nternational Business Development (in Herning) New programme

• International Business Strategy and Leadership (10 ECTS)
• Advanced Business Economics (10 ECTS)
• Business Research Methodology (10 ECTS)

• Business Model Development (10 ECTS)
• Advanced Marketing Management (10 ECTS)
• Analytics for Decision-Making (10 ECTS)

• Elective Courses (30 ECTS)

• Master's Thesis (30 ECTS)

International Business Strategy and Leadership

The course will enable students to understand, describe, compare and reflect on the main characteristics of different strategic and leadership paradigms and methods. This provides the student with the knowledge platform to be able to select and argue for the relevance of a particular strategic design and leadership approach in specific business development contexts. The course focuses on building knowledge of different business strategy designs as to their applicability in creating national and international business development. This includes describing and applying advanced business strategy and leadership research, methods and models on a specific business development problem and formulating and analysing problems and applying models, methods and techniques in solving business development challenges in various organisational, geographical and industrial contexts.

Advanced Business Economics

The course will enable the students to apply advanced business economics in making the right economic decisions in business development. In the course, the students will learn to formulate decision-making problems in a business development context and to understand and apply principles and tools of modern microeconomics and game theory to business development. This includes understanding various pricing strategies in monopoly and oligopoly models with application to the firm and critically evaluating quantitative methods used in business economics research. Furthermore, the course will teach the students how to select and apply the appropriate method(s), like regression analysis, data envelopment analysis and mathematical programming techniques for analysing different business economics problems, and to interpret and critically assess outcomes of quantitative methods in the business economics literature.

Business Research Methodology

The course will enable the students to apply business research methodology to gather and analyse data to assist better business development decisions. In the course, the students will learn how to describe, compare and reflect on the main characteristics of business research paradigms and methods and how to argue for the relevance of a particular research design in the process of knowledge creation in their own group project. Furthermore, they will be able to describe and discuss different research designs as to their applicability in creating empirical business knowledge and describe and apply advanced business research methodology on specific business problems. This also includes formulating and analysing problems using qualitative techniques, such as content analysis, narrative analysis or semiotic analysis, and to formulate and analyse problems using quantitative techniques, such as factor analysis, discriminant analysis/logistic regression, conjoint analysis and cluster analysis.

Business Model Development

The course will give students an understanding of business development, business model innovation and how to develop and implement business models from a theoretical and empirical perspective and across different industries, sectors and ecosystems. The course focuses on identifying new business opportunities resulting in new firms (entrepreneurs) or innovations in established firms. Central concepts are business model innovation, business development, ecosystems, organisations, sectors and networks, cross-sector collaborations, firm boundaries, and how organisations evolve and change over time. These concepts highlight how entrepreneurs and existing organisations source and internalise new ideas and knowledge from external partners, networks and ecosystems in developing their existing business and new business models. The course builds on the course ‘International Business Strategy and Leadership’ and progressively develops the students’ knowledge about how entrepreneurs and firms can carry out their business strategies and organise for business development.

Advanced Marketing Management

The course will enable students to identify and analyse the stakeholders, flows and interactions that are impacted by and impact on particular changes in the boundary conditions of a marketing system. Also, the students will be able to analyse macro-marketing environments and marketing systems in order to develop strategies which further the aims of the focal stakeholders, be they private companies, governmental and/or non-governmental organisations. The course also discusses the role of communication as well as how the integration of several communication tools may support the firm’s communication strategy by viewing marketing management from a strategic perspective and by combining and linking all policy areas to decision-making at the top management level.

Analytics for Decision-Making

The course enables the students to understand and apply concepts and methods to improve business decision-making by using fact-based support systems. The course provides the students with knowledge of methods for analysing data to support decision-making and for improving business processes on the basis of business analysis. The students will be introduced to a range of analytical methods and techniques that can be used to better understand, plan and execute the right decisions and business development plans. The students will develop skills to approach business life situations critically and evaluate and communicate their findings with ease.

In the third semester, you can choose elective courses within your areas of interest. The courses can be taken either at Aarhus BSS during the semester, at the AU Summer University or at one of our more than 300 partner universities abroad. You can also participate in internship programmes either in Denmark or abroad.

The fourth semester is devoted to the Master's thesis. You may freely choose the topic of the thesis and thereby get a chance to concentrate on and specialise in a specific field of interest. The thesis may be written in collaboration with another student or it may be the result of your individual effort. When the thesis has been submitted, it is defended before the academic advisor as well as an external examiner.