Professional Core Courses
Introduction to Marketing
This course introduces students to various key aspects of marking as a scientific discipline. The course is organized around thirteen topics including the history of marking, understanding markets, consumer behaviour and market research. These topics serve as a solid foundation for marking modules in the second and third year and support work placement actvities for students who take this route. This first-year marking course is also aimed at developing thoughtful, critical students, who might be new to marking, but who have, by the end of the academic year, a marking knowledge that extends well beyond the ‘introductory’ level.
Statistical Methods for Business
The course introduces statistical methods to support quantitative decision analysis for solving business problems. Topics covered include descriptive statistics, probability, discrete and continuous random variables, sample and sampling distribution, confidential intervals, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, regression analysis. The course does not dwell on the details of computation, its main focus is on understanding a few deep concepts and interpreting data and statistical results.
Business and Management II: Strategic Management
Strategic Management is about making distinctive choices concerning the direction and scope of the organization over the long term, in order to enhance its ability to create value and improve its prospects for organizational survival and growth.
In a complex and turbulent environment, with rapid economic, regulatory, and technological changes, strategizing – the art of processing complex information thoughtfully and creatively and the ability to convince others of your analysis and recommendations – is a critical skill to acquire. These skills affect not only the short-term financial health, but also the long-term survival of a firm – and have implications for a broad range of organizational stakeholders.
The goal of this module is to provide you with an understanding of strategy that will enable you to discuss real-life business activities within a framework of contemporary strategic management thinking. This module is designed to encourage you to develop a personal and distinctive understanding and appreciation of strategizing for different industries and in uncertain environments, through lectures, case analyses and class discussions.
Rethinking Leadership
It is often argued that “more effective leadership” is a key way to improve organizational performance. Yet, it is also increasingly evident that traditional understandings of what constitutes leadership - heroic and transformational models - have not lived up to their promise. Against this background, CNMNGT 320 seeks to re-think leadership dynamics by exploring the strengths and weaknesses of various primary perspectives on leadership. In particular, the course addresses heroic, post-heroic and critical approaches and explores important but neglected issues such as proactive followership, culture and context, power and control, resistance and conformity and identity and insecurity. The course is designed to rethink leadership dynamics in ways that critically examine their facilitators and challenges in organizations and societies.
Management in the 21st Century
This course explores the main challenges for management and business in the 21st Century. The main aim is for you to understand the place of management and business in contemporary society and in our lives. This means that we will be describing management and business in different ways than you are accustomed to from the separate disciplines you have studied so far. The purpose is to develop a synthetic image of how management and business have become central in global, organizational and personal terms. We are not raising problems in a way that leads to us teaching you our own technical models or solutions.
Ethical Responsibility in Business
The objective of this module is to attempt to develop moral sensibility and practical reasoning in the context of managerial everyday action in organizations. The module will be concerned with morality in action, as it happens, rather than a removed reflection on codes and principles of ethics and CSR (corporate social responsibility). The module will aim to show that ethics and CSR in action is diffused and difficult. Nevertheless, managers and employees have a responsibility to ‘work it out’ for themselves. It is this ‘how to work it out’ that the module will keep as its focus. Managers and employees must eventually make a choice and not only do they have to justify this choice but also respect that others may have a different perspective. The module will use a number of case studies as a basis to develop this moral sensibility so that managers will be able to act in a morally appropriate manner as part of their ongoing organizational practice.
Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship
The module will develop an introductory understanding of entrepreneurship and introduce you to experience a range of entrepreneurial skills (creativity, accessing resources, building networks and creating value) to enable you to understand what it means to be entrepreneurial. These skills will be transferable to many contexts, whether you wish to open your own business, be entrepreneurial in your career, or for working within Government or social enterprises. The module will also help you to develop more general skills such as communication, presentation and writing. In addition, you will also build key skills in reflecting on your own practice.
Other professional courses
Introduction to Operations Management
Operations management is found in all kinds of organization, from private sector manufacturing firms through to public sector services. It is about the capability to organize all of the activities needed in the production of goods and the delivery of services in a world of intense competition. It is a core managerial discipline and of particular relevance to students in the Management School.
Part of this subject is analytical: being able to formalize, measure and understand operations management problems, such as congestion, under-capacity, and operational failure. Part of it is constructive: being able to plan and design production and service processes. The course reflects this combination, and includes both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Statistics and Computing for Management
Understanding of data and uncertainty is an essential basis for sound decision making in any organization. The main aim of this module is to teach statistical and data analysis skills to deal with data and uncertainty in a management and business context. This course along with MSCI 212 next year will teach a wide range of business analytics techniques. As well as covering the techniques, we will discuss when and how to apply them, and common pitfalls. This will hopefully enable you to challenge and spot problems in data analysis in various contexts such as organizational data, government statistics, and media news reports. The module will also include some computing skills, in particular the use of Excel. The module is available to students on specific majors at Part I and is taught during the Michaelmas term in weeks 1 to 10. The skills taught are widely used and are absolutely essential for many careers such as accountant, management consultant, business analyst, economist, operational researcher, specialist consultant. They are also very valuable for running any business from small start-up to multi-national.
Accounting Information Systems and Auditing
This 15-credit course is designed to provide in-depth exposure to the basic areas of accounting information systems and auditing and to develop competencies in the practical application of these areas of expertise. This course is compulsory for some AcF degrees and optional within a range of other degree programmes. It is intended to provide an introduction to, and an overview of, the design and main features of Accounting Information Systems (AIS), and the use of such systems in the conduct of an audit, and also coverage of some basic concepts and practices in auditing.
Principles of Financial Accounting
This 15 credit course is designed to extend students’ knowledge of the environment within which businesses, particularly companies, in the U.K. conduct their financial accounting and reporting, introduce selected issues relating to regulation and monitoring and consider aspects of the theory and practice relating to financial reporting. Whilst the course examines certain technical aspects of the accounting process, it also aims to broaden the course participants’ outlook to enable them to appreciate the principles guiding the regulation of financial reporting, and the role of external financial reporting in the efficient allocation of economic resources.
Forming part of the Department’s financial accounting stream, the course requires the prior study of introductory financial accounting (AcF 100 or AcF 111/261 at Lancaster or equivalent) and leads on to advanced courses such as AcF 301 and 311. It is compulsory for the degrees in Accounting and Finance; Accounting and Management; Finance and Management Studies; Accounting and Economics; Accounting, Finance and Mathematics; and Accounting, Finance and Computer Science, and is optional for other AcF and LUMS (and other) degrees.
Business and Management: An Introduction to Theory and Practice
This course is a basic introduction to some of the key theories of management and leadership. It does not require any prior knowledge of the topic by students. All of the topics chosen for study will be explored in more depth in the final year modules. Since management and leadership and its many constituent theories have an impact upon all of our lives, the course encourages you to critically reflect upon the theories we introduce, and, more especially, about the practice of management and leadership. Our intention is for you to go beyond just knowing a theory. The aim of the module is that you will understand the implications of its use in practice and develop the capacity to become critically reflective managers and leaders.
Introduction to Financial Accounting for Managers
The objective of this course is to introduce students with no previous knowledge of accounting to:
basic ideas and concepts underlying financial accounting,
basic techniques used in preparing accounts,
the use and interpretation of financial statements, and
an appreciation of financial accounting by companies, so that they can work effectively as future non-accounting managers with their accounting colleagues in cross-functional management teams.
Introduction to Economics for Managers
To provide an introduction to the analysis of economic issues from a business perspective, primarily for business major students. The course demonstrates the relevance of economic concepts and principles to business issues through teaching and application of introductory microeconomic theory to a range of issues affecting economic aspects of the business environment.
Marketing Research I
Marketing Research is taught over two terms. This course outline pertains to Term 1 and covers qualitative aspects of marketing research only. You will be provided with a second course outline for MKTG210 in Term 2, pertaining to quantitative aspects of marketing research.
Part one of this module, provides an overview of the decisions and stages of the marketing research process, focusing on the qualitative dimensions of marketing research. In this course, a range of qualitative research methods and study designs will be taught around eight themes; (i) Research objective setting and sampling methods, (ii) Ethical considerations (iii) Visual methods and videography, (iv) Focus groups, (v) Qualitative in-depth interviews, (vi) Qualitative analysis and writing up, (vii) Ethnography and (viii) Case studies and introduction to netnography. You will use what you have learned in this course to tackle a ‘real-life’ marketing research project.
Marketing Research II
This course introduces students to various key aspects of marketing as a scientific discipline. The course is organized around thirteen topics including the history of marketing, understanding markets, consumer behaviour and market research. These topics serve as a solid foundation for marketing modules in the second and third year and support work placement activities for students who take this route. Th is first year marketing course is also aimed at developing thoughtful, critical students, who might be new to marketing, but who have, by the end of the academic year, a marketing knowledge that extends well beyond the ‘introductory’ level.
Routes to Market
This module is a core element of the Lancaster marketing degrees and the Business Studies degree for LUC@BJTU. This module provides the opportunity for students to understand the practical challenges that marketers face with respect to the routes through which products and services are created and are made accessible to their target audiences.
Financial Accounting I
The purpose of this module is to enable students to prepare and present financial statements for business combinations (complex entities) which conform to international accounting standards and to be able to explore and evaluate some of the more complex areas of financial accounting and reporting.
Financial Accounting II
The objective of this course is to develop students’ critical evaluation of advanced financial accounting issues, and to place this within the international accounting context. The course will focus on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The course aims to provide academic perspectives on accounting issues and therefore progresses from and builds upon CnAcF212 Principles of Financial Accounting (the pre-requisite course) and CnAcF301 Financial Accounting I.
Strategic Marketing
This course aims to equip the students with specialised knowledge of strategic marketing, so that the students can tackle challenges and opportunities emerge from the market.
In part A, students will have the opportunity to acquire foundation knowledge of strategic marketing. In part B, students will have the opportunity to learn about advanced marketing strategy and management. In part C, the discussion will shift to the technology realm of strategic marketing management, which focuses on the role of artificial intelligence and robot in strategic marketing.
The module aims to equip students for a career in strategic marketing management in various industries, which may include, among others, consulting services. Additionally, the module equips students for graduate positions in strategic marketing management and related postgraduate degrees.
International Marketing
The course of International Marketing is one of the required courses for undergraduates majoring in business administration in the School of Economics and Management. It plays an important role in cultivating students' scientific vision for the world and methodology and the practical ability of international marketing of enterprises.
The main task of this course is to cultivate students' ability to analyze corporate phenomena and solve practical problems through classroom teaching, group discussion and case studies, so that students can master the key concepts, mainstream theories and analytical tools in the field of international marketing, have the knowledge base to participate in the actual management of enterprises, and support the corresponding index points in the graduation requirements.
