Executive MBA

Course modules

Year 1

Leadership Practicum

This module will provide a novel and leading edge perspective on leadership in contemporary organisational contexts. It will allow you to explore a range of perspectives on leadership looking at, for example, conventional trait and situational theories of leadership and considering these in comparison with more facilitative, relational and discursive approaches such as, transformational, charismatic and distributive leadership. Additionally, this work will be underpinned with coaching and mentoring and the module will provide rich and varied opportunities for you to contextualise your experiences.

Financial Decision Making

The Financial Decision Making module considers the dynamics of numerical data and information and your role in current business and management practices and business development. It will be delivered through a combination of face-to-face tutoring and distance learning and at different levels, in order to respond to different participant pre-accomplishment and ability. The module will employ case studies which illustrate how to interpret and effectively utilise financial information in a manner which adds value to business decisions and integrates financial information in the light of the realities of business strategy shaping in the contemporary era.

Strategy in Turbulent Times

The module will use a simulation and the teaching will be based around various aspects of understanding of the questions and situations generated. Business analytics will be covered during this module together with opportunities to work with techniques on real case studies and live business issues. The module will take you through conventional linear representations of strategy and progress to demonstrate and provide hands-on experience, through relating this back to your own professional experiences, to more incremental, complex and transformational approaches. Crucially, you will learn why strategies fail and succeed.

Year 2

Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation in New Settings

This module allows you to explore your academic and professional experiences in a novel context and engage in innovative and entrepreneurial behaviours. The work of the module is constructed around a number of ‘Sustainable Development Goals’. Current business challenges point at the need for new ways of thinking and new solutions. Such approaches can also be a driver for wider social change. The module introduces you to models and debates in the field of social entrepreneurship and social innovation, and examines some of the realities of rendering these operational. This module will also integrate research methods and field research, such as the field business project at Chiang Mai (Thailand). The team have access to a wide range of potential projects including, for example, Cocoa supply change management.

Business and Sustainability

Sustainability presents a contemporary domain in which organisations and business are obligated to balance constraints and pressures from both internal and external sources. Senior organisational figures and executives feel compelled to behave appropriately and therein resides a challenge – how to keep up-to-date with the latest information and research when resources in terms of time and work pressures are scarce. This module addresses the need for current and relevant research delivered in an applied manner so as to build and reinforce effectiveness, judgement and confidence in the contested area of business and sustainability. The module will be mindful of being presented without jargon yet will use and contextualise leading edge research with a view to stimulating novel and critical reflection on issues which are central and critical to organizational international business policy.

Future of Work and Organizations

This module is a capstone for the course. You will examine a wide range of stimulating and interesting topics emerging around, for example, the impact of artificial intelligence, crowdfunding, social enterprises, and virtual organisations. The module will include a series of company visits with the possibility of inter-institutional collaborative seminars. Students will relate the material of the module to the other modules of the programme drawing out inter-disciplinary and cross-modular themes and learning.

Teaching and assessment

The Leicester Castle Business School combines academic knowledge with consultancy experience, gathered from their work with organisations as diverse as Jaguar Land Rover, Topshop and Leicestershire Partnerships NHS Trust. We also host leaders and practitioners in the classroom, who share their experience and insights.

As well as exploring a range of academic perspectives, Executive MBA students learn through a variety of dynamic methods:

• Project-based knowledge. There are a range of opportunities to apply your new knowledge, whether you’re exploring a challenge in your organisation, tackling your final capstone project or joining our international immersive treks to businesses and communities around the world.
• Simulations. A gamified method of learning about you, teams and the realities of decision-making in real time. You will participate in a strategy simulation and a financial simulation.
• Discussion-based learning. Our faculty are trained to also drawn on the knowledge of the highly diverse and experienced participants in the programme, facilitating group discussions throughout each of the modules.
• Personal development and career coaching. You will advance your confidence and self-awareness through emotional and psychological profiling, followed by a series of one-to-one coaching sessions that shed light on your career plan.

Teaching is delivered through a mix of assessment methods such as, presentations, time-constrained assessments, case analysis and reports. Part of the rationale for this mix is to assess different skills which enable you to collect, prioritise, assimilate and disseminate information in different contexts.