MSc Strategic Leadership (Part-Time)

This module is the capstone of the programme, and provides aspiring leaders with an opportunity to critically reflect upon the contribution of leadership in the context of organisations. It is designed to develop you as ‘reflective-practitioners’ and independent learners. Furthermore, the module encourages you to think about the responsibility of individual leaders and organisations in the context of contemporary ethical and sustainable challenges to business.

We will consider contemporary issues and challenges facing individuals and organisations in terms of leading and managing in increasingly dynamic business environments. This approach will develop your ability to critically analyse behaviour, evaluate actions; plan and employ critical judgement through careful consideration of and reflection on current and future management and organisational challenges.

This module will enable you to critically evaluate the range of factors that impact strategic positioning and performance. It will help you develop new knowledge and skills in strategic analysis and planning techniques, which you will apply in your own context, to critically analyse opportunities for implementation and recommend future improvements to organisational practice.

The module will analyse contemporary theories and models informing strategic approaches to leading change and managing new ways of working across infrastructure, processes, people, culture and sustainability within organisations.

Central to understanding how organisations achieve success is the appreciation of how accounting, finance and operations can be used for strategic advantage. This module will develop your knowledge and critical appreciation of the key components of accounting, finance and operations and enable you to apply these within the context of a successful commercial organisation.

The module will include key concepts in relation to investment and financing decisions, operational controls, and financial health and growth. You will be able to build your knowledge starting with how to choose and appraise an investment decision, dealing with operational matters that keep the business running, using finance, accounting and operational techniques to strategically manage the direction of the business and to understand how expansion can successfully and sustainably take place.

As the future of work and organisations continue to change and take on new shapes, legal and regulatory forms, leaders will have a critical role to play both as strategic partners in organisations, supporting and developing front line employees as well as managers, and enabling change. Effective management of people is vital for the achievement of an organisation’s strategic goals, yet it is hard to do well and easy to do badly.

The module investigates the strategic priorities and practicalities of strategic human resource management and development in addition to a focus on stakeholders’ development needs. You will develop an understanding of individual and organisational learning, including the opportunities and challenges of approaches to strategic workforce planning such as talent management, workforce design, performance management, diversity and inclusion.

This module will provide you with theoretical and applied perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of managing in the digital economy. Through the use of a range of topical and case based examples this module will illustrate the far-reaching impact that rapid technological change, digital strategies and disruptive innovation has on companies, governments, individuals and society.

You will explore how these impacts are interrelated and are dynamic and unpredictable in character. The assessment explores this dynamic interaction, providing an opportunity to explore the impact of transformation digital change. The use of academic and practitioner materials will enable you to clearly understand the socio-economic impact and contribute to developing new strategies to reap potential value from the global digital economy.

The growth of evidence-based management and the increasing range and amount of data that managers are expected to process on a regular basis requires managers to have analytical skills and a sound understanding of research. This module will equip you with the necessary practical skills needed to manage this complexity and to generate conclusions, which can be used to support management decisions.

In addition, you will be provided with a broad understanding of the basic issues and considerations you will face when completing your final management investigation. You will be introduced to philosophical issues as well as frequently used methodologies and techniques to inform whatever research strategy and methods you decide to adopt in your later investigation.

This module will support your transition into postgraduate higher education by developing specific skills and attributes to both manage your studies, to communicate your ideas effectively within the academic community and giving you an insight on how these skills contribute to your professional development.

The module supports you to draw on your own experiences at work allowing you to reflect and evaluate your own effectiveness in this area, and plan your own personal development and approaches to managing your future career.

This module is research/enquiry based and you will be required to identify, and give a convincing rationale for, a researchable work based topic, which addresses an issue or problem within an organisation.

You will identify and critically review relevant literature and synthesise a theoretical framework, which will guide you to choose and execute an appropriate research methodology, including the gathering and analysis of relevant data. From the research findings, you will offer a discussion of the academic relevance of the results and any further research prompted.

Finally, you will outline your conclusions and derive and present a set of realistic recommendations which the organisation could take into practice and which addresses the initial research topic.