Digital Business, Innovation and Management

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. The superstars in the business community are those whose platforms can create connected ecosystems such as Microsoft and Google. Any going concern needs to understand how to enhance the digital if it is to survive and thrive in today's fast-moving consumers and corporate world. To this end, the module presents a variety of frameworks and case studies that help the student formulate a comprehensive understanding of digital business. A closely related and important part of digital business is digital marketing. The module offers traditional marketing coverage with a twist, by focusing on the Internet and other technologies that have had a profound effect on marketing. The lectures are interactive, multi-modal, and real world that involve various exercises that help you understand and employ the various frameworks.

The strategic significance of Information Systems (IS), is important, difficult, complex and interesting to analyse, because there many ways that IS can lead to strategic advantage. Not only can IS support an organisations strategy, it can also create strategic choices. IS now extends into every enterprise and every citizen, and is the basis of emerging business models from sectors as diverse as taxicabs (e.g. Uber and Zipcar) to banking (crowdfunding). Managers are increasingly asking themselves if everyone has access to IS then how can organisations get strategic advantage from IS? Indeed an organisations information systems strategy now increasingly forms the basis of many innovations in products, processes and business strategies.

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 about organisational changes more widely 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. It is in this context that the module aims to offer an understanding of what management consulting and project management entails, in particular focusing on ways of diagnosing and interpreting complex organizational problems and processes through the lens of consulting, and engaging in strategic project management.

The module will broaden students’ awareness of different consulting approaches and perspectives as well as provide an opportunity to reflect upon their strengths, limitations and underpinning 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 students will develop a richer understanding of ways of engaging in IT consulting and project management that meets the requirements of business – with case studies helping students understand ways of succeeding and also 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 students 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 students better understand the academic requirements and expectations of the programme. 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.

Industry experts / guest speakers will be invited for masterclasses with students on the module.

The aim of this module is to provide students 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.

The module deepens students’ understanding of how different potential futures might be understood, predicted, and brought into being. In order to do so, the course will look 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 module presents the current approaches surrounding the design of innovative IT artefacts as well as planning for the evaluation of the artefacts.

The lectures are interactive, multi-modal, practical and real world that involve various exercises that help you understand and employ the various ways of thinking about futures, analysis and design concepts.

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 students with the notion of system integration and the ways companies can respond to their integration needs. Most importantly it provides the students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with an ERP system and run a virtual company using the system.

This module aims to introduce to the students 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. The students will learn how architecture is important for defining structural, behavioural and functional aspects of both of the 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.

A research dissertation involves a student identifying and academic research question and then conducting original data collection through fieldwork to address the question. Or it can involve a student tackling a self-defined research problem/question using a combination of academic literatures and skills 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, the module seeks to encourage you 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 students’ 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 a student 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. It is the focus of this course.

In recent decades, management gurus, consultants, politicians and academics have talked about a transformation of the workplace but what does this mean? A series of change initiatives have emerged such as Teamworking, Quality Management and Business Process Reengineering which can be understood as part of this transformation and a means to achieve it. This course 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 students with a theoretical and practical understanding of key ideas and perspectives in the management of organisational change. Throughout the course we will introduce concepts, theories and cases from studies of managers and organisations. Our focus is upon the development your abilities to analyse change management critically, systemically and reflectively.

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.