Year 1 focuses on providing you with the necessary underpinning in terms of broad business enterprise and innovation knowledge and skills. It introduces key business and management concepts.
Year 2 lets you explore your own interests and deepening your insights as well as having more responsibility for your own learning.
The final year explores more advanced topics within business enterprise and innovation and you develop your awareness of your own responsibility as a future leader of business. Finally, you have the opportunity to put your knowledge into action by undertaking a self-managed independent project through the Dissertation module.
Course structure
Foundation year core modules
Academic Skills and Personal Development for Business
This module develops your academic and transferrable skills to support successful study on a business degree course. These skills include a range of personal and transferable study skills including active listening, reading and understanding academic texts, note taking, time management, written and oral communication, analytical thinking and referencing, as well as professional skills linked to employability and career aspirations.
Business Creativity Enterprise and Career Aspirations
You are introduced to the basic elements of research and develop an understanding of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship in the context of business organisations. You gain the confidence to explore and research current topics and generate new ideas to solve problems. You will work in teams reviewing relevant literature and considering different methodologies for researching and collecting relevant data to develop a proposal for a small research project.
Collecting Understanding and Presenting Business Information
This module will introduce you to the basic elements of collecting primary and secondary business data, understanding it and then presenting it as meaningful information. It will provide you with the confidence to explore current business topics and the knowledge and skills required for the Team Research Project Utilising Digital Platforms module. You will use digital platforms such as Excel spreadsheets, Word, online survey packages and PowerPoint to facilitate collection, basic analysis and presentation of business information.
Introduction to Business Environment
This broad-ranging module provides you with an introduction to the interrelated nature of business activities and their relationships with the micro (internal) and macro (external) environments. The internal environment will introduce the key concepts surrounding marketing and human resource management (HRM). The external environment, examines the key political, economic, social, technological, and cultural issues affecting the modern firm.
Numeracy and Introduction to Finance
This module provides you with an introduction to core numerical skills and quantitative techniques that are essential to studying business in higher education. You will develop effective quantitative problem-solving skills using practical business problems and gain an appreciation of the contribution that accounting makes to the financial analysis and managerial control of business organisations.
Team Research Project Utilising Digital Platforms
This module provides an opportunity for you to work collaboratively as a team, to carry out a short piece of research using an online survey package to conduct a short survey. As part of a team, you will demonstrate your ability to apply skills of research, analysis and synthesis to present your findings and conclusions using appropriate software packages.
Year 1 core modules
Business Enterprise
This module will inspire you to think about entering the workplace once you have completed your studies. The module is delivered as an interactive learning experience which will enable you to develop an enterprising mind-set and help to identify some of the skills and attributes you already possess. The module content will encourage you to begin to think about your personal career aspirations, whilst addressing potential gaps linked to your knowledge, skills and experience. You will be encouraged to think in an enterprising fashion; learn new approaches to adapt and enhance your individual style. You will have the opportunity to work independently and as a member of a group by participating in personal challenges and group projects, and will learn to understand the importance of networking. Furthermore, you will have the opportunity to hear from and to question experienced external practitioners.
Business Finance
You gain an understanding of the way in which accounting is used in the external evaluation of organisations and develops the ability to use accounting and finance techniques in decision making, control, management and adding value to performance.
Business Psychology
This module draws on the applied science of business psychology to allow you to investigate how to make people and organisations more effective. By engaging with social scientific research methods to study people, workplaces and organisations you will gain an understanding of how to create healthy and productive relationships between people and organisations for mutual benefit.
International Market Environment
You are introduced to basic economic theories of markets and competition along with aspects of the wider business environment, including government policy and the macro-economy. These ideas are then applied to the practical analysis of markets using segmentation, targeting, and positioning framework.
Personal and Professional Development for Business
You become more aware of your own personal and professional development through reflection and interaction with peers. Drawing on related theories, you understand the importance of personal development and develop skills to enhance your future employability.
Understanding Organisations
You study some of the general principles of business management, particularly in the context of structure, culture, leadership, organisational behaviour, the business environment and the impact of these areas operationally. You are also introduced to the concept of strategic management with an emphasis on organisational resource and competency. And you consider the impact of organisational behaviour on overall business effectiveness, examining the role of the individual within the organisation and exploring motivation, perception and personal impact.
Year 2 core modules
Agile Management
In a world of relentless and fast paced change the most important question for any company is ‘are we agile?’ In other words are we able to deal with new situations and changes quickly and successfully. For many the answer is no. In this module you will learn how to get to yes through the greatest resource available: people. You will develop knowledge and understanding of why much of management is no longer fit for purpose (management 1.0), and how a new alternative is emerging (management 2.0) is an alternative fit for the 21st century.
Enterprise and Practice
This applied module allows you to demonstrate your practical skills and knowledge within a work environment. You explore the theoretical and practical world of business and will explore entrepreneurial and wider managerial approaches to the development of business within enterprise. Through your work within an enterprise, you will develop valuable professional skills and first-hand knowledge of an enterprise. If you already work you will be guided to recognise and reflect on this practice and use your own organisation as a case study. You are supported by academic staff and business contacts from across and outside the University.
Entrepreneurship in Action
The module content pays particular attention to the theory of effectual entrepreneurship and the relationship between social entrepreneurship and bricolage. You will have the opportunity to engage with local social enterprises and apply the theories to practice. The five principles of effectuation will inform your understanding of entrepreneurship in action and provide the base of the study, particularly in the context of establishing and running a micro or small business.
International Business and Management
You develop an understanding of the main issues affecting international business in the global economy and explore topics including globalisation, trade, economic growth and development. You focus specifically on examining these topics across different cultures. As the module progresses you become able to differentiate cultural variations and the impact of cultural difference on individuals and key organisations. You also have the opportunity to study a culture of your choice in-depth.
Research Methods
Building on prior learning within various stage 1 modules, this module develops your understanding and awareness of the principles and practicalities underpinning ethical and rigorous research. Through interactive seminar sessions with research-active academic staff, the module develops the practical skills you require for conducting a rigorous and ethical research study. The skills developed and knowledge gained will link to the stage 3 Dissertation module.
Small and Medium Business Development
The majority of businesses in the UK are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and collectively these make a significant contribution to the UK's economy. You develop a deeper understanding the SME sector and apply that understanding to practical situations.
Optional work placement year
Work placement
You have the option to spend one year in industry learning and developing your skills. We encourage and support you with applying for a placement, job hunting and networking.
You gain experience favoured by graduate recruiters and develop your technical skillset. You also obtain the transferable skills required in any professional environment, including communication, negotiation, teamwork, leadership, organisation, confidence, self-reliance, problem-solving, being able to work under pressure, and commercial awareness.
Many employers view a placement as a year-long interview, therefore placements are increasingly becoming an essential part of an organisation's pre-selection strategy in their graduate recruitment process. Benefits include:
· improved job prospects
· enhanced employment skills and improved career progression opportunities
· a higher starting salary than your full-time counterparts
· a better degree classification
· a richer CV
· a year's salary before completing your degree
· experience of workplace culture
· the opportunity to design and base your final-year project within a working environment.
If you are unable to secure a work placement with an employer, then you simply continue on a course without the work placement.
Final-year core modules
Contemporary Issues in Business Management
You develop an understanding of the challenges faced by organisations and explores the controversies and dilemmas of contemporary management thinking and practice. You study three key interrelated contemporary issues facing businesses - internationalisation; technological innovation and sustainability.
Creative Thinking and Business Design
You gain insights into managing organisational creativity and innovative business design. Key to the approach is the idea that change, creativity and business design all overlap and interconnect rather than being three separate areas of study and that managing the three together is central to organisations having the competitive edge in developing new value propositions.
Dissertation
Your final year dissertation is an opportunity to do an independent piece of research, demonstrating that you know how to take a systematic approach to research, analysis and evaluation within a structured business-orientated framework. It also encourages you to reflect and critically evaluate your personal development.
Innovation in Action
This module draws on innovation management theories combined with contemporary technology management and linking them up to changes in the organisational environment and organisational structures. It will focus on developing knowledge and skills necessary for understanding innovation and innovation management problems in contemporary businesses, involving technology advancement and new markets generation.
Sustainability, Strategy and Society
You gain knowledge and skills in effective strategic management and responsible leadership in the wider context of business and enterprise. The current context of the macro environment will be explored and contemporary issues will be considered, specifically relating to leading change along with leading and implementing strategy. You identify personal leadership qualities and skills and improvement strategies which will promote change and organisational development.
