The World of Management (integrated)

Core subjects

The World of Management is an intensive one week course which introduces students to some of the central ideas and approaches to understanding management and developing managerial skills. The subject provides an overview of management and a set of tools for students to enable them to manage themselves through the MBA program and improve their effectiveness at work.
The subject emphasises four aspects: Personal Development, Perspectives, Periods and Processes. The personal development section will enable students to build on their personal management and interpersonal skills. The second aspect explores the various perspectives that are taken in understanding management issues. Different disciplines such as finance, marketing and human resources often take different approaches to analysing issues. Also, stakeholders in the community have varying views about management and their actions and the subject raises these perspectives and provides avenues for integrating them. The third aspect is concerned with how management has been viewed at different periods in time, and how some of the original management models have been built on to improve management understanding, while others have been discarded as fads. The fourth aspect will emphasise learning processes and help students look at different ways of gathering and analysing data, making decisions and deriving the most benefit from these different approaches.
Students should note that World of Management is week long intensive subject that runs from Monday morning to Friday afternoon. The subject is compulsory and working students will need to take leave from their organisation in order to participate.

Financial Accounting

Accounting plays a dual role in an organisation: it provides relevant information to both external users (financial accounting) and internal users (management or cost accounting) to assist them in decision making. The course aims to provide an understanding of both of these roles and the interface between them. The financial accounting part of the course will cover the elements of the traditional accounting system, the measurement of profit, the valuation of assets and liabilities, the elements of owner’s equity, the estimates and choices inherent in modern accounting treatments, and an introduction to the use of financial accounting information in measuring the performance and financial strength of an organisation. The management accounting elements of the subject will deal with the internal planning and control function, the nature of costs and their behaviour, cost-volume-profit relationships, the behavioural aspects of management accounting, and an introduction to costing systems and budgeting.

Managing People

To help people perform well at work, managers need a sound understanding of why individuals behave the ways they do and how people behave in groups. This subject uses the discipline of organisational behaviour to provide insights into individual personality differences, what motivates people to work, what factors produce job satisfaction, and why people in organisations have difficulty in communication. Students explore the critical factors involved in organisational change, the bases of leadership and power, and how work-based groups affect individual and organisational effectiveness.

Marketing

The Marketing subject focuses on the challenges management faces in developing and implementing a successful marketing program. The importance of marketing arises from its role as the boundary function between the organisation and the marketplace. Changes in the market require changes from the company. Similarly, changes made by the company create changes in the market.