Business Management (Entrepreneurship)

This module aims to advance knowledge of entrepreneurship by experiencing aspects of the business start-up process through project-based activities. It aims to help you understand you own enterprise skills and develop the ability to communicate new business ideas using opportunity business models in the context of business start-up.

In the second year of your Business Management degree, this module supports your journey towards securing a future graduate job role which you will enjoy and thrive in doing! We combine gaining career insights from employers, recent alumni and networking opportunities alongside a focus on building graduate labour market knowledge, preparation for the graduate recruitment selection process and gaining relevant work experience in the field you are interested in.

Building upon Entrepreneurial Learning theories, this course prepares you to understand the core dimensions of an entrepreneurial mindset and guides you to find and assess opportunities, seek answers, gather resources and implement solutions regardless of your specific context or institutional constraints.

This module will help you develop your own personal and professional leadership abilities. You will learn how to apply the major leadership models to your own life with a focus on practical steps you can take to improve your leadership skills. Real-life case studies will let you learn from the world’s greatest leaders how to be successful.

The module includes confidential self-assessments on a variety of leadership measures that will further help you build on your strengths and find the right leadership style for your personality.

Running a business or leading a department can be challenging, so this course will help you develop resiliency, emotion regulation and management, grit and perseverance, and emotional intelligence competencies. Responsible, authentic, ethical, and empathic leadership will be a theme throughout the module. The module includes both lectures and a workshop.

The use of franchising continues to increase at a remarkable scale globally - apart from the traditional restaurant/fast-food sector where franchising is dominant, franchising is now used in over 100 industry sectors (e.g. entertainment, transportation, health care, education). This module will introduce you to the management of franchise organisations, including the historical development of franchising, the requirements for successful franchise operations, the challenges that may arise in franchise networks, and the nature of the relationships within franchise chains.

Innovation is becoming popular in the current economic and political debate to improve the competitiveness of economies and firms. In today’s fast-paced technology and creativity-driven society, innovation is both a desired trait and a necessity for survival. This course will discuss innovation on many levels from a micro level, focusing on the role of innovation in enabling individuals to generate competitive advantage, to the strategy and the types of problems faced by firms in their new product/service and process development. In particular, we will be looking at the links which need to be made between innovation activities in the development of new products, services and business models, and the role of strategy and individual actions may play in supporting or obstructing innovation. The module will give students an opportunity to develop an understanding and critical awareness of current theories and approaches relevant to managing innovation.

This is a practical module to help students understand how the key principles of entrepreneurship apply in different types of businesses and settings. It draws upon notions such as networking, entrepreneurial sales, and entrepreneurial teams. Through experimentation and experiential learning, students will build the skills needed for developing, testing, refining, and selling a product/service, and they will understand how to collect and combine necessary resources in ways that offer value to the customer.

This module will explore how the principles and practices of social innovation can be integrated into an organisation’s business model. The module will also provide insights on the importance of responsible leadership, which will enable a business to succeed while considering the impact on society, the environment -- along with financial profit. Students will learn and apply principles or team behaviours throughout the module. The module will highlight processes, concepts and issues that connect to other modules from the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy.

This is a dissertation module, which provides a number of options that can be tailored to your future career and business aspirations. If you aspire to set up your own business, you can engage with an entrepreneurial project where you will be guided through the business planning process with the help of a supervisor and a team of Entrepreneurs in Residence (EiRs).

If you plan to work within a large organisation, you may wish to conduct a consultancy project based on an organisation with which you have access. If you are thinking about continuing in education, or wish to develop your research and critical skills, you might want to look at an academic piece of work.

This module takes both theoretical and practitioner perspectives to give students an understanding of the nature and characteristics of financial planning and management in the broad context of entrepreneurship and small business. The module is focused on understanding the process of new venture financing and the finance needs of growth and responses to other managerial contexts. The module covers typical funding sources, challenges and strategies, and will also introduce a variety of approaches to business planning and the production of business plans, from pre-startup through the growth stages of a venture.

Strategic Management is about making distinctive choices concerning the direction and scope of the organization over the long term, in order to enhance its ability to create value and improve its prospects for organizational survival and growth. In a complex and turbulent environment, with rapid economic, regulatory and technological changes, strategising – the art of processing complex information thoughtfully and creatively and the ability to convince others of your analysis and recommendations – is a critical skill to acquire. The goal of this module is to provide you with an understanding of strategy that will enable you to discuss real-life business activities within a framework of contemporary strategic management thinking. This module is designed to encourage you to develop a personal and distinctive understanding and appreciation of strategising for different industries and in uncertain environments, through lectures, case analyses and class discussions.

This module will explore the nexus of entrepreneurship and sustainability. The key questions being addressed will be:

• What role does entrepreneurship play in the sustainability agenda?
• Should all new ventures be sustainable? (And what do we mean by 'sustainable' in this respect?)
• What are the challenges in sustainability entrepreneurship?
• In what ways is the nexus of sustainability and entrepreneurship a global phenomenon? And what are the unique challenges around the world?
• What role do economics and politics play in sustainability entrepreneurship?

Family businesses are the most common business form around the world. They make up over three-quarters of all businesses in most countries and contribute significantly to employment and GDP. This course provides students with an opportunity to understand the concepts, theories, models and dynamics of family business and suggest solutions to challenges related to their management, entrepreneurial development and succession.

The module will provide you with an alternative gendered and socio-political insight into the importance of entrepreneur and employee diversity in an increasingly globalised world. The module takes an interactive and practical approach to classroom learning to help you develop skills to explore the impact of gender and diversity on models of business, including the sometimes controversial facts and fictions presented in the media, policy and everyday societal attitudes towards management and entrepreneurship across the world.

This module consists of a computer-based strategic management simulation which provides you with the opportunity to practise managing and growing a business in a dynamic and competitive industry. Each team takes over a growing automobile manufacturer. The simulation runs for ten years, at the end of which it is hoped each manufacturer will be in a much healthier state.

The module will provide you with hands-on experience of manipulating key strategic and operational variables. In each simulated year, your team will make a set of decisions in relation to: strategic positioning, pricing, advertising, promotion, distribution, production, vehicle upgrades, new vehicle introductions, financing, and a host of other decisions over the eight years. Your business will compete directly with other automobile manufacturers in a dynamic marketplace.