Management and Leadership MSc

• Professor Richard Kwiatkowski

Success in management, particularly at senior levels in organisations, depends on understanding organisations, the people in them and the relationship between the internal and external environments within which they exist; and in ensuring that they work effectively. 

Organisations are run by and for people, and the success or failure of an organisation depends on the people in that organisation. 

It is rarely an absence of planning that causes organisational difficulties; it is often the failure of management in understanding and managing complex personal, interpersonal and organizational systems that can lead to significant problems.

Similarly an acute and critical understanding of these dynamics can lead to profound and enduring success and benefit for the individual, the team, the organisation and, indeed, wider society.

In this module students will be introduced to various aspects of people and organisations.  This module combines models, theories and ideas from organisational behaviour, psychology,  sociology and International Human Resource Management, in order to provide students with an understanding in recognising, understanding and utilising what has been termed the "human factor" in organisations; including ways of conceptualising organisations and how people behave within them.  We shall consider the impact of the external environment; and begin to address notions of organisational change.

Uniquely this module will also focus on application and will allow students to reflect on and apply theories and techniques in their own real world context, utilising a structured portfolio approach in order to enhance their own Leadership behaviours.

It may also be that students will wish to undertake an in company project in this area; several of the faculty involved will be pleased to discuss this with you.

• Individuals in the organisation (covering topics such as learning, personality, perception, motivation, psychological capital and emotional intelligence)
• Groups and teams in the organisation
• Management processes (including organisational change, leadership, organisational politics, and cross-cultural management)

1. Differentiate ways of conceptualising people in organisations, for example using culture, ethics, well-being, diversity, politics, management, and change frameworks
2. Assess and evaluate the importance of relationships at work, group dynamics, effective teams and leadership in achieving effectiveness
3. Critically engage with relevant models, theories and ideas in order to enhance personal capability linked to their personal and professional development agenda.
4. Appraise how they have increased their personal influence and their capability to lead with impact

• Professor Catarina Figueira

To introduce the concepts and techniques associated with Managerial Economics, i.e., Microeconomics (e.g. market analysis, price theory, rationality) and Macroeconomics (e.g. inflation, exchange rates and interest rates).

• The initial few sessions are spent on discussion of the concept of equilibrium as it applies to the micro and macro structures of a broad range of financial markets.
• In the next four sessions, an understanding of choice theory and rational economic decision making as it applies to the levels and structure of prices of assets in a broad range of financial markets is developed.
• Finally, remaining sessions are devoted to discussion of the concepts and ideas in macroeconomics which have a direct relevance to financial markets. Particularly, discussion is centred around the understanding of monetary economics and the institutional context to which it applies. Discussion of structure of money and capital markets rounds up this module.

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Employ economic reasoning when making choices in the use of resources.
2. Recognise the importance of marginal analysis and diminishing returns in the context of business and consumer decisions.
3. Appreciate the various objectives which different firms may pursue and the consequent impact on managerial decisions, including those relating to price and output levels.
4. Analyse both the external environment and the internal capabilities of a firm and understand the forces shaping the firm’s competitive environment.
5. Recognise the importance of developments in the macroeconomy for management and business performance. 

By the end of this course, students should exhibit:

1. An ability to use economic theory.
2. An ability to use relevant geometric and quantitative models to explain and analyse monetary and financial phenomena.
3. An ability to apply economic theory to real world problems, e.g., via case study analysis.

• Dr Abdelkader Aoufi

To develop a theoretical and practical skill base of Leading Strategic Operations. This module provides students with an understanding of the Operations Management task and its contribution to organisational competitiveness.

• Strategic role of operations
• Process design and layout
• Managing the process experience
• Tools and techniques of process improvement
• Capacity management
• Inventory management, lean and agile operations
• Strategic quality management and improvement
• People in operations.

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Propose and appraise the main components of operations strategy
2. Analyse the capabilities of different types of operation including the trade-offs involved in the chosen approaches
3. Challenge strategies and operations in terms of resource allocation and business continuity/risk management and determine how operational processes may be designed, managed and improved
4. Critically assess key issues in the strategic leadership of organisations examining both processes and people implications
5. Evaluate various organisational contexts, assessing how operations management involves cross functional links at the process level

• Professor Vasilis Theoharakis

A crucial competence for general managers is an understanding of marketing strategy: in simple terms, analysing how a marketplace of customers can be divided into segments, which of these segments are key targets for the firm, determining the firm’s optimal value proposition for each segment, and what financial and non-financial results can be expected over a planning period of typically 1-3 years. This module teaches Cranfield’s world-leading step-by-step process for developing such a marketing strategy and documenting it in a marketing plan. This process has been developed with hundreds of blue-chip companies worldwide over the last 30 years, informed by several Cranfield PhDs on the topic which have studied what works in practice. This planning process is documented in a leading textbook on the topic, McDonald & Wilson’s Marketing Plans, which has sold over half a million copies. This book is used as the course text. Students may wish to acquire a copy from the library or through purchase to help bridge from the course to planning for real in their subsequent management roles.

• Strategic marketing in context
• 10 steps of the strategic marketing planning process
• Mission statements and organisational objectives, including organizational purpose and sustainability considerations
• The marketing audit and analytical tools
• Market maps and market segmentation
• SWOT analysis
• The Directional Policy Matrix
• Marketing objectives and strategies.

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Discriminate the role of marketing in creating a customer centric strategy for the organization
2. Formulate market and customer analyses based on a series of marketing strategy tools and techniques
3. Integrate market insights into a business planning process and critically suggest improvements to strategy.
4. Compose a written strategic marketing plan for a senior management audience.
5. Assess the quality of marketing analyses and strategies prepared by others.

• Dr Matthias Nnadi

Financial Accounting: to give students a thorough understanding of company accounts, how they are constructed and how to interpret them. 

Management Accounting: to look at and understand the key issues in the subject from the point of view of business leaders needing to make practical decisions in their organisation.

• The fundamental accounting documents – Income Statement, Statement of Financial Position and Cash Flow Statement
• Interpretation of accounts through ratio analysis
• Cost/volume/profit analysis and breakeven
• Allocation of overhead costs
• Budgeting and variance analysis
• Transfer pricing

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Demonstrate a systematic understanding of the fundamental principles of financial accounting.
2. Prepare key financial statements from basic information.
3. Analyse and interpret company accounts.
4. Classify different types of cost, understand methods of internal pricing and conduct break-even analysis.
5. Prepare budgets and interpret variances from budget.

• Dr Namita Shete

Global sustainability challenges are shaping the way business operates in the 21st century. Businesses are under increasing pressure from multiple stakeholders (for e.g. shareholders, customers, employees, society) to manage their positive and negative impacts with clear responsibility and strategic intent.  Leading firms are choosing to respond to these challenges by generating sustainable value propositions to ultimately drive competitive advantage. For many this has meant re-engaging at the level of purpose and re-addressing their role in wider society and for human well-being.

This module outlines the major sustainability challenges and explores the capabilities organisations require to respond positively to them. It will engage you in gaining a better understanding of how corporate action can be best configured to promote responsible and sustainable business strategies. In doing so, it will demand management students (as future business managers and leaders) to reflect on the long-standing debate about whether or not ‘the business of business, is still business?

Watch video: An introduction to the Leading Corporate Sustainability module

The content is organised around the sustainability management ‘compass’ below:

The course content is structured as follows:



Part 1: Setting the context

Context setting

• Managing corporate sustainability
• Social and environmental trends

The role of business

• The role of business
• Challenges and opportunities for business

Exploring possible futures

• Playing an interactive future sustainable scenario board game
  



Part 2: Developing the capabilities

• Setting a purpose
• Formulating and implementing strategy
• Working with stakeholders
• Innovating
• Collaborating
• Valuing
• Leading

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

1. Identify global environmental and social trends and relate how these present both challenges and opportunities to business.
2. Explain why businesses need to respond to these challenges and opportunities and assess the capabilities they require to do so.
3. Classify the potential stakeholder groups businesses can work with to develop and implement their sustainability strategies and compare collaboration approaches.
4. Consider the role of personal leadership in an organization’s values, strategic direction and ability to execute its sustainability strategy.
5. Critically assess the content and reporting of businesses’ sustainability strategies.
6. Design and recommend a sustainability-oriented innovation for a selected business.

Strategic Management and Leadership is concerned with the direction and scope of the organisation. This involves determining the purpose of the organisation, establishing objectives and formulating strategies to achieve the objectives. It predominantly explores how an organisation positions itself with regard to its changing environment, and in particular its competitors, in order to gain and sustain competitive advantage. This means that strategic management and leadership considers how an organisation’s internal resources and capabilities can be developed to meet the changing demands of customers, in such a way as to achieve the expectations and objectives of its stakeholders.

The module begins by focusing on strategy at the strategic business unit level. It is orientated around five key questions:

1) where to compete?
2) how to gain competitive advantage?
3) what capabilities are required?
4) what capabilities do we have?
5) how do we change?

The module then explores corporate level strategy and the particular challenges of international strategy. Finally the issues of strategy implementation and change are discussed. Throughout the module a range of tools and techniques for strategic analysis and choice will be introduced.

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Identify the key questions and critically analyse the associated challenges to be addressed in formulating an organisation’s competitive and corporate-level strategies.
2. Create ways for organizations to sustain competitive advantage, building on a detailed understanding how an organisation and its leaders can harness its internal resources and capabilities and react appropriately to changes in its external environment.
3. Appraise and differentiate between corporate, competitive (business unit) and functional strategies and the roles of leaders within these.
4. Critically appraise and justify the key factors to consider when leaders develop an international strategy.
5. Critically apply a range of tools and techniques to illuminate the key questions of competitive strategy and corporate strategy.

• Professor Leon Williams

This module introduces disruptive innovation and sets out why it is a distinctive form of innovation. The core theory underpinning the topic is introduced along with the rationale for adopting a contrasting approach to that used for managing incremental innovation. The module presents a range of practical tools to support organisations in building strategic competences that enable them to recognise, create or react to disruptive innovation. The module reviews how disruptive innovation applies, individually or in combination, to technology, processes, services and business models.

A core element of the module will be a simulation of an innovation project. The project’s aim will be to develop an innovative product that has potential to be disruptive to the existing market. The simulation will involve team-based activities that equip students with practical tools and hands-on experience. The assessment requires a critical reflection on the experience of using various techniques for managing disruptive innovation within the simulation.

During the module the knowledge and skills required for the simulation will be introduced through a combination of lectures, cases studies and other activities. These will introduce both theoretical elements of the module but also practical techniques that can then be applied within the simulation.

• Identifying and analysing recent, relevant literature that informs an understanding of an organisational capability in innovation, for example through the individual capabilities supporting the Pentathlon framework.
• Understand the nature of disruptive Innovation: what is it, and why is it necessary?
• Understanding how coordinated development effort across a combination of goods, technologies, services and business models can result in disruptive innovation.
• Use and reflect on specific approaches and techniques that underpin an innovation capability, for example:
  1. Understanding, classifying and prioritising customer needs using the Kano model.
  2. Planning technology and is development trajectories using techniques such as environmental analysis, technology roadmapping, and other foresight techniques.
  3. Analysis and design of services using techniques such as service blueprints.
  4. Analysis and design of business models using techniques such as the business model canvas.
  5. Prioritisation of projects within the innovation pipeline.
  6. Management of the new product development process.
  7. Evaluation of an innovation in terms of its disruptive potential.

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Examine the key capabilities, and their interrelationships, that underpin an organisational capability in innovation.
2. Critically review the theoretical underpinning of innovation management.
3. Analyse how an organisation’s approach to the innovation process influences the types of innovation created.
4. Evaluate the use of a range of techniques that enable disruptive elements of an innovation to be analysed and communicated in terms of the contribution of technological, process and business model innovation.
5. Critically review the extent to which innovation projects have disruptive potential.

• Dr Monica Franco-Santos

This is an integrative module allowing students to develop management consulting skills and apply their learning in a practical manner. Students will work in their consulting teams and will role-play as a management consulting team, competing against the other teams. All teams will address the same business challenge: a genuine business issue in a particular company. Students will have a set of taught sessions on the ‘art and craft’ of management consulting. In parallel, they will work with their consulting teams to address the case company business challenge. They will have three weeks to understand the problem; gather the relevant data; use appropriate tools/frameworks and propose innovative, pragmatic and achievable solutions.

This module comprises conceptual knowledge about the foundations of management consulting and practical knowledge developed through a consulting project for a real organization which every year is chosen by the module leader. The module includes teaching and feedback sessions focused on the following

1. Consulting skills

• Listening and questioning
• Communication
• Persuasion
• Evidence-based problem solving
• Critical thinking
• Teamworking

2. Consulting process

• Diagnostic phase
• Data collection and analysis phase
• Design phase
• Implementation phase
• Education phase

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

This module is intended to enable students to develop critical management consulting skills and apply them in the context of a real-life business problem. By the end of this module students should be able to:

1. Identify and critically examine managerial problems and provide innovative ideas based on evidence to address them
2. Explain and critically assess relevant processes, concepts and methods involved in management consulting projects.
3. Practice critical thinking to diagnose problems and design potential solutions
4. Present ideas effectively to an audience of business executives. 

• Professor Michael Dickmann

In essence this module is concerned with managing the organisation’s key resource – the people who work for it. It aims to help participants understand how effective people management and human resource management can contribute to develop and sustain organisations. The focus of the module will be concerned with helping participants understand the relationship between people management and organisational performance, including the crucial role of line managers. The module aims to develop an insight into the complexities of managing people in a changing environment.

The module will provide an introduction to the main activities associated with resourcing, developing and day–to-day management of people in work organisations. It is not the intention of the module to develop human resource management specialist, but rather to provide a general introduction to the people management issues that concern all managers. Throughout, the sessions will be highly interactive in order to develop critical insight and core skills in the people management field.

The module will draw on key academic contributions in the broad field of people management, including current research being carried out by faculty in the School of Management. 

• Strategic People Management and Workforce Design
• The Changing World of Work
• Talent Sourcing
• Talent Development  and Succession Planning
• Rewards and Remuneration
• Managing Performance
• Employment Relations
• Employment Law: Health and safety, grievance, discipline and dismissal
• Building a People Strategy

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

1. Have a critical appreciation of the role and scope of people management activities
2. Apply and evaluate a complex range of established models and factors which influence choices made in the management of people
3. Have undertaken critical analyses of a range of people management issues and have made considered, informed proposals to address them.
4. Design strategic approaches to human resource management and critically explore their relationship with business strategies
5. Evaluate the contribution the people resource makes to developing and sustaining organisations

• Dr Valentina Battista

The module is primarily designed to provide students with an understanding of what is required to conduct research in business contexts considering that todays’ managers

• are paid to make decisions
• are expected to make ‘informed’ decisions (i.e. based on evidence)
• are evaluated on the basis of the outcomes from their decisions. 

Therefore, understanding the process of producing evidence will ensure students to have the core skills to inform management decisions.

Introduction to evidence-based management

• The elements of evidence-based management



Conducting research in management

• Defining management problems
• Reviewing the literature



Using qualitative research methods

• Interviews and focus groups in qualitative research
• Qualitative data analysis: using NVivo



Using quantitative research methods

• Designing questionnaires and conducting surveys
• Quantitative data analysis: using IBM SPSS statistics



Presenting research evidence

• Translating data into information to support management decisions

On successful completion of this module you will be able to:

1. Critically evaluate evidence in order to inform management decisions.
2. Assess and select appropriate methods of qualitative and/or quantitative data collection.
3. Choose and apply appropriate methods of qualitative and/or quantitative data analysis.
4. Interpret data to provide evidence for management decision making.
5. Utilise quantitative and qualitative analysis software.

• Professor Michael Bourne

To develop a theoretical and practical skill base of Enterprise Performance and Risk Management including its key concepts, as well as the main tools and techniques used by a variety of organisations in different sectors of activity.

• Strategy and performance, the execution gap
• Theories and approaches to governance and management control
• Hard and soft approaches to strategy execution and the implementation of change
• Organisation theory, lenses for enterprise management
• A framework for strategy execution
• Strategy and success mapping, as a concept and a process
• The development of appropriate and effective KPis
• The target setting wheel
• The importance and use of survey based measures
• Incentives and rewards, frameworks and pitfalls
• Risk management, a discursive approach
• Challenging strategy and strategic assumptions
• Stakeholder analysis
• Change and resistance to change
• Theory of change, as a planning tool, management tool and for evaluation
• Change capacity
• Change kaleidoscope
• Values and people engagement in enterprise leadership and management
• Designing performance and risk management reviews
• Mindful meetings
• Leadership of risk and performance

The EPRM module will introduce students to the nature of enterprise performance and risk management. Using models, frameworks approaches and theories, the student will be exposed to and practice the development of executable strategies, the alignment of the organisation and the implementation of change. Focusing specifically performance measurement and management techniques, risk and the management and leadership of change, students will develop their critical thinking and application.

The module aims to develop student understanding of how these processes may be designed, managed and improved combined with application to real world situations.

On successful completion of the module students should be able to:

1. Knowledge and understanding

• Describe the contributions of performance and risk management to control and governance
• Apply theoretical lenses to critically assess frameworks, models and approaches.
• Critically assess strategy, objectives, measures and targets
• Apply tools in performance measurement and risk to direct and manage the organisation.
• Challenge strategies from the perspective of testing underlying assumptions
• Apply tools and frameworks to critically assess approaches to change
• Apply tools and frameworks for the planning and implementation of change
• Appreciate the leadership and cultural influences impacting successful enterprise performance and risk management
• Critically assess performance and risk from a sustainability perspective
• Develop approaches to decision making from a mindfulness and resilience perspective.

2. Subject Specific Skills

After completing this module the students will have:

• Put enterprise performance and risk management in the context of governance and control
• Demonstrated their ability to design enterprise performance measure and management systems
• Demonstrate their abilities to critically assess enterprise risk
• Demonstrated their abilities to assess stakeholder perspectives and sustainable solutions
• Demonstrate their ability to plan change
• Understand and design approaches to evaluation and effective decision making

3. Behaviours

After completing this module the students will have:

• Presented written material
• Presented material orally
• Kept records of their personal learning achieved
• Practiced performance and risk tools and techniques
• Enhanced their team working abilities
• Shared good practice through reflection within and outside their own organisation