Business Management and the Human Resource BA

Our degrees have a modular structure. This means that compulsory modules provide you with the core knowledge and skills that you need, while optional and discovery modules allow you to shape your course to suit your personal interests and career aspirations.

Compulsory modules in your first year will give you the broad foundation you need to study management at this level, and specifically HRM. You’ll gain an understanding of basic accounting practices and economic principles, as well as organisational behaviour and the environment in which contemporary businesses operate. In addition, you’ll learn about the theory and practice of setting up a business of your own and examine the relationships between business and societies.

You’ll build on this in Year 2, where you’ll examine how the theories of organisational behaviour relate to real-world situations and learn more about the research and analytical methods used in HRM research. At the same time, you’ll study industrial relations and labour economics, as well as business topics such as decision-making, the legal environment for businesses, corporate social responsibility and marketing. An optional module will allow you to focus on a topic such as usage of information or supply chain management.


When you reach your final year, you’ll develop your management skills with compulsory modules in strategic management and leadership as well as gaining a firm grasp of employment law. You could explore topics such as managing innovation or take the Contemporary Management Consulting module, which gives you the opportunity to register with the Chartered Management Institute. If you successfully complete the module after this, you’ll gain the CMI Level 5 Certificate in Professional Consulting.

The course culminates with your dissertation, an independently researched project that you submit in your final year, allowing you to apply your research and analysis skills to a topic of your choice.

Modules

Year 1

Compulsory modules

• Leadership in Business
• Personal Tutorials for HRM
• Economic Institutions (Labour)
• Accounting for Managers
• Economic Institutions (Industry)
• Business and Society (Combined)
• Organisational Behaviour
• Starting Your Own Business
• Economics for Management

Year 2

Compulsory modules

• Contemporary Industrial Relations
• Principles of Marketing
• Labour Economics
• How Managers Make Decisions
• Business and the Legal Environment
• HRM Research Practice and personal tutorials
• Organisational Behaviour in Practice
• Corporate Social Responsibility

Year 3

Compulsory modules

• Strategic Management
• Human Resource Management Dissertation
• Strategic Human Resource Management
• Employment Law