Objectives

The VU Master of Business Administration (MBA) program is a high-standard program that is relevant and responsive to emerging business trends. The program is designed for future managers and business leaders looking to take their career to the next level. The program will expose the participant to a solid foundation course that includes business fundamentals, tools, and models useful for making decisions.

 

MBA Program Structure

Each MBA Program course is comprised of mostly three-credit courses (48 credits in total) and is divided into two groups. With rare exceptions, MBA participants are required to follow the course sequence as shown below.

1.   The "Core Courses" provide MBA participants with a solid academic foundation.
2.   The "Concentration Courses" allow MBA participants the opportunity to develop further a specific area of interest.

The duration of the MBA course is one year and participants must successfully complete all courses. The courses are assessed by means of both coursework and examination.

It is compulsory to create a thesis to finish the MBA program. The thesis should have a strategic analysis, a report that looks at a certain issue and gives well-founded solutions. The participant needs to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research. The thesis must give data and ascertain validity. The paper length is 25,000 words.

Participants may be exempted from the Core Courses based upon undergraduate major and courses taken at other learning institutions. The Core Courses provide essential tools for the Concentration Courses.

MBA Core Courses

MBA Concentration Courses

Course Description

GBME500-GBIT500

This course applies microeconomic analysis to decision methods of businesses or other management units, the science of directing scarce resources to manage costs effectively. Understanding consists of three branches: competitive markets, market power, and imperfect markets.

This course concerns a branch of economics with resource allocation as well as management, acquisition and investment; the systematic recording, reporting, and analysis of financial transactions of a business.

This course deals with the entire physical and strategic dimensions of conversion of material and parts inputs into final products. The span extends from plant layout and material flow to inventory holding, production lot size determination, and quality control. Issues of product packing and packaging are explored. The function has quantitative and strategic dimensions and these are included in the coverage.

This course examines the range of individual and group behavior in an organization. Topics: personality and attitudes, perception, motivation in the work setting, group and team behavior, leadership, interpersonal communication, and organizational design and culture.

This course addresses all business areas and human organization activity needed to get people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management Theory comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization.

This course examines the concepts, strategies, and applications involved with marketing. The course addresses the problem of designing and implementing the most effective mix of marketing variables to carry out the firm's objectives in its target markets. Marketing Management aims to develop the participant's skills in applying analytical methods, decision tools and marketing concepts.

This course will help participants understand and use information technology in today's competitive environment. Participants gain an understanding of information technology for management decision-making, including how to evaluate and manage technology.

GAMA510-GIIS591

1. Accounting

This course will help participants make cost-benefit choices among accounting methods and systems in support of strategic decisions and operational control. Behavioral effects of accounting systems within organizations, construction of budgets, forecasts, and estimates for new product/process costs are part of the curriculum.

This course builds skills in analyzing and interpreting income statements, balance sheets and statements of cash flows for the guidance of managers, shareholders, and creditors. The curriculum also focuses on the topics of liquidity and related short-term debt-paying ability, long-term debt capacity and profitability.

This course examines the fundamental legal concepts and principles that affect a business in a variety of functional and regulatory environments. Emphasis is on the application of legal principles through the case method approach. Key legal concepts relating to transactional aspects of business are discussed.

This course examines cost accounting issues in organizations and the use of cost data to support managerial decisions and measure performance. Traditional as well as state-of-the-art concepts and approaches to the measurement and use of cost data are illustrated.

This course provides participants with an understanding of the fundamental concepts of modern finance from an analytical and quantitative perspective and serves as a foundation course for further work in finance. The course emphasizes valuation, capital budgeting decisions, capital structure and dividend decisions.

2. Finance

This course examines the fundamental legal concepts and principles that affect a business in a variety of functional and regulatory environments. Emphasis is on the application of legal principles through the case method approach. Key legal concepts relating to transactional aspects of business are discussed.

This course provides participants with a clear understanding of the important role that quantitative methods play a modern decision-making process. The course introduces quantitative techniques and tools that are relevant to intelligent decision-making and explains how they work. The course emphasizes how decision-makers can apply these methods to business problems.

This course studies the role of money in an economy and examines monetary policy and tools by investigating the relationships between money supply and interest rates, inflation and business cycles. The course explains how financial institutions and markets work, as these institutions involve huge flows of funds throughout the economy, affecting thus production of goods and services, employment and profit.

This course follows an in-depth examination of the functions of financial markets. Participants will study monetary theory and policy. Other major topics include debt security markets and commercial bank operations, domestic and international.

This course provides an examination of the role of commercial banking in the economy and advanced theoretical and applied analysis of commercial bank management.

3. Management

This course examines the fundamental legal concepts and principles that affect a business in a variety of functional and regulatory environments. Emphasis is on the application of legal principles through the case method approach. Key legal concepts relating to transactional aspects of business are discussed.

This course is concerned with the long-term direction and performance of the whole organization. Contemporary theories of excellence in management and leadership will be studied. It examines organizations from the ‘‘strategic management'' perspective of top management. The concepts and skills presented are applicable at all levels of management and to the variety of roles leaders, executives, and managers fill.

This course provides participants with a clear understanding of the important role that quantitative methods play a modern decision-making process. The course introduces quantitative techniques and tools that are relevant to intelligent decision-making and explains how they work. The course emphasizes how decision-makers can apply these methods to business problems.

This course introduces key concepts and techniques that managers need to know in order to best attract, retain and develop skilled personnel, based on current practice and theory in human resources management. Legal and ethical considerations in human resource management are also emphasized.

This course is designed to trace the entrepreneurial process from the initial business idea to the harvest. It is organized into four parts: entrepreneurial process, evaluating opportunity and developing the concept, assessing and acquiring resources and managing and harvesting the venture.

4. Marketing

This course builds skills in analyzing and interpreting income statements, balance sheets and statements of cash flows for the guidance of managers, shareholders, and creditors. This course also focuses on the topics of liquidity and related short-term debt-paying ability, long-term debt capacity and profitability.

This course examines the fundamental legal concepts and principles that affect a business in a variety of functional and regulatory environments. Emphasis is on the application of legal principles through the case method approach. Key legal concepts relating to transactional aspects of business are discussed.

This course examines the role of communication, message design and economic and financial factors in the development of a sales promotion campaign.

This course uses the consumer decision model as a framework of analysis of why and how goods and services are bought and consumed. This course also explores the impact of consumer behavior and attitudes on the firm's marketing strategies.

This course addresses the problem of designing and implementing the most effective mix of marketing variables to carry out the firm's objectives in its target markets. Specifically, this course aims to develop the participant's skills in applying analytical methods, decision tools and marketing concepts to problems of product offering, customer service, sales promotion, intermediary network and pricing.

5. Project Management

This course examines the fundamental legal concepts and principles that affect a business in a variety of functional and regulatory environments. Emphasis is on the application of legal principles through the case method approach. Key legal concepts relating to transactional aspects of business are discussed.

This course introduces prerequisite knowledge for all project management courses. This course provides the intellectual and normative basis for the establishment of project management as a specialization.

This course emphasizes the phases of project management processes and their interrelatedness and includes management techniques, budgetary considerations in projects, life cycle planning, and issues in projects, and performance criteria development in contracting and project planning.

This course focuses on the utilization of management tools in managing and controlling projects and the integration of projects into the larger corporate financial structure. Topics and tools include Gantt, PERT, CPM, earned value techniques, material and planning and control, present value analysis, contingency considerations, and off-the-shelf hardware/software issues.

This course deals with the efforts taken to minimize risk within the context of the project life cycle. Topics and areas for analysis include impact analysis, statistical applications, and models, role of quality processes in mitigating risk factors, international commerce demands, and economic considerations in project management.

6. Strategy and Leadership Development

This course focuses on finding and developing unique opportunities to create value by enabling a provocative and creative dialogue among people who can affect a company's direction; a way of understanding the fundamental drivers of a business and rigorously challenging conventional thinking. Good strategic thinking uncovers potential opportunities for creating value and challenges assumptions about a company's value proposition, so that when the plan is created, it targets these opportunities.

This course covers financial statement analysis, corporate governance, business performance measurement, and budgetary control. It involves diagnostic analysis for assessing liquidity, solvency, profitability, operating efficiency and capital market performance of a business entity across time and space. This leads to the systems and mechanisms of corporate governance as evidenced by the role of boards, institutional investors, transparency, and performance measurement.

This course consists of transactions that are devised and carried out across national borders to satisfy the objectives of individuals, companies, and organizations. Primary types of international business are import-export trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). The latter is carried out in varied forms, including wholly owned subsidiaries and joint ventures. Additional types of international business are licensing, franchising, and management contracts.

This course will be examined from three perspectives: (1) customer-business, (2) business-business, and (3) intra-organization. The Internet, intranets, and extranets, electronic data interchange (EDI), security electronic payment systems, tax issues and global policy will be investigated.

7. Information Technology Management

This course exposes participants to the aspects of technological and operational issues. Participants will be able to appreciate the importance of operation as a competitive weapon and will be able to apply operational improvement. Participants will also be exposed to the concepts and techniques that allow managers to organize thorough planning in facing competitors and capitalizing on market opportunities.

This course will be examined from three perspectives: (1) customer-business, (2) business-business, and (3) intra-organization. The Internet, intranets, and extranets, electronic data interchange (EDI), security electronic payment systems, tax issues and global policy will be investigated.

This course discusses both the technical and managerial issues related to the acquisition, deployment, evaluation, and evolution of organizational and inter-organizational information systems. It provides an exposure to decision support systems, e-business, knowledge management, enterprise resource planning, database, and data warehousing technologies, telecommunications, and Internet technology and applications.

Business intelligence is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. This course provides an overview of how companies can deploy Business Intelligence initiatives to improve efficiency, productivity, and revenues in any business function. The course includes an overview of major BI vendors and software solutions.

Behind the development and design of this course is to know how to design, manipulate, and manage databases. The course participants are exposed to various forms, types and models of database systems to enable them to make viable choices. The ultimate aim is to encourage the usage of database management systems for effective data management.

8. Human Resources Management

This course introduces key concepts and techniques that managers need to know in order to best attract, retain and develop skilled personnel, based on current practice and theory in human resources management. Legal and ethical considerations in human resource management are also emphasized.

This course examines the critical success factors of managing organizational change and process innovation in multidisciplinary subject areas such as marketing, operations management, product and process design, business process reengineering, management accounting, finance, and administration. The course is intended to develop an understanding of change and its impact on the organization as well as the people in the work place.

This course begins with a broad survey of modern macro-economic theory and will introduce economics of labor. Most of the course will focus on economic approaches to the various topics within the field of Human Resources Management.

This course provides an important overview of critical issues and concepts in employee and labor relations, involving the employer-employee relationship. Topics include labor law, collective bargaining, administration of the collective bargaining agreement, mediation and arbitration, and grievance and discipline procedures.

This course examines the fundamental legal concepts and principles that affect a business in a variety of functional and regulatory environments. Emphasis is on the application of legal principles through the case method approach. Key legal concepts relating to transactional aspects of business are discussed.

9. Banking, Finance, and Insurance

This course focuses on the conceptual foundations of banking and credit markets, including the theory of financial intermediation, spot and forward lending, securitization and other lending techniques, deposit contracts and insurance and international banking.

This course provides participants with a clear understanding of the important role that quantitative methods play a modern decision-making process. The course introduces quantitative techniques and tools that are relevant to intelligent decision-making and explains how they work. The course emphasizes how decision-makers can apply these methods to business problems.

This course studies the role of money in an economy. Participants will examine monetary policy and tools by investigating the relationships between money supply and interest rates, inflation and business cycles and explain how financial institutions and markets work, as these institutions involve huge flows of funds throughout the economy, affecting thus production of goods and services, employment and profit.

This course follows an in-depth examination of the functions of financial markets. Participants will study monetary theory and policy. Other major topics include debt security markets and commercial bank operations, domestic and international.

This course is an introduction to risk management and insurance. This course surveys various risks and policy options including homeowners, auto, fire, marine, liability, life, health, employee benefits, social and business.

10. Hospitality Management

This course focuses on the management of products and services at hotels, resorts, and other venues that hold group meetings. The aim of this course is to help participants understand, gain knowledge, and develop an appreciation of the multifaceted elements of hospitality management by exploring all aspects of the field. Topics include business ethics, franchising, management contracts, and areas of management responsibility such as human resources, marketing and sales, and advertising.

This course will provide the scope and complexity of the industry. The course covers key hospitality issues, management definitions, and career opportunities available in restaurants, hotels, beverages operations, casinos, theme venues, entertainment centers, cruise lines, and countless other hospitality and tourism businesses.

This course covers the legal and regulatory requirements as found in most gaming jurisdictions in Europe. Of particular interest will be regulatory and legal issues. Security is discussed in the context of assuring that all legal and regulatory requirements are being faithfully fulfilled.

This course explores themes and developments like the growth in long haul travel and issues relating to globalization, providing high quality customer service through organizational excellence, increasing market competition and the importance of good leadership and entrepreneurship.

This course discusses both the technical and managerial issues related to the acquisition, deployment, evaluation, and evolution of organizational and inter-organizational information systems. It provides an exposure to decision support systems, e-business, knowledge management, enterprise resource planning, database, and data warehousing technologies, telecommunications, and Internet technology and applications.

Industry Focus

VU's Industry Focus prepares participants for management positions with a high degree of responsibility in leading international companies. Participants can choose either a regional focus (e.g. Switzerland, China, South Africa) or an industry focus (creative industry, watch industry, financial industry, pharmaceutical industry). The participant will gain a deep understanding of the structure and the challenges of these industries in today's international marketplace. VU's lecturers are well connected to local, regional, and global business networks.

The Industry Analysis is a complete strategic analysis of a real, well-defined business problem or opportunity. In essence, two questions need to be answered :

• Is the company's strategy consistent with its internal strengths and weaknesses and its challenges and opportunities in its external environment?
• What changes should be made in the current strategy, and investments in resources and capabilities, to improve or sustain overall performance?

Participants will have to analyze every aspect of a company and its environment and integrate their findings into a comprehensive understanding of the company's current situation. Participants will gather information from various sources, analyze the data, develop and evaluate alternative solutions then formulate conclusions and recommendations. A high-quality analysis will have several well-supported and internally consistent recommendations that present an integrated strategic option that can be implemented by the company: recommendations need to include what can realistically be done to improve the company's performance.

Project work can be undertaken individually or by a team of 3 to 5 participants. Team project work analyzes larger projects than individual project work. The final length of the analysis is 20 pages maximum. This amount of pages does not include title, references, appendices, etc. Normally, a project lasts for about 12 weeks.

It is compulsory to create a thesis to finish the program. The thesis shows the participant's comprehension of the material studied. The participant can choose a mixture of a research-based paper, a business report, a case study or a business plan. Qualitative and quantitative research needs to be conducted. The thesis must give data and ascertain validity together with examining the importance of events.

The thesis has to be undertaken individually. The minimum length of the thesis is 25,000 words. This amount of words does not include title, references, appendices, etc. Normally, writing a thesis lasts for about 22 to 28 weeks.