Core courses
At London Business School we understand that core disciplines are a vital part of any MBA programme and this is why we offer the breadth and depth of courses you see listed below. The Executive MBA core courses offer a thorough grounding in business management and the opportunity to build on existing skills and acquire new ones. The core courses enable you to gain practical skills that can immediately be applied back to your career.
- Corporate Finance
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Decision and Risk Analysis
- Developing Effective Management and Organisations
- Entrepreneurial Management
- Financial Accounting
- Introduction to Management Accounting
- Leadership Skills
- Managerial Economics
- Managerial Statistics
- Marketing
- Operations and Technology Management
- Strategy
- Understanding General Management
- Understanding the International Macroeconomy
- Capstone
The financial function has two key goals: to invest wisely, and to make decisions about how best to finance the company. Thus there is a two-fold focus to this course. It looks at investment decisions within companies, and at financial market decisions such as capital structure. Other issues include the valuation of companies, mergers and acquisitions.
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Corporate Social Responsibility
This course is designed to inform and stimulate thinking on issues of ethics and social responsibility encountered in business. The material covered is intended to prepare students to recognize and manage ethical and social responsibility issues as they arise, and to help them formulate their own standards of integrity and professionalism. The overall course objectives are to increase awareness of the ethical dimension of business conduct, to contribute insight into the professional standards and responsibilities of students in their future careers; to develop analytical skills for identifying and resolving ethical and social responsibility issues in business; and to practice decision making about ethical and social responsibility issues.
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Focuses on evaluating the impact of risk on your business, making decisions in the face of uncertainty, and allocating scarce resources to optimise business performance.
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Developing Effective Management and Organisations
This course aims to enhance understanding of managerial and organisational effectiveness. It does so by focusing first on individual variables such as personality, motivation and managerial style and subsequently, by locating these within the context of working relationships within organisations. It also focuses on macro-organisational issues such as structural choices, corporate culture and the management of organisational change. It provides a diagnostic framework for organisational analysis that you are asked to apply to your own organisation. You are encouraged to evaluate the use and effectiveness of key human resource issues and processes that link to employee commitment and performance in the light of your own experience and that of your colleagues.
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This integrative course focuses on the unique challenges involved in managing entrepreneurial ventures, whether in start-ups, small early stage entrepreneurial firms, or within larger well-established companies. In addressing this entrepreneurial domain, this course complements other core courses that address the analytical and administrative domains of managerial behaviour. It provides a solid foundation in the fundamentals of entrepreneurship for students planning to take entrepreneurship electives and for those who hope to run an entrepreneurial venture at some point in their careers. Students, working in teams, will assess the attractiveness of a real entrepreneurial opportunity and prepare a feasibility study that presents their conclusions.
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Financial reports are the primary means by which managers communicate company results to investors, creditors and analysts. These parties use the reports to judge company performance, to assess creditworthiness, to predict future financial performance, and to analyse possible acquisitions and takeovers.
Users of financial data must understand how a company's operations are reflected in its accounts, so as to interpret and analyse them correctly. Also, since company managers choose accounting techniques when making their reports, users must learn to identify and undo the effects of these accounting choices. The purpose of this course is to give you the foundation for such analysis.
During this course, you will:
- learn how firms' operating activities are reflected in their financial reports
- acquire extensive accounting terminology
- analyse the link between accounting decisions and their reflection in the financial reports
- understand the rationale for various accounting methods
- develop a critical view of managers' accounting choices
- learn to compute and interpret basic financial ratios
- explore why international differences in reporting exist.
Financial Accounting is an introductory course and does not require any prior knowledge of valuation or evaluation models. You will use the fundamentals that you learn here in other classes, most notably in corporate finance and strategy.
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Introduction to Management Accounting
Examines basic accounting techniques, accounting for delegated decision making and the impact of strategic and organisational change on the use and usefulness of accounting information.
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Traditional Management Skills such as planning, organising, budgeting and problem solving are essential. Increasingly, however, we are seeing that interpersonal skills are the key to implementation. De-layering, out-sourcing and virtual teamworking mean that a manager cannot rely on her or his title to get things done. Persuasion is paramount. Working in groups, this course will help you to make the very best of your abilities.
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Looks at the logic and language of microeconomics and focuses on prices, markets, incentives and optimal decision making and how organisations behave under different market structures. This is a course in applied microeconomics, with a primary focus on the needs of managers.
Provides managerial tools that will enable you to make informed decisions when relying on data. The emphasis is on understanding and quantifying uncertainty in a managerial context.
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Modern marketing defines, develops and delivers value to customers. It provides the essential customer focus for all business operations, and plays a key role in the definition of the overall business and competitive strategy. In this course, we show how products and services that satisfy the customer are designed and taken to market, and how your organisation can respond and stay ahead of markets in the midst of change.
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Operations and Technology Management
Operations and Technology Management focuses on productivity and customer service as the basis of creating business profitability. Operations is the point at which strategic intentions have to be implemented into working practices. This course will enable you to distinguish and develop the appropriate methods for managing operations in changing business environments.
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Develops your ability to think strategically, to evaluate strategic options and to anticipate and manage strategic change in today's turbulent and competitive environment. You will use leading edge tools and techniques to help you understand the dynamics of such situations, including team-based simulations and system dynamics models.
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Understanding General Management
Business has arguably replaced government, religion and, in many cases, family life as the social institution with the greatest influence on people´s lives. Management therefore, plays a pivotal role in promoting economic and social progress. This course provides the general managers of tomorrow with a clear understanding of management´s role and how to fulfil this role in a way that gives full expression to what they stand for, both personally and professionally.
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Understanding the International Macroeconomy
Studies the deep forces that determine the corporate environment and the backdrop against which firms have to operate. You consider what makes countries rich and how value added is created, how technology impacts on the economy, and the role of trade in influencing national wealth, corporate performance and industrial structure.
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This course enables you to draw together your learning from the entire Executive MBA programme to prepare you for the transitions ahead. You will distil the most important aspects of your time at the School, and explore three critical themes that will keep you on your chosen track as alumni. These themes are commitments, aspirations and the process of transformation over time that keeps your aspirations and commitments aligned with each other and with reality.
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