Your MBA Curriculum
A general MBA teaches broad management concepts. KLU’s MBA is built around the operational backbone of business: supply chains and value creation. You don’t just learn strategy — you learn how to execute it across end-to-end operations, people, and systems.
Module 1: Competing Strategically in Global Business
The strategic and commercial foundations of the global enterprise. Leaders develop the capabilities to position their organizations in international markets and make decisions grounded in financial reality.
Develops strategic negotiation management within and across organizations, teaching when to deploy cooperative versus competitive tactics and leverage psychological dynamics in win–win and win–lose settings.
Analyzes competitive landscapes and response strategies to competitor moves, including understanding the constraints under which firms operate in global competition.
Develops understanding of customer needs and strategies to fulfill them. Students structure the marketing mix, develop appropriate sales strategies, and actively manage customer relationships while developing awareness and branding.
Students learn how corporate financial and accounting practices can be implemented to ensure that appropriate resources are available for the sustainability of strategies. The course develops an understanding of international financial accounting policies and how analysis tools and KPIs are used to evaluate the financial health of companies.
Module 2: Organizing and Managing the Enterprise
The architecture of the modern organization — how businesses are designed, structured, and run to deliver value consistently and adapt as conditions change.
Students learn to transform strategies into appropriate organizational structures and assess the strengths and weaknesses of different structures for effective global strategy implementation.
Covers the data science lifecycle, natural language processing, process mining, and how data science improves decision-making. Shows how process automation facilitates goods movements and documentation flow in intra- and international operations.
Students explore network design through decisions on sourcing, production, distribution, and inventory while balancing cost, service level, resilience, and sustainability. The course examines how data, digital technologies, and AI support supply chain design and enable adaptive global networks.
Emphasizes developing organizations and employees for success in complex, changing worlds. Discusses informal learning formats, continuous learning habits, learning processes, and organizational learning cultures.
Module 3: Leading People in a Global Context
The human foundations of leadership. Develops the personal and interpersonal capabilities leaders need to guide themselves and others through complex, global environments.
Demonstrates the importance of personal resilience and physical/mental well-being. Students learn resilience maintenance, subordinate support, relaxation techniques, and fostering healthy work environments and designs.
Teaches competent navigation of difficult conversations in managing people. Introduces communication tools, psychological safety, and guidelines for inclusive working environments addressing individual and systemic bias.
Immersive study trip to Vietnam exploring Southeast Asian supply chains, manufacturing, and business culture through company visits, guest lectures, and cultural experiences. Participants gain firsthand exposure to Asian logistics ecosystems and bring a global perspective back to their work.
Provides foundational understanding of global business operations and economies, macroeconomic effects on global activities, and how countries compete.
Module 4: Leading Change and Transformation
How to lead organizations through change, crisis, and disruption. Builds the judgment to make decisions under pressure and the capability to carry people through transformation.
Explores leading supply chains through crises, examining emergency operations, team mobilization under uncertainty, ethical choices in volatile contexts, and converting constraints into impact.
Focuses on implementing and leading lean, efficient operations in manufacturing and beyond, emphasizing waste elimination through detailed attention and data-driven experimentation.
Covers change management principles from a behavioral perspective and the fundamentals of human motivation to strengthen messages tailored to respective audiences.
Prepares students for fact-based decision-making and capstone thesis research. Covers data collection (with a survey methods focus) and analysis approaches for leveraging big data.
A focused day to prepare for the Master's Thesis: identifying your research question, scoping your study, and connecting with thesis supervisors. The session bridges MBA coursework into the independent research phase of the program.
Introduces frameworks and tools for identifying ethical dilemmas and determining appropriate responses. Supports reflection on leadership values and preparation of a Leadership Development Plan based on core values.
Each student selects one specialization track in Phase 3. Both tracks are 15 ECTS, run in monthly weekend blocks, and conclude with the Applied Impact Challenge presentation at the Impact Festival.
Specialization A — Digital Operations
Module 5: Designing the Digital Supply Chain
The digital backbone of modern supply chain management — how technology and data foundations reshape the design of cross-functional operations.
Introduces the latest technologies and systems managing complex, dispersed production and distribution webs, enabling efficient management of sophisticated information systems for supply chain operations.
Develops understanding of supply chain function integration comprising end-to-end business processes, with focus on avoiding silo-based decision-making affecting overall performance.
Immersive study trip to Colombia exploring Latin American logistics, supply chain innovation, and business culture through company visits, guest lectures, and cultural experiences. Participants gain firsthand exposure to emerging market logistics challenges and apply their MBA learning to a different operational context.
Teaches designing and implementing purchasing strategies, processes, structures, and systems. Emphasizes integrated supplier management frameworks balancing savings, availability, risks, disruption, innovation, and ESG standards.
Module 6: Creating Digital Impact
How to turn digital capabilities into measurable business and leadership impact, from operational resilience to future-proof organizational design.
Examines supply chain risks that have emerged in recent years, in the context of a supply chain risk management framework that aims to identify, quantify, mitigate, and monitor risks.
Examines how managerial decisions depend on the ability to integrate heterogeneous data generated across processes, systems, and organizational boundaries. Participants learn to design decision architectures, data governance mechanisms, and process improvements that enable effective data integration without over-engineering.
Requires sophisticated understanding of execution processes in modern international companies and operational impact on the environment. Students apply operations principles to practical business problems.
Introduces challenges in managing and planning transport networks, including cost structures and digital innovations. Provides sectoral overviews, discusses government regulations, and emphasizes intermodal transport strengthened by digital innovation.
Future-proofs leadership beginning with self-awareness. Students harness AI for self-reflection, decision coaching, and high-stakes conversations while rethinking organizational design and task allocation for human–AI collaboration.
Starting in the middle of the program you carry a real challenge from your own organization (or one we source for you) and work toward a structured understanding, staying with the process, identifying relevant questions applying frameworks from the curriculum and refining your thinking through conversations. The challenge culminates in a presentation at the Impact Festival, where you share your reflections and next steps alongside your MBA peers from both specializations.
Specialization B – Organizational Resilience
Module 5: Designing a Sustainable Enterprise
The strategic and business-model foundations of sustainability in operations. Integrates regulatory context, circular operations, and value creation in a sustainability-driven economy.
Participants critically reflect on corporate activities affecting and affected by the biosphere. Provides structured views on corporate sustainability focusing holistically on company roles in natural and social environments.
Explores how companies can redesign their business models to create economic, social, and environmental value simultaneously. Participants learn frameworks for identifying sustainability-driven opportunities and building business models that are both profitable and responsible.
Focuses on extending social and environmental standards beyond organizational boundaries upstream and downstream. Students design closed-loop supply chains and facilitate shifts from linear to circular economy models.
Immersive study trip to Denmark exploring Northern European leadership in sustainability, circular economy, and renewable energy through company visits, guest lectures, and cultural experiences. Participants gain firsthand exposure to one of the world's leading sustainability-driven economies and apply that lens to their own organization's challenges.
Module 6: Creating Sustainable Impact
How to translate sustainability ambition into measurable impact. Builds the leadership, innovation, and communication capabilities required for low-carbon operations and responsible business.
Examines designing and managing environmentally and socially responsible logistics and operations processes from organizational, technological, and behavioral perspectives. Discusses principles, practices, and innovative concepts for sustainable solutions with emphasis on carbon measurement and decarbonizing freight transport.
Interactive course where students experience stakeholder tensions and develop practical strategies navigating conflicting interests while driving collaborative sustainability transitions.
Teaches how organizations develop innovative ideas and bring them to market. Focuses on developing innovative, sustainable products through improved circularity rather than replaceable products.
Equips students with skills to clearly and persuasively communicate sustainability topics to customers. Blends theory with hands-on practice for crafting targeted messages, translating complex issues into customer-relevant value.
Starting in the middle of the program you carry a real challenge from your own organization (or one we source for you) and work toward a structured understanding, staying with the process, identifying relevant questions applying frameworks from the curriculum and refining your thinking through conversations. The challenge culminates in a presentation at the Impact Festival, where you share your reflections and next steps alongside your MBA peers from both specializations.
