Base
MBAM610 Agile and Innovation-driven Leadership (15 points)
Contemporary leaders need new capabilities and mindsets for creating work-groups that can thrive in an era of rapid, disruptive change, by overcoming challenges, and seizing opportunities. These leaders build engaged, high performing teams that are characterised by teamwork, rapid learning, and innovation. This course provides leadership development through a blend of personal assessments, practice-related activities, reflection, discussion, and input from practising leaders. The goal is to promote leadership skills and self-awareness that equip participants for an ongoing journey of growth and development as leaders.
MBAM604 Data Informed Strategy (15 points)
Strategy is about making purposeful, explicit choices on how to build a sustainable competitive advantage and sustainable long-term profitability or impact. In this course, we will discuss various ways of thinking about organisational strategies, what tools are available to guide your thinking, and the importance of data and analytics for both the selection and implementation of such strategies. This course will prepare participants to think strategically, to ask the right questions, to identifying what data is needed to answer those questions and how to transform data into meaningful insights in order to support decision-making.
MBAM603 Innovation by Design (15 points)
Design Thinking is a people centric, collaborative, optimistic and experimental way of working to drive innovation and create customer value. It is a pragmatic approach that aims to nurture deep curiosity about an issue, unleash creativity in how to approach it, and ensure clarity when it comes to implementing solutions. In these sessions we introduce a process that can be used to approach problems with this new perspective. We work with a lot of new tools and techniques that will help teams collaborate in more creative ways. And we use these to address live business/organisational issues to show how this method can be practically applied.
Expand
MBAM601 Digital Transformation and Technology Preparedness (15 points)
The course embodies the growing need for organisations to embrace a change oriented culture - with a heightened focus on organisational digital maturity in its processes, products/services, business models and its people. In doing so, the organisation's digital strategy must integrate a range of technologies that support a breadth of functions ultimately offering a superior user/customer experience. The course will explore and provide hands-on opportunities, in collaboration with industry, for participants to engage with technologies such as blockchain, IoT, AI etc. Furthermore, to be able to influence, participants will also familiarise themselves with the strategic use of business cases and risk assessment.
MBAM615 Managerial Finance, Accounting and Governance (15 points)
This course explores how the analysis of a range of financial information is used to enhance managerial decision-making. It will look at how organisations raise capital and assess the performance of projects and investments. The course will provide students with a framework necessary to understand how important financial decisions are determined within a corporation. It will explore how a range of financial information is used to gain insights and enhance managerial decision-making. The course will also examine how value is created for shareholders and other stakeholders in a firm through investment and financing decisions. It will look at the ways organisations raise capital and assess the performance of projects and investments. The course will also emphasise cases for good corporate governance practice. The course blends theoretical aspects of managerial finance with industry practice, case studies, discussions, and financial modelling. The emphasis of the course will be on applying financial concepts, tools, and techniques to solve real-world problems. Some working knowledge of Microsoft Excel will be useful for this course.
MBAM623 Business Sustainability and Economic Decision-Making (15 points)
This course will introduce you to a range of economic and sustainability principles. We discuss how economic principles shape the behaviour of individuals and organizations, and how these principles can help meet policy objectives effectively and efficiently particularly in resource and environmental management. We examine how thinking like an economist can provide a lens through which we can think about and improve the world. Understanding key economic principles like incentives, trade-offs, markets, and costs and benefits, means making better organisational decisions, including sustainability ones. The course will also cover the principles of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria, and sustainability within a bi-cultural and global context.
MBAM622 Marketing and Strategic Intelligence (15 points)
Marketing and Strategic Intelligence is designed to equip students with a comprehensive understanding of marketing principles and the strategic application of business insights. Throughout the course, you will delve into the world of marketing principles, market research, and explore various data collection and analysis techniques, with a focus on quantitative methods. You will gain insights into consumer behaviour, competitive intelligence, and the development of effective marketing strategies, encompassing segmentation, targeting, positioning, biases, and the marketing mix. Students are expected to leverage business, consumer, and market insights to make well-informed, data-driven business decisions. This course develops marketing expertise and cultivates the ability to synthesise data into meaningful information that can inform business decision-making. As part of preparing students for working in a treaty partnership and equity context, and aligning with the UC Pasifika Strategy, the course facilitates applying marketing principles to ensure the lens and values of the community we’re reaching are recognised.
Ignite
MBAM620 Creative Challenge (15 points)
This course on Creative Challenge has been curated in the program to offer participants an opportunity to push the boundaries and challenge their own status quo by establishing a stretch goal, planning an intervention to address the challenge and working to execute it. It is imperative in designing the performance metrics or rubrics that participants incorporate a 50% likelihood that they will NOT achieve the intended goal. This will ensure the true nature of 'stretch' and 'growth'. Participants will largely be self-directed in executing the plan but will have access to guidance of a coach, industry or academic mentor.
Master
MBAM614 Business Research Methods (5 points)
This course aims to prepare MBA students for their MBAM680 consulting project. The course will outline what is required for that consulting project, what a good consulting project looks like, and the common pitfalls experienced by students embarking on the project. The course will also provide a refresher about the business research methods that will likely be required to complete the MBAM680 consulting project. The course eventuates in a draft proposal for MBAM680 (MBA Consulting Project). It is intended that this course is taken towards the end of the degree’s workload just prior to commencing MBAM680.
MBAM680 Consulting Project (45 points)
The MBA Project is a consulting project that involves working with an organisation to address a practical issue of strategic importance. Projects are expected to apply discipline-based knowledge from MBA courses and use rigorous research methods.
Elective (10 points)
Every year, we offer multiple electives that allow students to master key areas of management and understand emerging trends, including (but not limited to):
MBAM624 Global Business: Advocacy, Influencing and Negotiation (10 points)
This course explores the framework for influencing and negotiation in international business and organisational development. The content incorporates business strategy, management psychology, legal, intellectual property, marketing, and supply chain perspectives. The course activities include seminars and discussions, accompanied by practical experience in preparing for, and participating in a range of face-to-face negotiations.
MBAM625 Entrepreneurship (10 points)
The decision to start a business is made hundreds of time each week in New Zealand. In terms of frequency, it is followed by the decision to close a small business. Internationally, New Zealand has a relatively high rate of business start-up, but relatively few of these grow into significant companies. The aim of this course is to develop some practical understanding of the opportunities and problems associated with the start-up and subsequent development of small businesses. This includes considering the unique Aotearoa NZ cultural, community, and business landscape for risks and opportunities in the start-up sector.
MBAM626 International Study Tour (10 points)
This study-tour course focuses on business and strategy in an international context. The study tour incorporates industry visits and cultural experiences that assist in building awareness of the unique environment of international business. Drawing upon international best practice and established international business frameworks, students will deliver a report addressing an international business client’s need.
MBAM627 Marketing in a Digital World - Term One (10 points)
Marketing strategies create great products and services by communicating and delivering their value to prospective customers; however, digital technologies are disrupting nearly every aspect of business including marketing, so what does the future hold for marketing as know it? Future marketing leaders will be required to both quickly scope the potential application of new digital technologies, and also pivot existing organisational practices to accommodate these technologies’ applications without endangering relationships with fundamental stakeholders. In this course, we will explore many new technologies brought on by the dramatic increase in the abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years, including AI analytics (e.g., automatic efficiency, lead generation, inventory systems social listening), generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Dal-E), AI-generated content (e.g., Deepfakes, GANs), AI mediated customer experiences (e.g., self-checkouts, smart mirrors, customer service bots), and immersive technologies (e.g., VR, AR, Metaverse). While there exists much promise in these digital technologies applied to various aspects of marketing strategies, these technologies also bring additional challenges that we will debate and discuss in class to prepare you to critically reason what prospective opportunities and potential risks may arise if you were to implement a technological solution in your or your client’s organisation.
