This module consolidates the consulting skills you develop on parallel modules. You will enhance your self-awareness, professional competency and advanced consulting capabilities and develop the skills required to thrive in complex consulting environments. Ou will also improveyour data-gathering, analytical and presentation capabilities in the context of ongoing projects.

Using a structured skills portfolio, you will assess your competencies against a set of professional consulting standards through an individual diagnostic assessment. With support from academic and career staff, you will identify your strengths and areas for development. This personalised approach, will enable you to design a tailored learning path, ensuring you gain the advanced skills necessary for consulting practice.

This module enables you to reflect on and articulate your primary development objectives and outcomes and surfaces your ability to critically engage with the complexities of advanced consulting practice.

This module explores contemporary and emerging trends in management consulting. It will equip you with the knowledge and critical skills to navigate an evolving consulting landscape across diverse organisational contexts.

Current themes include:

• Managing knowledge in a digital world: You will explore how consultants and managers operate within today's knowledge-based economy. You will explore the foundational frameworks of knowledge management, the role of fast-evolving digital technologies in how knowledge is managed, and how the consulting industry is shaping artificial intelligence strategies.
• Managing Sustainable Change focuses on the relationship between management theory, practice, and change for sustainability.

This module will provide you with an understanding of the different ways managers and consultants navigate the history, ideas, varieties, materialities, and critiques of ‘organisational knowledge’ and ‘change for sustainability’ in a complex and evolving economy where organisational leaders need the confidence and mandate to act.

In this module you will critically examine leadership and change management within the context of advanced management consulting and organisational transformation. You will gain a theoretical and practical understanding of organisational change and leadership. You will be encouraged you to critically analyse different approaches and apply them to real-world scenarios. You will learn about the relational, contextual, and political nature of leadership. This will equip you to navigate and influence change in diverse settings.

You will develop your knowledge and skills in the critical evaluation, interpretation and practice of leadership in organisational and consulting contexts. Being introduced to a wide range of theories will invite you to consider wider questions about leadership practices. This will help you to develop your own leadership approach and your ability to analyse change and leadership critically, systemically and reflectively. Ultimately, this module will enable you to understand and analyse how leaders manage organisational change.

You will apply your knowledge, critical skills, and practical expertise to develop a consulting intervention for a client or to investigate an organisational dilemma, as a means of addressing real-world management challenges faced by organisations. You will also participate in workshops that involve various exercises to help you prepare for delivering your Master’s Project.

You will then have the option to choose between two formats for your project:

1. Company-based project, working in groups and in collaboration with an industry partner
2. Master's research dissertation, working individually to conduct and critically evaluate a literature review.

Both options are designed to allow you to engage with an applied topic relevant to your research and professional interests and aspirations. Your project or dissertation will demonstrate your understanding of management consulting in organisational settings while also showcasing your knowledge and expertise to prospective employers.

In this module you will explore the key theoretical foundations that underpin the activities of professional services consulting firms. You will learn how the consulting industry evolved, tracking its development across different industrial sectors and geographies. We will introduce you to the concept of “market making” in consulting, examining the tactics firms use to create and sustain the products they release through relational and brand-building strategies. You will also examine the development of the critical consulting and management literature and the emergence of the “fads and fashions” industry.

Through case studies, interactive sessions and innovative writing simulations, you will develop the skills to critically assess the relationship between consulting firms and their clients across a variety of settings. By the end of the module, you will have the tools to understand and evaluate the performance of consulting and its role at advanced levels of management.

You will develop an in-depth understanding of consulting practice over two semesters. In the first semester, you will examine the overall lifecycle, components of and approaches to consulting and apply them in a simulated consulting environment. Moving from foundational through to advanced knowledge, you will explore a range of consulting approaches. You will develop your understanding and knowledge of the principle internal organisational features that impact upon and influence consulting interventions, namely:

• the political relationship of the consultant to the client system
• the organisational structure
• the organisational culture or climate.

Building on the simulation, you will apply your learning from the first semester to a time-bound consulting project during the second semester. After an initial briefing, you and your team will complete a project proposal, approval, research, recommendations for implementation, sign off and evaluation with specially designed project support and tutorials.