MBA (part-time)
Leadership and Supply Chain Management

• Business in a Global Economy

Understanding the macroeconomic framework is one of the key factors for firm success. Opening with core knowledge about macroeconomic variables each manager should know, this module will then concentrate on the international elements of macroeconomics. For instance, the role of our national saving for trade deficits or surpluses is discussed as well as international capital flows and multinational enterprises. We will close this course with an expert analysis of foreign exchange markets and the strategies how to hedge again currency fluctuations.

• Strategic Decision Making: Game Theory in Business

In many real-world setups, your success will not only depend on your own decision making, but also on the decisions of other ‘players’. Players may be competing firms, bidders in an auction, politicians, nations, or sportsmen. Game Theory is about understanding and analyzing problems where opponents with non-aligned interests are relevant for your success. This modern field of science does not close with the analysis of a specific problem, but also provides valuable tools for selecting strategies which are good for your outcome of a game you play.

Program Highlight

• Managing Diversity and Handling Interpersonal Conflicts

Decisions related to personnel, organization divestitures, mergers, acquisitions, new markets, etc. may entail difficult human relations issues on various levels and for various reasons. In this course you learn how to properly identify difficult human relations issues and how to deal with them constructively. Additionally, we will focus on one aspect that has great potential but also just as much risk for conflict: Diversity. We will cover the advantages and disadvantages of diversity at work, including the conditions that can render diversity a competitive advantage. Specifically, we will cover how to first build diverse workforces (spanning from demographic diversity to diversity in thoughts) and secondly how to create a culture of inclusion. 

Program highlight, interactive, reflective

• Competitive Strategy in a World of Constraints

The interplay of organizations competing in a market for customer attention leads to competition and constraints. The competition requires an understanding of the interactions of entities and the development of strategies to counter, block, or oppose the movements of competitors so that an organization can achieve its goals. You will be provided with the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to develop and critically reflect on strategies that allow your organization to compete globally.

Hot Topic

• Finance and Accounting Across Borders

In the beginning you will recapture the fundamentals of accounting such as the accounting equation. Based on this, you will learn to better understand the language of business, which is accounting. Specifically, you will be enabled to better read and interpret financial statements such as the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement. You will further get to know the most important international financial accounting standards that govern the decision-making processes of international companies.

Program Highlight

• Mastering Win/Lose & Win/Win Negotiations

You will be introduced to the wider domain of distributive (win/lose) and integrative (win/win) negotiations. Topics, among others, will include issues such as employing softball and hardball tactics, subtle psychological strategies, and counterstrategies, and crafting one's communication more deliberately including the particularities of negotiations in the online space. The win/win section draw the fine line between integrative negotiators and compromising negotiators. It will focus on how to build rapport but also concrete communication techniques to tease out interests and inspire creativity. 

Highly interactive

• Global Organization Design

Proper organization structure is necessary if a global strategy is to be effectively implemented and sustainable value created for stakeholders. This module provides you with the tools and frameworks needed to properly turn their strategies into appropriate organizational structures that not only can implement the strategy but can create long-term, sustainable value for all stakeholders.

Highly interactive

• Financial Management for Sustainable Value

The overall aim is that you will be enabled to make better business decisions based on information that stems from the planning and controlling of financial performance. Specifically, you will be equipped with a toolbox of concepts such as relevant costs, break-even analysis, net present value calculations, budgeting, and performance measurement systems. Creating sustainable value will entail that you will not only focus on financial metrics, but also understand the necessity, but also the challenges when integrating non-financial metrics into the performance measurement systems of companies.

Program highlight

• Learning Organizations

Against macro trends such as digitalization and current disruptions, organizations and individuals within organizations are challenged to build up new capabilities. Life-long learning is not only an impediment for individuals, but organizations need to continuously monitor and adjust their capabilities to stay competitive. For doing so, organizations need to move beyond formal learning by implementing informal learning formats and making continuous learning a habit throughout the organization.

You will learn why developing organizations and their employees that continuously learn from their environments is critical for organizational success in today’s complex and ever-changing world.

Hot topic

• Innovation and Sustainable New Product Development

Long-term value creation only occurs if an organization can consistently develop new and valuable products for its customers and society. Unfortunately, developing new products is a challenging endeavor fraught with many uncertainties and complexities.  

Firstly, we will address how organizations develop innovative ideas and how they bring those ideas to the market. The course will first focus on how to develop innovative products that are more sustainable through improved circularity.

Hot topic

• Voice of the Customer-Driven Marketing and Sales

You will learn in this course about what customers truly need, and how you can develop strategies and innovative ideas to fulfill those needs and do so in a manner that is both sustainable from an ongoing process perspective and from an environmental perspective. Organizations must properly market their newly developed products and services so that target customers are aware of their benefits. So, you will learn to structure your marketing mix, develop sales strategies appropriate for your products and customers, actively manage your customer relationships over time and develop awareness and branding.

Highly interactive

• Developing Personal Resilience and Well-being in Organizations

The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of personal resilience and physical as well as mental well-being in organizations. Therefore, you will also learn that not only do you need to understand how to stay resilient and healthy, but also how you can support your subordinates’ resilience and health. Additionally, we will learn relaxation techniques and how healthy work environments and work designs can be fostered in organizations.

Hot topic

• Information and Communications Technology for Supply Chain Management

In this course you will be introduced to the role of hardware and software in an organization and explore the foundations of data science and machine learning. You will be exposed to decision making using data science and analytics and we will discuss where to use data science and how to develop a strategy for your organization. Lastly a discussion on the challenges and opportunities as well as the recent field developments will take place.   

• Supply Chain Design

Large international organizations today are quite different from the businesses that operated as recently as 50 years ago. No longer do businesses manage tightly coupled, vertically integrated, operations that provide the raw materials and subassemblies necessary for the finished products or services that the organization sells. Today’s international organization outsources to numerous suppliers and subsidiary organizations the production of the raw materials and subcomponents that the organization assembles into final products and services.  

Managing highly dispersed and complex web of production and distribution requires sophisticated information systems. These technologies and systems are evolving rapidly, consequently, you will be introduced to the latest technologies and systems that are being employed to manage supply chain operations today so that the designs they develop can be managed efficiently and effectively.  

• Conducting Real-World Research

Fact based decision making requires good analytical skills. This course will prepare you for conducting research for the capstone thesis project as well as for analyzing business problems after graduation. The course comprises both aspects of data collection (with a focus on survey methods) as well as data analysis (with a focus on approaches to make use of “big data”). 

Support for your master thesis 

• Humanitarian Logistics: Operating in a Volatile World

Today’s volatile world, coupled with the impacts of global warming, has created ever-increasing demand for humanitarian response and aid. You will be introduced to the complex nature of supply chain operations in responding to humanitarian crises, how to manage supplier relationships effectively, and how to manage across organizational functions to achieve objectives that require collaboration. In addition, you will learn that the complexities and risks faced in operating in humanitarian crises are like those that an organization faces when having to respond to supply chain disruptions. The tools and techniques to operate in a resilient manner in one domain are demonstrated to be applicable to all domains through examples and discussions.  

Hot topic, simulation game 

• Cooperative Procurement and Supply Management

Purchasing and supplier management (PSM) is on the agenda of management today. Top purchasing managers have moved up to CEO positions in companies such as Apple or Volkswagen. This course includes a study of foundational and advanced approaches used in the PSM process within modern companies. You will learn how to design and implement purchasing strategies, processes, structures, and systems, and how to structure and manage supplier portfolios and buyer-supplier relationships to meet firms’ supply needs. In practice, there is an increasing emphasis on outside-in innovation from the upstream supply chain. Therefore, it will be presented how startups or entrepreneurial ventures become suppliers to established firms, respectively how established buying firms can tap the benefits offered by startup suppliers.  

• Managing Cross-Functional Operations

High-performing supply chains require extensive collaboration and coordination of various stakeholders within an organization (i.e., sales, purchasing, operations, and the executive level) as well as from the outside of the organization, i.e., to suppliers and customers. All business processes and activities should be set up in a way to achieve a well-defined overall mission and/or vision of the organization. In practice, such collaboration and coordination are very often rather complex and difficult to achieve. You will gain a comprehensive understanding of how decentral organized supply chains interact within and across organizations, and how silo-based decision-making affects the overall business performance.

Simulation game, highly interactive 

International Study Trip #1 and Leadership Reflection

You will gain insights into how supply chains, logistics operations, leadership, and business are conducted in a different context. During this visit, you will compare the approach to business, leadership, and supply chain operations with your own understanding of how these areas are managed in your home country.

Program highlight, interactive, reflective

Includes a practical day with outstanding industry experts on relevant logistics and management topics, as well as an international study trip focusing on management education and leadership.

• Creating Impact with Supply Chain Management

General managers who delegate their oversight of operations to “technical experts” risk doing major damage to their companies. Understanding operations means understanding processes. Not only do these processes produce the goods and services sold, but they also exist to operate the company. Every corner of the company is affected by processes. This course will first examine some of the key elements of processes, be they in either the manufacturing or the service realm or behind the scenes in company internal operations. We will then study what it takes for processes to become productive, in any kind of context.

• Lean Management: Increasing Operations Value

The day-to-day operation of the logistics and supply chain functions in a modern international company requires a sophisticated understanding of not only the underlying execution processes of the operations but of the impact of these operations on the environment.  

This course will provide you with the skills to lead, implement and operate lean and efficient logistics operations. To help you lead the change efforts required to enable their organization’s operations to sustainably provide value to customers and society, the course will introduce you to processes, frameworks, and tools that motivate individuals to change and that enable you to effectively lead these efforts.  

Virtual reality  

• Leading Through Organizational Change & Motivating People

In a VUCA world, change is inevitable. However, strategic change initiatives that may look good on paper, often prove to be a Herculean task in practice. In this course, we cover the principles of change management from a behavioral point of view. Additionally, participants will be introduced to the fundamentals of human motivation. In doing so, participants will start on their journey to understand what motivates them at work and why anyone should follow their leadership. These insights will then be used to strengthen motivational messages tailored to respective audiences.  

Reflective, highly interactive 

International Study Trip #2 and Leadership Reflection

On the second international study trip, participants will gain insights into how supply chains, logistics operations, leadership, and business are conducted in an international context. During this visit, participants will compare different approaches to business, leadership, and supply chain operations with their own knowledge of how these areas are managed in their home countries.

Program highlight, interactive, reflective 

• Transportation Management

The lecture aims to give insights on some key challenges in Transport Management. It will first deliver an overview on latest developments looking at sectoral/statistical reports and discussing new innovations and business models in the market. We will then dive into the traditional mode choice discussion using an interactive case study on intermodal transport. The next part then covers transport costs which are driven by Economies of Scale. A simulation will provide an understanding why collaboration and cost sharing is a challenging task in this context. Finally, we will discuss regulation, which traditionally is important in this sector, especially in times where sustainability becomes important for society. A case study on regulation in the (rail) network industry will make this tangible.  

Simulation game 

• Intelligence Business Process Automation

You will be introduced to the fundamentals of AI and robotic process automation. Firstly, with a discussion on how intelligent robotic automation is transforming work processes and businesses. We will then dive into identifying processes ripe for automation and estimate its business value. Finally, we will discuss what are the main stages of the typical enterprise automation journey.  

Hot topic 

• Ethical and Values-Based Leadership

While being exposed to the complexities of international operations and goods movements from a management perspective is important to understand the potential ethical issues that often arise when operating across borders and cultures. You will be introduced to frameworks, tools, and techniques to understand when they are facing an ethical dilemma and how they should, could, or must respond in the face of the dilemma. The course also integrates a reflection on your own leadership style, leadership skills such as storytelling and empathetic communication and you will be encouraged to prepare a development plan based on your core values.   

Highly interactive, reflective 

The MBA Thesis is the final paper that completes the program. It is designed to demonstrate that you can work independently on a topic from your subject area using academic methods within a set period. You will be free to select a topic related to the study program or to focus on a work-related project.