Programme Curriculum
The curriculum has been designed to empower working professionals like you in making decisions. You will gain decision making confidence by solving on average 24 management practical problems rather than memorising theory to pass examinations
GMBA 6100
6 ECTS
International Management
In Module GMBA 6100 you will appreciate how your workplace is part of a larger international world. You will assess how globalisation and the great technological transformation affects your workplace today and in the foreseeable future. This will be the departure point for a discussion on strategy in Module GMBA 6200 Strategy and Transformation. Furthermore, we will challenge you to assess your abilities to communicate and negotiate across cultural borders. To appreciate the uniqueness of your home country in this global world, you will design a proposal that calls for foreign direct investment into your company.
Course units include:
- The Nature of International Business
- Cross Cultural Management
- International Business Law
GMBA 6200
10 ECTS
Strategy and Transformation
With Module GMBA 6200 we change the perspective from international environments to you as manager and your workplace, which may be an existing company, a start-up company, non-for-profit organisation, or a strategic business unit. We give you the opportunity to assess your personal management skills and those principles you apply in managing people around you. One of the reasons for success in an executive position is rooted in how you manage yourself and others. In the second part, we invite you to design strategy in a world that one cannot predict. We do this in class, and at your workplace. We look at how to successfully navigate business, specifically your workplace, in a time where digital technology and AI will change the way we have done business in the past. This is a foundational module for the MBA.
Course units include:
- Principles of effective management
- Tasks and tools of effective management
- Strategy residential
- Mastering Complexity through Navigation
GMBA 6300
10 ECTS
Finance
In Module GMBA 6300 you analyse and evaluate the performance of your company/workplace as revealed in financial and other data you are able to access. In addition to this, you evaluate your personal case’s performance including a possible investment based on the analysis of internal account data. Finally, we challenge you to plan on-going performance based on findings in your prior analysis and the residential period.
Course units include:
- Financial Accounting
- Financial Planning
- Finance residential
- Advanced Financial Planning
GMBA 6400
10 ECTS
Marketing
In Module GMBA 6400 we start with defining and analysing marketing opportunities. We guide you by answering questions like how can you develop a market for a new product or service or how to develop a new geographical market for an existing product/service? In the next step, you discover the power of marketing research regarding risk reduction associated with making marketing decisions.
The marketing residential gives you an opportunity to develop a comprehensive marketing plan for a product or service represented by you. Alternatively, you may want to take a start-up idea as a personal case and develop the marketing plan for it.
To conclude the marketing module, you have the opportunity to examine more in depth how one could go to market. This includes tackling how to best reach your customers in an economical way, sales and promotion channels, and possibly locking up key partnerships.
Course units include:
- Strategic Marketing
- Marketing Research
- Marketing residential
- Leading Marketing Innovations
GMBA 6500
10 ECTS
Human Resources
In Module GMBA 6500 you discover human resources as a strategic asset, meant to support the strategy of your company/workplace. In doing so, you have the opportunity to assess yourself as part of an ongoing employee development programme. This includes the search for options how to improve existing systems for appraisal of performance of HR.
The HR residential has been designed as a very practical workshop. We reserve time for you to introspect your leadership qualities and perspectives for personal development. As a result of academic debates on developing skills you understand why the greatest danger is not failure but being successful without understanding why.
To complete this module, we share with you what is known and what is not known about how to develop management skills and how to foster productive, healthy, satisfying, and growth-producing relationships with others in your work setting. The idea is to help you to improve your personal management competencies – to change your behaviour.
Course units include:
- Learning and Employee Development
- Appraisal and Performance of HR
- Human Resources residential
- Development of Management Skills
GMBA 6600
10 ECTS
Operations
As introduction we equip you with skills to improve your personal performance as a project manager. In the second part, we start a debate on ways operational activities support the business strategy, no matter whether you are into services or manufacturing. This discussion also looks at what is considered to be by scholars the main task of operations in times of globalisation: supply chain management.
Both, operational and supply chain management build the foundation to examine the fourth industrial revolution, which is industry 4.0 – made in Germany. The operations residential allows you to see industry 4.0 in practice and draw practical lessons for your own workplace
In last course unit, we expose you to the balanced score card approach to help your organisation translate strategy into appropriate measure to monitor success. We incorporate into this course unit much of what you have learned in strategy, finance, marketing, operations, and human resources.
Course units include:
- Project Management
- Operations Processes and Supply Chain Management
- Operations residential
- Strategic Performance Management
GMBA 6800
6 ECTS
Digital Leadership and Transformation
Students studying Module GMBA 6800 will not be promoted to become chief programmers after graduation. Rather, we like you to appreciate how digitisation and the great technology transformation will change the way how we conduct business today, and actions that need to be taken today to remain in business tomorrow.
Coming closer to graduation, we allow you to return to what you have learnt by assessing the degree to which digitisation may disrupt how you manage your workplace from an operational standpoint. In particular, you assess the sales part of your business model and integrate findings of Module 6800 into a revised strategy map.
Course units include:
- Innovation and Digital Technology
- IT and Customer Relations
- Managing IT and Strategy
GMBA 6999
20 ECTS
Master Thesis
With finalising your own research project, the Global MBA comes to an end. As experienced throughout the programme, we ask you to solve a practical management problem again, which obviously differs in scope from smaller assignments you wrote before. Important for IBR is that you will create value for you personally and/or the company that you selected as a case.
This module starts with a comprehensive research residential that guides you step by step in designing a very practical road map for your research project. Opposite to all other residential periods, the research professor works with each student on a one-on-one basis. This offers you a maximum of personal attention and guarantees that you have a very clear perspective of how to tackle your research project.
Those students that plan to continue their education at PhD level – perhaps even the Global MBA like many IBR graduates – will particularly enjoy Module 6999 as it sets a solid foundation for doing research in industry and academia.
