Accounting and Finance

The first part of this module, which is a course on financial and managerial accounting, provides an introduction to core accounting principles and their applications, both internal and external, to business organisations. This course covers the essentials any manager should have when working in a business, whether employed as a manager or as the business owner, and provides an underpinning for any subsequent studies in financial management.

The second part of this module, which is a course on corporate finance, considers a range of strategic financial issues of importance to company financial officers and other financially-oriented corporate executives as well as external managers and analysts engaged with these firms.

Statistics and Analytics for Business

This module offers a modern survey of major statistical methods, along with their applications to real world problems ranging from finance, insurance and marketing to the movie industry and sports. The statistical concepts and methods include data visualization, descriptive statistics, probability theory, normal and T distribution, sampling distribution, confidence interval, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis.

The analytics element of the module investigates how leading companies are using data and analytics to improve their strategy processes as well as fundamental tenets of data and analytics. This course also exposes students to aspects of strategy that are tied to data and analytics.

Economics and Business in China

The first part of this module, which is a course on managerial economics, introduces economic concepts and provides a firm understanding of the nature of man, choice and cost, pricing and marketing tactics, the real rate of interest, unemployment, the determinants of income, market structure, competition policy, money and various macroeconomics topics.

The second part of this module, which is a course on China’s economic development, reviews China’s economic growth from a historical perspective and focuses on economic decentralization and its impacts and the export-led growth model. The course also covers prospects for China’s future growth.

Organisational Behaviour and Leadership

The first part of this module, which is a course on managing organisational behaviour (OB), is a management skills practicum. Students complete online exercises that identify strengths and weaknesses in different management skills. Lectures give students a firm foundation in OB theory and cover practical steps that can be taken to build each person’s level of skills.

The second part of this module, which is a course on global leadership, focuses on leading people and building the leadership skills of students, particularly in relation to working in a complex, uncertain, and diverse global environment. A significant part of the course is devoted to a team project that investigates leadership practices in real companies.

Decision Making and Operations Management

Part 1. Decision Making for Business: Since building explicit models for decision analysis is a crucial task for every manager, the first part of the module will focus on various techniques used in the decision-making process. Sessions will cover modelling concepts applicable to a wide range of management situations. Modelling can be considered an art that requires creativity, imagination, and business understanding, combined with strong technical knowledge. This part of the course blends these aspects and explores the key techniques for effective modelling.

Part 2. Operations and Technology Management: The operations and technology management element of this module focuses on operations and management of technology in a wide variety of industries. Operations management is the design and management of the processes that transform inputs into finished goods or services. Operations is one of the primary functions of a firm, similar to Finance or Marketing. The operations and technology management element provides a foundation for understanding the operations of a firm by exploring a simple question: How do companies actually do things?

Operations management is also a key competence for consulting companies that are called to analyse and streamline the processes of their clients. Technology is often intertwined with the operations of a firm, so students will also see the interplay between technology and operations, and together how they can provide a critical competitive advantage. The operations and technology element focuses on operations in a wide variety of industries including manufacturing, technology, healthcare, hospitality, retailing, transportation, among others.

Strategy

Most large companies, and many quite small ones, are not single businesses but groups, comprising a portfolio of more or less separate business units and one or more levels of corporate management. Suppose, you are the CEO of a multi-business company, an advisor to the CEO, or a business unit manager who wants to collaborate with another business unit, which corporate strategies can you use to compete as a collection of multiple businesses?

The first part of the module, which is a course on corporate strategy taught by UCL, focuses on the following two corporate strategy questions:

• Portfolio composition: Which businesses should we be in as a company, and how can we enter these businesses and exit from others?

• Portfolio organisation: How should we organize the company to create value across the different businesses?

The second part of the module, which is a course on strategic management taught by PKU, focuses on competitive advantage and further develops the concept of strategy. Strategic management is about creating persistent superior performance for organisations in general and business firms in particular. The course is also concerned with both the determination of the strategic direction and the management of the strategic process. Again, the perspective in the course will be that of a general manager, whose ultimate responsibility is the long-term health of an entire organisation or a major division within an organisation.

Marketing

Marketing creates value for customers by identifying and fulfilling customers’ needs. The goal of this module is to delineate the means of fulfilling these wants and needs.

Creating this value requires that managers must effectively assess marketing opportunities by analysing customers, competitors, and their own company (the 3 C's) and design effective marketing programs to capitalize upon these opportunities by selecting appropriate strategies for pricing, promotion, place, and product (the 4 P's). The first part of the module, which is a course on marketing science, is organized around these three C's and four P's and prepares students to create marketing strategies that address these points.

The second part of the module, which is a course on marketing research, follows the steps in the marketing research process. Different types of research designs, techniques of data collection, and data analysis are covered and emphasis is on the interpretation and use of results rather than on mathematical derivations. Marketing research methods will be taught within the context of case studies and interspersed with theory in consumer behaviour research. Topics include: problem definition, research design, data collection methods, questionnaire design and measurement, sampling schemes, data analysis, and modelling. Both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of marketing research are covered and some physiological methods for consumer research will also be introduced, e.g. Eye-Tracking, Face Reading, EEG, fMRI, IAT, etc.

Business Research Project

The business research project is a research exercise aimed at providing students with practical experience and theoretical tools related to conducting research in a management context. Students are expected to complete an individual research project based on the collection of both primary and secondary data. The research project can be based on a consultancy project carried out by a single student or team of students for a company. The research report can be either a traditional academic dissertation or a business plan. Students will develop the skills to analyse and interpret both qualitative and quantitative data and understand and conduct statistical analysis for research purposes.

Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Europe

This module will provide students with an interactive introduction to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship and innovation management in a European context.

The module introduces strategies to assess the potential of a new business concept and thus improve the likely success of high-impact ventures. It covers methods for analysing, specifying, designing, and launching high-impact initiatives along with the knowledge and skills required to prepare a financial plan for a new business venture.

As well, the module approaches innovation as a core business imperative and appropriate management as an essential element to business success. Participants will be introduced to an overview of critical issues and skills necessary to not only manage innovation within existing companies but to foster an open-innovation environment that encourages innovation across organisational boundaries.

This module is offered in London only. Students intending to take or who have taken the module MSINGC16 Chinese and Global Entrepreneurship offered in Beijing cannot take this module.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing techniques have become a dominant force in marketing and marketing communications for the modern organization. This module will look at how organizations are approaching the shift to digital and omnichannel marketing, working across multiple media channels, and utilizing new engagement methods. This includes a focus on empowered consumers, digital consumer journey experiences, generating marketing insight, measuring impact and building and protecting brands in the digital age.

Behavioural Science

Influence and Negotiations

This module explores negotiation, which is the science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties, and it is a part of our everyday lives. The primary goal of this course is to provide students with the fundamentals of effective negotiation and communication. The core concepts presented in the course will help them develop wiser decision-making strategies under pressure, a more systematic framework to prepare for and execute negotiations, and greater facility in approaches for creating and capturing value in negotiation.

Managing across Cultures

This module considers the issues and problems of leading and managing in different cultures, in particular the 'people problems' that invariably arise in international business relationships. Failure on the part of managers to appreciate and deal with the differences in attitudes, values, and behaviour of those with whom they interact in international business consistently has been shown to be a major source of difficulties. 12 The modules involves marrying theories and concepts from the broad fields of 'culture' and 'international business' and applying them to problems typically confronted by leaders and managers involved in international business.

Entrepreneurship

This module introduces students to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship by looking at how opportunity arises within the rapidly-changing patterns of global value creation. It takes as its premise the idea that entrepreneurs are made, not born; most people have choices about the behaviour they display, and therefore can learn how to launch a new high-growth venture.

Global Entrepreneurial Systems

This module will provide students with a thought-provoking perspective on changing patterns of new value creation around the world. It considers the economic and social impact of entrepreneurs, their interactions with institutions, how opportunities arise and are evaluated, and the role of social enterprise and entrepreneur philanthropy in the economic cycle. It looks at how culture - national and organisational - creates the environment to support new venture creation and manage risk around that venture. It uses case studies of some of the most globally successful ecosystems such as Silicon Valley, to explore how environment interacts with the innovation process. It will take students beyond their local known context to think of entrepreneurship in a global, connected context by understanding the drivers and constraints that arise around the world.

Emerging Business Technologies

This module explores how the emerging technologies of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Distributed Ledger Systems (DLT) are affecting our socio-economic systems.

Students will learn the backgrounds of these technologies and then explore how they are affecting business models and processes as well as disrupting industries by creating new market opportunities. Students will examine how different stakeholders are being affected and how organisations can set strategies in the face of these technologies.
The module will introduce tools and frameworks for various stakeholders to understand how to act through the framing of AI as enabling cheaper prediction and DLT as enabling cheaper value transfer.

International Business Finance

This module provides a description of the international financial environment within which multinational firms and financial institutions operate and deals with the theories and practices of international financial management. Students will discuss balance of payments, exchange rate regimes, currency derivatives, international money and capital markets, interest rates and interest rate derivatives, as well as international investment. This module will give students the ability to manage the international financial operations of a firm.

AI Practice and Ethics in Business 

This first part of the module investigates the nature of AI with a strong emphasis on real-life business situations and case studies.  The module starts from the explanation of key concepts, related technologies, and a brief history of AI.  Next, students will learn about the landscape of AI industry including its composition and drivers for competition.  The role of decision-support AI (data science) and generative AI will be explored through practical case studies.  How AI reshapes particular industries such as finance and retail will also be examined.

The second part of the module explores the regulatory and ethical principles related to the use of AI in business.  This part of the modules starts from the exploration of the potential harms and benefits caused by AI including privacy and data protection.  The ethical implications of human-AI collaboration in the workplace are then examined.  From this follows a discussion of autonomous systems and accountability for such systems.  The module finishes with the analysis of regulatory frameworks for AI and different approaches internationally.

Investment Banking

Investment Banking is a short graduate module encompassing selected topics relating to finance, from a practitioner’s perspective.

It starts off with an overview of the methods used by investment bankers and equity analysts to value companies. It then progresses to Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), which is the purview of the advisory division of an investment bank. This module looks at M&A deals from multiple perspectives: the acquirer, the target and the adviser (investment bank). Profit opportunities arising for announced deals are also looked at from the perspective of hedge fund risk arbitrageurs.

While the module will include some merger-related research, the focus is on a numerical or valuation approach to deals. The tools used are like those used at top investment banks’ advisory divisions.

The module also looks at the initial public offering (IPO) process primarily from a valuation and pricing perspectives. The module concludes with a short discussion of the IPO process.

Design Thinking for Business

This module teaches students how to use principles of design thinking to reason in sophisticated and persuasive ways about the practice of strategic analysis. This module is neither a business nor a corporate strategy course—instead, it should be thought of as a critical thinking module taught using strategy as a context. 10 In an increasingly uncertain business environment, leaders cannot be effective strategists solely by learning a series of strategy frameworks for single businesses and for corporate entities comprising multiple businesses (which is the function of conventional modules teaching business and corporate strategy respectively)—they must also understand how to reason about these frameworks in sophisticated ways and think about them in relation to the kinds of data needed to design good strategy. Most importantly, they must be able to make persuasive arguments about strategic decisions. This module complements conventional business and corporate strategy courses by emphasizing and giving students experience in using critical thinking, rigorous argument, and use of evidence in the context of thinking through, selecting, and communicating strategy effectively. Students in this course will begin by learning how to use design thinking to supplement conventional strategy in uncertain environments or entrepreneurial ventures. Students will then apply these strategic thinking tools through interactive in-class case analyses and a written strategic analysis on an organization of their choice.

Digital Transformation of Industries, Ecosystems, and Firm Strategies

Organisations are increasingly engaging in a digitally enabled business environment where digital platforms and ecosystems play significant roles while transforming traditional industries. Admitting the transformative power of digitalisation, managers should not uncritically accept rhetorical narratives, myths, and anecdotes that prevail. This module is designed with an inter‐disciplinary approach to demystify digitalisation by helping students establish a systemic and critical understanding of the digitalised dimension of the contemporary business environment.

Leadership in the AI Era - Comprehensive Business Simulation Management

The Management Sandbox + AI course adopts a group-based simulation format where each team starts from obtaining market information, analyzing business environment, discussing business policies, researching and designing products, discussing operational plans, signing sales contracts, organizing production operations, sales market confirmation, organizing financial accounting, summarizing reflection and review, and other aspects of business operations. Through reflecting on their own strengths and weaknesses, participants will gain deep insights into the core concepts of team management and effectively accelerate the growth of newly promoted management cadres into competent comprehensive managers, adapting to challenges and opportunities in intelligent transformation.

Marketing in China

The objective of this course is to learn the systematic framework of product and brand marketing management through theories and cases, and to find out the essence behind appearance. The course covers a number of cases that relate to Chinese companies and goes through their success and failure experience in the marketing practices in China. It will also investigate the problems that need to be paid attention to and the reasons behind them in a context of social, economic and cultural traditions and status quo. Based on the above studies, this course also introduces some general information about marketing development in the internet and big data era.

National Development Lecture Series

This course is aimed at setting up a platform for participants to interact with distinguished professors at the National School of Development, helping them develop a better comprehension of the current economic and social developments in China. The series will cover a wide range of topics, pooling the academic specialties of prominent scholars in their respective areas, such as economic restructuring, medical reform, monetary policy, etc. The lecture series is expected to enhance students’ insights, expand their horizon and inspire their independent thinking.