Full-time MBA Electives

We daily make decisions in our professional and personal environments and sometimes, these decisions are difficult to make, whereas other times we feel confident and certain about the decision we made. A major factor that affects the decision-making process is uncertainty. How can we deal with uncertainty? Using data analytics we can make predictions that provide us with extra information that is crucial during the decision-making process. With the assistance of analytics tools we make data-informed decisions, while improving the efficiency and effectiveness of decision making processes.

The aim of this module is to introduce you to some of the most important decision making tools used in business analytics. The focus is on the application and interpretation of the tools and results and no previous experience of software coding is required. Below are some of the intendent learning outcomes:

• Develop analytical skills in structuring and analysing business decision problems
• Build analytical models for a variety of problems in a number of functional areas
• Understand usefulness and limitation of selected techniques
• Use software to generate computer solutions of the models
• Demonstrate skills in interpreting the business significance and communicating the analysis and results of business decision problems.

The course aims to equip you with the skills set you need in order to recognize financial and strategy related situations you will come across in your professional lives as advisors or managers.

You will focus on some strategic decisions made by healthy and distressed companies, particularly: raising capital from angels, venture capitalists, initial public offerings and seasoned equity offerings, corporate restructuring and bankruptcy. You will be encouraged to view these as ''real life'' situations. The course includes a presentation and discussion of the concepts but also a set of case studies. In order to extract the greatest value, you will be required to prepare and discuss the cases in class.

Learning outcomes

• Understand deal mechanics and structuring issues
• Understand the impact of financial decisions on corporate strategy
• Apply valuation skills.

To help you to understand the economic contribution that advertising can make to an organisation and the extent to which advertising can provide companies with a substantive source of differentiation.

To demonstrate what advertising communications can achieve for a company and its offerings both in the short and long term.  This entails analysing the specific financial contribution can make and more generally how advertising can influence customer choice. In particular, the course looks at the influence of branding and how advertising can contribute to building brands.

Learning outcomes

• Evaluate what advertising can (and has) achieved for a given organisation. For instance the economic contribution that advertising/branding has made to companies such as BMW and Coca-Cola.
• Understand what brands are and why branding is so important.
• How organisations can create effective advertising.
• Critically evaluate advertising campaigns against the stated objectives.
• Understand the importance of advertising in achieving differentiation, namely establishing perceived quality.

This module provides a working knowledge of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), both from a corporate strategy and investing perspective and offers the opportunity to apply these concepts through a team-based case study which simulates the key aspects of working to formulate an ESG strategy for a company. Emphasis is hands-on learning, allowing you to apply theoretical concepts to real life situations.

Content outline

The module covers ESG issues from a 360-degree perspective, exploring how expectations beyond financial returns are affecting capital market allocations and in turn influencing strategic decisions at company or project level.  Although the focus is on mature economies, considerations about emerging and frontier markets will also be covered. It alternates lectures and team work on a case study.

Learning outcomes

• Provide a rounded understanding of the complexities underpinning ESG decisions, appropriate for the level of the MBA
• Scope an ESG strategy for a company, taking into considerations also expectations and requirements of other market participants
• Analyse and solve the business case using appropriate research methodologies from different disciplines
• Apply theories and methodologies learned during the MBA
• Work as a team, using time efficiently and prioritising on the basis of the resources available and constraints of the project

Practice and theory rarely mirror each other.  Whilst students learn a lot in the classroom during core courses about theory, there is always a need to develop good practice and rehearse the theory as it is applied in reality.

This module aims to bring investment management and strategic level asset allocation into real life, encouraging you to rehearse skills that will be important in your future careers.

The course aims to bring financial theory and investment practice together. It aims to engage you in discussion about the fundamental concepts of traditional finance and challenge this against the observed behaviour of investors. 
It will explore and educate you in both how and why, in practice, different investment funds and approaches are put together and illustrate why investors should critically analyse and understand their own needs before setting their investment strategy.

Learning outcomes

• Differentiate types of investors and their liability models
• Understand different investment strategies and approaches
• Have an understanding of both major and alternative asset classes
• Understand the parts played in asset allocation by correlation and returns expectations
• Work with confidence within the investment management industry
• Consider the social and financial costs and benefits of financial decisions

Most companies believe that after careful strategy analysis and strategy formulation, they have a winning strategy. However, there is broad consensus both from practitioners and academics, that strategy execution brings its own layer of problems.

Drawing upon the latest research and best practices, the Leading Strategy Execution module takes a C-level approach toprovide the insights and tools to bridge the difficult gap between strategy formulation and strategy execution. It helps to identify hidden traps, and looks at how to balance the formal and rational aspects of strategy execution with the informal and emotional ones. By the end of the module, you will have a practical, yet academically rigorous, knowledge of the key aspects enabling, or hindering, strategy execution and will have built the confidence of leading strategy execution in action.

Some of the key learning outcomes include:

• Developing a realistic and actionable plan of execution
• State-of-the-arts insights about the hidden barriers to strategic execution and how to overcome them
• Acquire a deep understanding of how formal and informal organization interact
• Understand explicit and hidden agendas of the key stakeholders in strategy execution.

The managerial decision making elective is both reflective and challenging. It explores how you make decisions, how others may make them and how you can make better and more effective choices with those around you.

This elective focuses on you, your decision making and how you can make more valuable decisions. You will learn about the two crucial elements of effective decisions: the quality of them and the commitment to make them work. The outcome of the elective is:

• A better understanding of your current way of thinking and approaching problems
• A deeper understanding of how others make decisions and how you can influence both the process, quality and output of group decisions
• An understanding of how organisational culture, structure and nationality brings new challenges to our approach to decision making

Learning outcomes:

• To cultivate intuitive judgemental and decision making skills
• To use a wide range of performance media for business problem solving.
• A better understanding of your current way of thinking and approaching problems
• A deeper understanding of how others make decisions and how you can influence both the process, quality and output of group decisions
• An understanding of how organisational culture, structure and nationality brings new challenges to our approach to decision making

This course focuses on the topics you need to know for a world where M&A is an integral part of the strategic and financial business landscape.  It takes a global perspective, not focussed on any one market or industry although the course spends more time discussing the financial services industry.

The aim of the course is to familiarise you with various aspects of M&A in order to be able to:

• Understand the role of M&A in the life of a corporation
• Understand how to apply valuation techniques learned elsewhere
• Be familiar with the various techniques used in the different stages of a merger or an acquisition (including post-merger issues)
• Understand the alternatives to M&A

This is a multidisciplinary course that takes a general management and strategic approach to M&A, but necessarily incorporates the financial, organisational / individual behaviour and legal / regulatory aspects of M&A as well.

Learning outcomes

• Become comfortable, if not fluent, in the topic of Mergers & Acquisitions.
• Have an understanding of the blend of strategic and financial concepts applied to M&A.
• Full recognition of the impact on organisations and people of corporate restructurings.

Negotiations, both simple and complex, are a fundamental characteristic of the way “business is done”, across all sectors, cultures and markets. Success in negotiation is therefore a critical enabler of business success and value creation. But what does success mean, what factors enable / inhibit it and how can we lay the groundwork to delivering successful outcomes to complex negotiations?

The aim of this module is to provide a framework to structure the negotiation process, and a focused insight to some of the key issues – psychological, cultural and political – that underly the negotiation process.

The module will be structured around a complex case study: as part of a negotiating team, you will develop your negotiating strategy (understanding the interests & objectives of your stakeholders but also discovering / eliciting the interests & objectives of your negotiating partners, and dynamically structuring tactics to achieve the best possible outcome); you will learn how negotiation can be dysfunctional, through the biases and psychological short-cuts we bring to the table as negotiators, but also a failure to appreciate cultural nuances or to address the inherent flaws in group decision making; you will develop an appreciation of how to define and discover value, and to identify the risk that seeking the best outcome may result in a poorer overall result (the Prisoner’s Dilemma); finally, you will develop an approach that puts the emphasis on operationalizing for value, not merely negotiating a deal.

The module will be supported by 1-2 guest lecturers, sharing their practical experiences of complex negotiations and the approaches they take. We will also look at contemporary, high-profile situations to help bring the issues and principles to life.

The principal learning outcome is to provide a conceptual framework to support you as a negotiator going forward, to create a foundation for success in negotiation. This will include some exploration of your personal negotiation style to enable awareness of the inherent strengths you bring to the negotiation table, how best to deploy them and how to mitigate / develop areas for improvement – whether in a professional or personal situation (touching on the differences between acting as an “agent” versus negotiating for your own ends).

Content outline

Through several min-cases and one complex negotiation simulation case, developed through the case, supported by class discussion, we will cover the following key topics:

• A framework for negotiation – preparation, value discovery, operationalization for value creation
• Analysing the situation, identifying objectives and interests, developing negotiation strategies
• Understanding the effect of culture on negotiation
• Unconscious bias and the art of persuasion / influence
• Value discovery and the difference between value and price
• Group decision making & ethical behaviour in negotiation
• Negotiation as a Game – the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons
• Operationalization of value creation – laying the groundwork and managing the stakeholder.

The core case study is based on the lecturer’s experience and will cover the process of creating a foundation for value creation in an M&A scenario. You will work in small groups, each group representing a key stakeholder group in the process (e.g. buyside shareholders, buyside management, buyside deal team, sellside shareholders, sellside management) to explore how “win-win-win” outcomes satisfying multiple and diverse interests / objectives can (or cannot) be realized through a process of linked negotiations.

The aim of this module is to provide students with knowledge of the need for innovation and all aspects of the new venture creation process including feasibility testing, marketing financial forecasting and securing finance. At the end, the participant will be able to produce a comprehensive business plan covering the first three years of the commercialisation of their business idea.

Learning outcomes

• To understand the entrepreneurial environment
• Identify triggers and barriers to entrepreneurship
• Recognise the innovation process
• Understand the importance of small firms to the economy
• Now the appropriate business models for commercialisation of business idea
• Learn financial forecasting
• Discover sources of funding and the investment process
• Find the correct IP protection for a company
• Create a business planning process.

Private Equity is already regarded as a mainstream discipline within the investment community in North America, and is rapidly becoming so in Europe. However, it is radically different from other asset classes studied at Masters level (for example, bonds and quoted equity markets) and requires very different skills and disciplines, a knowledge of which will be essential to tomorrow’s investors.

To impart a thorough understanding of how private equity functions as an asset class, what are the different sub-classes which it contains, how its returns are earned, and how these may be measured and analysed.

Learning outcomes:

• Be able to model and analyse buyout returns
• Be able to model and analyse venture returns
• Have a thorough understanding of the drivers of returns in the different private equity categories
• Be able to segment PE funds by size, sector, stage and geography
• Know how to plan and implement a PE fund programme
• Be familiar with the main documentation used in the PE industry
• Consider the ethical implications of the PE model.

This intensive tour is designed for you to experience the challenges and opportunities presented by sustainability. Businesses are facing pressures from a variety of stakeholders – shareholders, customers, regulators, suppliers and their communities – to address the economic, environmental and social impacts of their business activities. Creating sustainable businesses and economies is one of the more pressing and urgent problems facing the world today. The aim of this module is to equip you with a comprehensive understanding of the responsibilities of a modern business organisation in relation to sustainability.

Key themes include:

• Identifying sustainable business strategies
• The future of sustainable cities
• An overview of the business opportunities to promote sustainability in cities
• The role of social enterprises and alternate organizational forms in promoting sustainability
• The role of market, state and civil society actors in promoting sustainability.

The International Symposium enables you to learn about the management, finance and cultural issues facing businesses within the Gulf Region, and Dubai in particular. This elective pulls together the theoretical learning into the business environment, providing examples of how business operates within different cultures, the regulations and issues facing start-ups as well as the broader socio-economic issues. The module will explore different business sectors such as professional services, finance, manufacturing and property.

Learning outcomes

• Use the knowledge gained to influence your own organisations in decisions regarding the region
• Understand the issues facing business within the Gulf region
• Understand the underlying reasons for success and failure of companies within the region
• Understand the socio-economic issues facing regional economies
• Be able to investigate the importance of specific industries to the region and how they will perform in the future
• Understand the importance of the region to the economic wellbeing of the broader world economy
• Realise the extent and limitations of business potential within the region
• Understand the issues facing businesses setting up and operating within the region
• Contribute to your own organisation in setting up and operating elements of their business within the region report.

This module aims to:

• Boost students’ strategic thinking about role of brands in a competitive landscape
• Gain insights into drivers of customer value, behaviour and choice, and how alignment of different stakeholders, such as employees and partners is necessary to deliver differentiated value propositions in branded customer experiences
• Become familiar with the application of world class marketing metrics in customer experience management and organisational performance
• Understand the organisational and financial drivers and challenges in the hospitality industry
• Reflect on the issues of CSR and sustainability

The Bayes MBA London Symposium looks at the economic drivers of the City as a commercial hub and its influence in international business. Benefitting from our unique location and network to create insights into how business is conducted and impacts the UK, European and the global economy. The module will mix Faculty, senior industry executives and commentators with small group site visits. You will benefit from interacting with MBA students from other Global Business Schools who have been invited to join the event.

Learning objectives and outcomes

• Learn about the financial, technological, socio-economic and cultural business environment of London
• Gain insights into the operating strategies and processes of a variety of sectors and organisations
• Apply MBA learning and skills in a reflective context to real business challenges
• Have an understanding of the drivers of the London economy and its significance within international business context
• Know how businesses succeed within London within a variety of sectors and use this knowledge to inform decision-making within the students own organisations
• Reflect upon the economic environment that supports business success.

Innovation and Technology

South Korea is known for being home to huge tech companies however it is also a vibrant home for startups and disruptive technologies. In recent years, South Korea has become the most innovative country in the world. Thanks to massive support by the Korean government and private investment activities, the Korean startup ecosystem is emerging as one of the world's most promising ecosystems for tech start-ups.

You will observe firsthand the South Korean high-tech industry and learn how entrepreneurs generate new ideas, assemble teams, start up new ventures and create successful innovative companies across multiple sectors. You will attend workshops and company visits and conduct field research on designated themes to collect primary data to use in your syndicate assignments.

The aims of this module are to expose you to a vibrant technological environment.  You will be able to explore the technological ecosystem in the different stages of business growth and development including insights not only of the entrepreneurs but also venture capitalists, government offices, technology incubators and established technology companies. You will be able to reflect on the way South Korea’s culture, environment and strategy create centres of innovation and get deeper insight of entrepreneurial challenges. You will be encouraged to reflect on the role of business and ethics in leading change and economic growth. Your ability to evaluate innovation projects and entrepreneurial ventures can benefit from understanding the implications of a geo-political context in much higher resolution than by reading news only.

This elective will allow you to sharpen your knowledge at the intersection of strategy, digital technology, innovation, entrepreneurship and policy

The elective will take place in Silicon Valley, the alma mater of digital ventures, a hot bed for innovation and the most influential place for entrepreneurship in the world. Silicon Valley is one of the engines of growth for the US economy, building revolutionary platforms for interconnected communities, instantly accessible knowledge and frictionless commerce.

The aims of the elective are to:

1. boost students understanding of the latest trends in digital strategy, digital business models, digital innovation, digital entrepreneurship
2. gain insights into the role of venture capital, business angels and other funding options to boost entrepreneurial growth
3. understand the role of policies and of the business ecosystem in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship
4. get exposure to (best) practices in innovation and innovation management

Learning outcomes

• Have a deep knowledge of the mechanisms at the intersection of digital strategy, digital business models, digital innovation, digital entrepreneurship and the wider business ecosystem
• Know how businesses succeed within Silicon Valley within a variety of sectors and use this knowledge to inform decision-making within the students own organisations
• Reflect upon the economic environment that supports business success

The course aims to equip you with the skills set you need in order to recognize financial and strategy related situations you will come across in your professional lives as advisors or managers.

You will focus on some strategic decisions made by healthy and distressed companies, particularly: raising capital from angels, venture capitalists, initial public offerings and seasoned equity offerings, corporate restructuring and bankruptcy. You will be encouraged to view these as ''real life'' situations. The course includes a presentation and discussion of the concepts but also a set of case studies. In order to extract the greatest value, you will be required to prepare and discuss the cases in class.

Learning outcomes

• Understand deal mechanics and structuring issues
• Understand the impact of financial decisions on corporate strategy
• Apply valuation skills.

Blockchain technology has the potential to transform business, from supply chain management through to lending, borrowing and payments. This module aims to provide you with a thorough grounding in the operation and capabilities of blockchain technology. You will encounter examples of how it is currently employed in a business context and where you might fruitfully employ it in your organisation.

We will begin by exploring how a blockchain works, how it relies on cryptography and how it can build trust and enable accurate record keeping without involving a third party. Building on this foundation, we will introduce cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets, and you will come to understand how they are structured and what purposes they serve.

We will then build on an understanding of smart contracts and demonstrate how these can be used to create decentralised applications, for example for borrowing or lending, on a blockchain network. Finally, we will look at the most recent developments and innovations in this space, for example, how blockchains interact.

Content outline

• Topic 1: Introduction to Blockchain Technology
• Topic 2: Fundamentals of Cryptocurrencies and Tokens
• Topic 3: Blockchain, Decentralised Protocols and Decentralised Finance (DeFi)
• Topic 4: The Decentralised Ecosystem and Emerging Trends.

How to compete in rapidly changing markets that are influenced by disruptive digital technologies?

In a world where digital technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Big-Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics Automation, Block chain – appear to be changing the competitive dynamics of industries; managers and future business leaders need to understand how to skilfully surf these waves of digital technologies – first separating weak signals from noise and then turning them as a source of momentum to gain competitive advantage!

This module focuses on four levels of analysis, each dealing with topics of competition and digital technologies. It starts with topics related to the paths individual decision-makers take to scan, try, and adopt digital technologies followed by an analysis of organisational designs to build digitally savvy enterprises. Then we discuss how organisations use technology as a competitive edge by experimenting and scaling –using lean methodology, and conclude with deep-dives in contemporary topics in digital technologies such as decision making using big-data analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation.

Learning outcomes

• To enable participants to develop skills in ‘thinking digitally’ and defining business problems for digital solutions.
• To build knowledge of the latest concepts in organisational design, managerial decision making, development of ecosystems, and establishment of digital markets.
• To enable participants to develop a working understanding of the latest disruptive digital technologies, a framework to experiment with these technologies, and current debates in the policy environment.

Modern businesses face global risks and can exploit global opportunities. In this module you will learn how to evaluate those opportunities and how to measure and manage the risks (e.g. how to perform capital budgeting in an international context, how to hedge exchange rate risk, how to exploit international financing opportunities).

As a leader in a multinational company, you will also need to understand whether exchange rate arrangements adopted by nations are robust or vulnerable to attack and whether a country’s trade deficits or external debt obligations are sustainable.

As these factors influence the likelihood of sharp exchange rate movements and receipt of promised cashflows, you will also learn how to evaluate these risks. Finally, as an international investor, you will cover issues related to portfolio management, diversification and asset allocation in an international context.

Content outline

• Topic 1: Introduction to Global Financial Systems and Markets
• Topic 2: International Financial Risk Management
• Topic 3: International Corporate Finance
• Topic 4: Global Investment Management

Learning outcomes

• Recognise and critically discuss the structure of the markets for foreign exchange, the instruments traded in those markets and the exchange rate regimes in operation globally
• Formulate corporate exchange rate risk management policies.
• Explain and compare the value of different types of derivative contracts for currency risk management
• Explain the link between exchange rates and trade balances and the link between trade balances and a country’s need for external finance
• Identify and compare international investment and financing opportunities
• Describe and analyse the costs and benefits of international portfolio allocation.

Real estate (land and structures upon it) is the biggest global store of wealth, worth more than equity and bond markets combined. It is typically the largest asset owned by a household, and on the balance sheet of a company, and the most common form of collateral for loans.

It is therefore very difficult to pursue a career in business or finance without having to deal with real estate, whether that is through the true value of real estate on the balance sheet value of a target company in a merger, the credit risk of a bank with a large exposure to property loans, or the impact of property cycles on an emerging economy.

This module will equip you with knowledge of the most important aspects of real estate as an investment asset. For those who intend to work in general business and finance, it provides the basis to understand the real estate issues they are likely to encounter. For those who intend to specialise in real estate as investors, fund managers or lenders, the module will serve as the foundation for further development.

Course outline

The course covers four key topics in real estate and builds on your previous learning:

• Cash flows, asset pricing and appraisal
• Investment performance and role in the multi-asset portfolio
• Real estate market analysis, the real estate cycle
• Real estate portfolios and investment vehicles.

Through the lens of different sectors, this module presents the leadership implications of AI and industry 4.0. It is designed to help students understand the significant macroeconomic trends and its implications on industry. It focuses on the emerging leadership skills, competencies, and knowledge that are required to thrive in Industry 4.0 that is driven by AI-based systems.

The module is self-contained, but it relies on information delivered in the core modules on Technologies and Innovation and Strategy. No prior experience with AI or Machine Learning is required. The teaching material is based on use cases that are updated every year and some examples may include the following industries; finance, healthcare, education, manufacturing.

Learning outcomes

• To evaluate and explain the macro-trends in AI and Industry 4.0
• To assess the leadership implications
• To debate the economic implications for automation
• To create innovation strategies for organizations
• To develop a personal leadership agenda
• To evaluate and manage complex ethical and social issues
• To interpret projects from different perspectives within a business context
• Awareness about the limitations of different perspectives
• Communication approaches for various audiences.

This elective focuses on strategy implementation and specifically planned strategic change as opposed to emergent change or change that comes about in organisation due to constant realignment and organisational learning. The particular aim is to explore organisations which set-out to undertake a step change, either in a pro-active manner in recognition of the need for pre-emptive change given potential threats that may arise in the future, or in a re-active manner in response to an immediate need, such as a direct competitive threat.

For planned strategies to become a reality, rather than dusty reports on shelves, strategists need to be able to link strategic thinking through to action. This in turn requires us to integrate the different streams of work on strategic change from a strategy and a strategic HRM perspective. With its focus on managing strategic change, the elective aims to give you an overview of different theories on strategic change, but also to introduce you to some practical frameworks that can be applied in organisations to deliver strategic change.

Learning outcomes

• Appreciation of the issues facing change agents when managing complex change
• Appreciation of the need for context sensitive approaches to strategic change rather than the application of simplistic "ten step recipes"
• Understanding and practical grasp of tools and frameworks that can help with the design of context sensitive change
• Understanding of the issues involved in transition management
• Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses as a Change Leader
• Appreciation of the skills required of change agents if they are to deliver change successfully.

The aim of this module is to provide students with knowledge of the need for innovation and all aspects of the new venture creation process including feasibility testing, marketing financial forecasting and securing finance. At the end, the participant will be able to produce a comprehensive business plan covering the first three years of the commercialisation of their business idea.

Learning outcomes

• To understand the entrepreneurial environment
• Identify triggers and barriers to entrepreneurship
• Recognise the innovation process
• Understand the importance of small firms to the economy
• Now the appropriate business models for commercialisation of business idea
• Learn financial forecasting
• Discover sources of funding and the investment process
• Find the correct IP protection for a company
• Create a business planning process.

Data science tools are increasingly regarded as a lever to achieve a competitive advantage position. However, the adoption of these tools poses peculiar challenges to business leaders, who need to connect established strategic analysis frameworks, with a solid understanding of the data science approach.

This module helps business leaders in mobilising modern data science tools in order to explore, evaluate, and communicate strategic courses of actions. This is possible by adopting a practical, problem-solving stance. Particularly, participants will be exposed to (i) concrete examples that illustrate how to integrate strategic analysis and data science tools; and (ii) a library of concrete business cases.

The entire module is delivered in a powerful, point-and-click data science software (e.g., Exploratory-R).

Learning outcomes

• Assess the challenges and limitations of analytics tools
• Capture the essential features of adopting analytics methodologies during the digital transformation process
• Assess the effectiveness of communicating the implementation of strategic decisions
• Create innovative strategies to create digital competition advance
• Formulate corporate strategies to integrate data science tools into business processes
• Evaluate and manage complex ethical and social issues when adopting analytics tools
• Communicate the analytics-based strategical decisions to various audiences