Executive Management 5 (BUSA90509)

This subject contains four components, as described below.

Finance II:

This component builds on the Finance I component in the subject, Executive Management 1, and is designed to provide students with advanced knowledge of financial management. This knowledge provides the basis for funding a firm’s investments and using its resources efficiently. The topics covered include:

• Risk management
• Real options
• Capital investments in foreign markets
• Determinants of capital structure
• Corporate payout policy

Business Strategy:

Business Strategy has a number of primary aims:

• to provide the students with an understanding of the primary roles and responsibilities of a general manager in formulating business strategies, and in building and sustaining competitive advantage;
• to provide students with an appreciation of the fundamental issues involved in integrating and coordinating the activities of different functional areas, such as marketing, operations, management, accounting, human resource management and finance;
• to introduce the frameworks and tools commonly used in developing and assessing business strategies; and to develop the decision-making skills of the students from the perspective of top management

Operations:

In competitive global and dynamic environments, companies face increasing pressures to exceed customer expectations along multiple performance measures, such as cost, quality, flexibility and innovativeness. To outperform their competitors, firms need to build a sustainable competitive advantage around these capabilities. The focus of the component is to highlight how firms should design, manage and continually improve their business and operational processes to better manage the mismatch between supply and demand. It aims at providing the core concepts in operations that are essential for appreciating how operational capabilities can help organisations achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This component provides a logical and rigorous approach to plan and control process structure and managerial levers to achieve desired business process performance.

Seminar V:

This Executive MBA Seminar Series complements the mainstream components of the module, and is dedicated to contemporary issues and global best practice development in the Finance II, Market Access Strategy and Managing Human Capital fields.