This module is concerned with recent, emerging and still evolving technologies. All are of great significance for our working lives and are becoming increasingly so for other aspects of life. These sessions will explore where the technologies have come from, how they are evolving and why they are so significant. The module will introduce the underlying technologies and services that enable digital business processes to be accomplished. For larger extent, these technologies will enable different types of innovations to take a place in technology-driven organisations. Holistically, the course can be thought of as covering an introduction to the technologies and services that are utilised for modern digital business applications.

Digital business is today’s leading way of doing business. This module will explore different types and scales of digital business, from small, innovative start-ups and disruptors - the born-digital organisations, to the digital transformation of traditional, pre-digital firms.

It will deepen your understanding of how these businesses strategise, operate, and manage themselves, as well as employee experiences and customer relationships within an ever-increasing digital environment.

You will learn to critically assess how digital business and marketing technologies transform traditional businesses and enable new business models and value creation. The lectures are interactive, multimodal, and real-world, involving various activities, cases, and industry speakers that help you understand and employ the various frameworks.

The success of modern organisations hinges on their ability to harness digital systems effectively. However, the rapid pace of digital innovation and the wide range of available options pose significant challenges. It is crucial for organisations to align digital innovations with their business models to create value and maintain a competitive edge.

This module explores how managers can analyse and strategise technology trends in organisational information systems (IS), leverage IS to drive innovative business models, and create a competitive advantage. Additionally, it explains how managers can orchestrate digital innovation processes and develop long-term strategies to extract value from digital innovation.

Consulting and project management cannot be separated from organisational change practices and innovations in information technologies. Whether it is consulting about IT systems and projects or consulting more widely about organisational changes that require changes to IT systems and the use of IT systems to manage the project, technology is omnipresent in the work of a consultant and project manager. In this context, the module aims to offer an understanding of what management consulting and project management entails, particularly focusing on diagnosing and interpreting complex organisational problems and processes through the lens of consulting and engaging in strategic project management.

The module will broaden your awareness of different consulting approaches and perspectives as well as provide an opportunity to reflect upon their strengths, limitations, and underlying assumptions and implications. In addition, you will be introduced to various concepts within strategic project management, particularly in relation to developing a business case, risk management, stakeholder engagement, requirements management, needs analysis and benefit realisation.

Through the module and its assessment, you will develop a richer understanding of ways of engaging in IT consulting and project management that meet business requirements – with case studies helping you to understand ways of succeeding and causes of failure.

Organisations in the contemporary world are receiving a constant and increasing flow of information as a result of becoming more globally connected through processes of digitalisation. This necessitates new and more flexible management practices than have been used in the past to be developed. Critical and reflective understandings of the interrelated nature of information, technology and organisation are fundamental for the development of these management practices.

The module begins by introducing you to the interdisciplinary academic approaches to digital technologies, organisational practices and innovation processes that underlie the programme. It then provides study-skills training that will help you better understand the course's academic requirements and expectations. In the second term, there are sessions on research methods to help you appreciate both ways of doing research and the related ethical issues and challenges. Insights gained regarding research methods and related issues will be important for undertaking dissertation research projects and will be assessed as part of the dissertation module.

The module also includes a series of masterclasses with industry experts as part of a guest speaker series.

Technology Futures, Analysis and Design will provide you with an understanding of ways to think about the role of technology in creating futures for companies and society, including the techniques that can be used to analyse and design futures. This is a topic of great importance as emerging technologies like AI and robotics are affecting at an unprecedented pace the way we live, work and operate in a world of environmental and political instability.

You will explore how different potential futures might be understood, predicted, and brought into being. The module looks at the role played by different ideas about the relationship between technologies and the future, both historically and in the present, as well as practical methods that are used in organisational contexts to attempt to anticipate the futures that technologies might enact.

The lectures and workshops are interactive, multi-modal, and practical, and they involve various exercises based on design studio principles that help you understand and employ various ways of thinking about futures, as well as analysis and design concepts in a creative, collaborative, and reflective way.

The final element of the Master's programme, and the most substantial single piece of written work, is the dissertation. This involves a sustained piece of individual research, which can take one of a number of formats. It is your chance to bring together and demonstrate all the learning you have acquired throughout the programme.

A consultancy project dissertation involves students working with a designated company to address a particular challenge they face using research and insights from the programme. A consulting project is typically done by a group of not more than three students. While the client deliverable is a team output, the dissertation also involves an individual piece of written work. Places on the consultancy project dissertation module are awarded competitively as there are a limited number of projects each year.

This module aims to familiarise you with the notion of system integration and the ways companies can respond to their integration needs. Most importantly, you will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with an ERP system and run a virtual company using the system.

In the module, you will be introduced to the art of IT architecting using the latest technological topologies. IT architecture plays a central role on the enterprise design and act as a blueprint for strategic and operational business development. You will learn how architecture is important for defining structural, behavioural and functional aspects of both enterprise and IT systems.

The final element of the Master's programme, and the most substantial single piece of written work, is the dissertation. This involves a sustained piece of individual research, which can take one of a number of formats. It is your chance to bring together and demonstrate all the learning you have acquired throughout the programme.

For a research dissertation, you would identify an academic research question and then conduct original data collection through fieldwork to address the question. Alternatively, you could tackle a self-defined research problem/question using a combination of academic literature and the skills you have developed through the programme.

‘Better’, ‘stronger’, and ‘more decisive’ leadership is often highlighted as the key to improving organisational performance and resolving social problems. Yet, traditional understandings of what constitutes ‘effective leadership’ - especially charismatic and transformational models - have failed to live up to expectations.

This module seeks to rethink leadership by firstly exploring the strengths and weaknesses of three primary conceptual frameworks: heroic (leader-centred), post-heroic (follower-/culture-centred) and critical (power-centred) perspectives. It aims to develop knowledge and skills in the critical evaluation, interpretation and practice of leadership in organisations and societies. Secondly, you are encouraged to apply these different theories and perspectives in the reflection and development of your own leadership approach within your own context.

The module aims to enhance your knowledge about leadership dynamics enacted in diverse settings.

The final element of the Master's programme, and the most substantial single piece of written work, is the dissertation. This involves a sustained piece of individual research, which can take one of a number of formats. It is your chance to bring together and demonstrate all the learning you have acquired throughout the programme.

The start-up plan version of the dissertation involves you using academic research relevant to the programme to inform the development of a business start-up plan.

What is meant by change management and how to analyse organisational change is an important, contested, and complex question. This module focuses on these questions.

In recent decades, management gurus, consultants, politicians and academics have talked about workplace transformation, but what does this mean? A series of change initiatives have emerged, such as teamwork, quality management, and business process reengineering, which can be understood as part of this transformation and a means to achieve it. This module aims to challenge accepted and simplistic understandings and practices associated with change. Our contention is that to understand what is going on necessitates a reflexive and critical appreciation of the contradictions, complexities and paradoxes of organisational change and interventions that seek to secure change.

The course aims to provide you with a theoretical and practical understanding of key ideas and perspectives in the management of organisational change. Throughout the module, we will introduce concepts, theories and cases from studies of managers and organisations. We focus on developing your abilities to critically, systemically, and reflectively analyse change management.

As managers and others seek to initiate, implement and account for the impacts of change projects it is important that taken for granted assumptions and simplistic solutions about organisational life are both articulated, understood and rethought. Throughout the course prevailing assumptions in the managerial literature are examined and evaluated from a range of advanced social scientific perspectives. By the end of course you should have developed an understanding of the complex and contested nature and practice of the management of organisational change.