue.

Good management of operations is essential both to ensure that day-to-day operations run smoothly and deliver value to customers and the business as a whole within its overall strategy. To deliver value, operations must identify and work to appropriate success criteria, drive continuous improvement and be capable of delivering the changes required to develop performance for the future. This module develops your understanding of operations and supply chain management, using a series of cases to explore various aspects of operations management within companies. The focus will be on the particular issue of ensuring that Customers’ current requirements and expectations are met or exceeded and that the operations function works in an integrated way.

Digital Innovation in Business is a learning thread in the MBA. You engage with the subject area in Terms 1 and 2. As the digitally-enabled economy has become dominant and pervasive, the importance and necessity of understanding how businesses can adapt digital innovation to stay competitive has been heightened. This module will develop a narrative for how digital innovations have, and will continue, to transform business enterprises and organizations. The focus will be the trifecta of technology, strategy and innovation and aims to develop an understanding of the strategic role of information systems and digital technologies in product, service and process innovation, in business integration, in developing new business models, and in industry transformation. Drawing on a collection of both theories and cases, DIB focuses on how the deployment of information technology influences and transforms interactions and processes within and between organisations.

The first of the four ‘Challenges’ on the Lancaster MBA, the Business Management Challenge is a four day simulation in which, working in small teams, you manage a business through an eighteen month period. It addresses the real, complex organisational issues involved in developing and deploying a ‘go-to-market’ strategy. As in the real world, each team is given the initial investment capital required, which you can use, for example, to build a factory. At the end of your ‘simulated’ first year of trading, your team prepares an investment pitch, to present a convincing case to the board of the holding company in order to acquire further funding to grow the business. You then continue trading for two further quarters, giving you time to act upon the funding decisions and make any additional changes. This learning experience is invaluable as you can apply the learnings of the first 10 weeks of the programme to a ‘real life’ situation of business management, in an integrative way. This action-learning challenge stress tests your cognitive and collaborative conduct, requires you to use many of the skills you have already acquired and generates a substantial opportunity for powerful experiential learning.

Macroeconomics gives insight into the main drivers of change in the broader economic context within which firms operate, distinguishing between short-term episodes and long-term trends, and recognising the roles played by trade, policy and business behaviour in shaping the wider environment. This module emphasises the importance of taking full account of the business environment in the decision-making process of the firm, and will further develop your analytical skills.

This module is part delivered at The Work Foundation in London. Twin room accomodation is provided in London.

Building on Finance 1, Finance 2 takes a broad approach for non-finance specialists and further addresses the principal issues that are of concern to the general manager and to all those needing to make financial decisions. These include, but are not limited to, nett present value, measures of risk and return, the capital asset pricing model, the financing decision, financial instruments, and derivative securities. By the end of the module, you will have developed knowledge of investment appraisal, including the time-value of money, and the measurement and treatment of risk. You will also know the fundamental characteristics of financial markets and financial instruments (such as stocks, bonds, and derivatives). Finally, you will have knowledge and understanding of corporate capital structures and its implications for a firm's cost of capital.

This module is part delivered at The Work Foundation in London. Twin room accomodation is provided in London.

Strategic Management is both a ‘science’ and an ‘art’, and this module enables you to gain an understanding of both. On the one hand, you will be taking an essentially analytical perspective, studying the traditional ‘toolbox’ of strategy as a business discipline. On the other, you will gain practical exposure to strategy development by engaging in strategy-making and reflection. The module will explore various subjects within the umbrella of strategic management, such as the nature of strategy, the roles and implications of governance, stakeholders, corporate parenting and strategic purpose, as well as the important issue of good relationships in theory and in practice. Crucially, you will develop your capacity to assess, evaluate and research strategic positions, and develop strategy itself.

The Entrepreneurial Challenge is the second of the four action-learning challenges within the Lancaster MBA, and allows you to apply your learning to starting up a business of your own choosing. Working in teams, you are required to produce a business development plan for your new company. You have to research the market, develop a go-to-market strategy, and specify how the business will be organised and financed in the future. This challenging process requires you to take an integrated view of all aspects of a business and pushes you to think holistically in the identification and exploitation of business opportunities, and integrate your 15 weeks of learning. This action-learning challenge is engineered to stress-test your cognitive conduct — your critical-creative-integrative thinking. It also provides yet another opportunity to practise your team-working, deliberative and presentational skills, and generates a powerful opportunity for some serious reflective experiential learning that will enhance your conduct in many dimensions.

Organising Behaviour offers a broad theoretical and practical understanding of some key concepts and issues in this area of study, particularly in the areas of organisational work and politics, culture and structure, and addresses their implications for managing the human resources of organisations at a time of disruptive change and the globalisation of business. The module develops important knowledge, but also crucial skills of analysis and critical reflection.

This exciting module is based around a short but intensive study visit of seven-to-ten days to an economy at a different stage of development to the UK. Prior to travel, you are briefed in Lancaster by experts about recent economic developments and business context in the host country. Then, whilst in situ, you learn first-hand about aspects of international trade and business management, from a range of guest speakers and organisational/company visits that enable you to understand, experience and observe the local business environment. In completing this module, you will develop your understanding of the particular economic and business problems associated with different economies. You will also be able to reflect on the social, cultural, ethical and management issues which arise when managing companies which operate in such economies, including the special problems facing multinational enterprises. The cost of the module is included in the tuition fee and twin accommodation is provided.

The Consultancy Challenge is the third challenge on the Lancaster MBA, designed to increase your effectiveness in a consultancy context. The module particularly helps you to understand consultancy as a process of influence, oriented towards exploring opportunities, solving problems and implementing action. You begin training in the class-room, with a 'consultancy tool-kit'; a set of tools and skills that will enable you to address complexity and deliver targeted outcomes. We focus on consultant mindset and consulting skills by examining the principles of effective consultancy, the barriers to successful intervention and how consultants manage risk. Subsequently, students work as teams of consultants, to analyse a problem or situation for a client organisation and develop implementable recommendations. In the past students have typically worked with a variety of organisations such as Microsoft, Kellogg, Hendelsbanken, BAE Systems and the NHS based in the North of England looking for support to address a wide range of business issues.

This action-learning challenge ultimately stress tests your cognitive and collaborative conduct, requires you to use many of the skills you have acquired and generates a substantial opportunity for powerful experiential learning.

Responsible Management and Ethics is a capstone component of the MBA; management approaches have significant implications in the contemporary world, socially, ethically and ecologically. In a sense, all of management is about choice - what factors to take into consideration in the making of a decision, and what future we should seek, and top managers and leaders must therefore be appropriately equipped with the ability to integrate this into their management strategies and practices.

The Corporate Challenge is the fourth of the Lancaster MBA’s action-learning challenges, and builds on the Business Management Challenge, the Entrepreneurial Challenge, and the Consultancy Challenge. The Corporate Challenge gives you the chance to undertake a consultancy assignment for a global company. The majority of these challenges are based in London.

Student can also choose other forms of final projects such as an internship and reflective essay or an academic dissertation.

This elective module explores change management and implementation, including understanding the need for change, individual responses to change, planned versus emergent change, and tools for change. These are specifically addressed through case study examples and relevant change management theory. This module can assist students in their preparation for their final challenge, focused on consultancy, where they undertake a consultancy report with recommendations for a real business and must understand how implementation might follow. Managing Strategic Change consequently provides an excellent opportunity to move beyond analysis to explore implementation and the consequential human issues evoked through change, and prepares students for the ultimate part of the programme.

This highly interactive elective module complements your study of strategic management. It particularly addresses the strategic questions that face large multi-business groups and how these differ from the issues faced by single business firms. This module further addresses the reasons, benefits and boundaries of diversification strategies and critically evaluates approaches to managing the portfolio of the group. An important focus will also be on the role of the corporate centre for value creation, as well as the organisation design choices of large corporations. You will have the opportunity to work in groups to explore case studies of large multi-business firms.

This elective module addresses issues specific to mergers and acquisitions, such as deal structure, deal financing, and target valuation. It also introduces topics such as leveraged buyouts and the role of private equity in the market of corporate control. At the end of the module you will have an understanding of the motivations behind mergers and acquisitions. You will also have knowledge of the financing of M&A transactions, the choice of deal structure and the valuation of target companies. Finally, you will understand the role of various parties in the M&A market.

Building on the earlier core Marketing module, this elective is designed to develop a critical understanding of brand management as a major issue in strategic marketing. This module moves away from the traditional classical model of branding, which emphasised the consumer, and instead addresses the new, more balanced perspective which recognises the importance of staff and other stakeholders as brand builders. The latter necessitates an integrated communications approach, as successful corporate brands result from coordinated pan-company actions involving stakeholders, to create coherent brand promise. No longer is it viable to claim long term competitive advantage from functional benefits: instead corporations recognise the importance of emotional differentiation, driven by their organisational culture.

The module opens by discussing the nature of brands, the concept of the brand as a promise, and mechanisms to encourage a coherent brand strategy. The attributes associated with powerful brands will be explored, along with techniques to ensure effective brand differentiation. You will be exposed to diverse managerial interpretations of the brand concept and will see how models enable brand evolution to be anticipated. A typology of added values will be described. A significant amount of time will be devoted to a strategic framework which enables the development of a coherent brand.