Innovative Executive MBA Curriculum Renowned World-Wide
Bringing together the best educators in the world with the most promising managers in the region, IEDC’s Executive MBA Programs prepare you to successfully manage business in a fast-changing international environment:
- by providing you with a solid foundation in core management disciplines and helping you recognize and leverage interdependencies between different functional areas;
- by developing your ability to deal with global uncertainties and capitalize on rapidly-emerging opportunities;
- by translating and adopting the best global knowledge to the unique realities of a particular region and industry;
- by pinpointing and fostering the attitudes and traits required for effective leadership;
- by utilizing art to foster creative thinking and innovative decision-making, and
- by enhancing your team-building and interpersonal skills.
The professors employ a stimulating variety of teaching methodologies including formal lectures, case studies, team and individual presentations, role-play and negotiations, action learning, and discussions. The program uses a pragmatic and result-oriented philosophy. You will work on consulting projects and assignments related to general management, building on the knowledge and skills learned in the formal courses.
Courses
The IEDC curriculum includes three types of courses: functional courses, strategic and integrative courses, and personal and interpersonal skills courses. All courses, even the functional course, share a common general management perspective, providing you with the ”view from the top” of an organization, and preparing you for the uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change that mark the reality of a typical executive.
Functional Courses
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Helps participants become intelligent users of accounting information for decision-making. Topics may include: reading financial statements, financial accounting and reporting, capital investment decisions, cost management systems, management control systems, new management accounting tools such as Activity Based Costing, Economic Value Added and the Balanced Scorecard.
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Provides participants with the understanding and tools necessary for financial management. Course topics may include: profit decomposition, bank lending practices, financial ratio analysis, financial health assessment, financial forecasting, break-even analysis, business planning, discounted cash flow analysis, capital expenditure analysis, introduction to valuation, debt policy, corporate strategy and financial performance, dividend and capital structure policies, leveraged buyouts, financial restructuring, mergers and acquisitions.
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Leading through People provides participants with an understanding of emerging people issues and gives them the tools required to respond to those issues. Topics include: managing the HR function, building a corporate culture, selecting and hiring personnel, developing talent, compensating and motivating employees, building human capital, managing for high performance and the role of HRM in change processes.
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Introduces the participant to the effective use of information technology in business and management. This course cuts across the various functions of the organization and positions the information technology as part of strategic infrastructure, which enables the overall business success. Both the internally focused roles of IT are addressed, including management information, corporate resource planning, communications, operation streamlining etc, as well as the externally focused, in particular related to sales and marketing (B2B and B2C).
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Gives participants an analytical framework for the marketing discipline and provides them with powerful marketing tools. Topics may include: marketing mix, consumer market analysis and segmentation, brand positioning and repositioning, basic principles of pricing, the development and implementation of distribution policies, private labels, marketing communication policies, advertising and promotion, preparation of marketing budgets for brands. These topics are later taken as a starting point to address more complex strategic marketing business issues.
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Discusses another perspective on the organization: its sum of processes with a clear goal on performance maximization. A broad range of topics include: operational strategy, material planning and control systems, demand chain management, outsourcing and strategic sourcing, management of constraints, virtual organizations, the elements of lean manufacturing and quality. The course includes as a prerequisite for Transformation competence modern project management methods: planning and coordination, fending risk and uncertainty, project stakeholder management, new organizational structures and learning from projects. Although it requires higher effort, project based activity is adopted by more and more companies at the expense of perfected but rigid processes, procedures and structures. The current business environment requires constant change, which entails the need to manage projects. A trendy profession by itself, Project Management becomes a critical part of every manager’s toolbox.
Personal and Interpersonal Skills Development
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Allows you to harvest the years of practical business experience of top managers in Central and Eastern Europe via individual face-to-face mentoring sessions organized throughout the MBA program. Each participant is matched with a mentor with relevant interests, industry background, and expertise to accelerate his/her personal development.
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Course focuses on the practical issues related to leading others and oneself. Therefore it deals with topics such as the essentials of team effectiveness, team dynamics, team roles, and stages of team development. It also addresses the need to adjust personal leadership style to different situations, as well as makes the participants more aware of the need to understand and manage own priorities.
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Course is based on three interrelated themes: structuring the effective communications and in particular presentations as stream of messages, need and ability to persuade the audience, as well as use of management communications as a crisis resolution tool.
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Sessions are dedicated to individuals’ personal development through the whole program. Scheduled at the beginning and towards the end of the program they are designed to serve as reference points in assessing ones own current leadership and managerial practices, reflecting on them and offer support in designing a plan to build on strengths further and overcome weaknesses.
Electives
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Offers an opportunity for each participant to choose two courses out of a list of five to seven options, and spend more time with a topic they most are interested in. Traditionally, electives cover in-depth study of foundational courses, such as finances or marketing, or topics of strategic interests that might be interesting to a particular group, such as entrepreneurship or organizational design.
Strategic and Integrative Courses
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Course touches upon main themes of the debate on the responsibility of businesses for their social and environmental impacts, considers some of the management innovations and tools that have resulted, and invites participants to explore their own responses, both as students and as professionals.
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Introduces participants to the theory and practice of strategy and provides participants with the tools they need in their Consulting Projects. Other topics include: Consulting Process – improving management effectiveness through techniques and practices used by professional consultants; Industry Analysis – linking environment to strategy, structure, and systems; developing sustainable competitive advantage; Company Analysis – analyzing and assessing organizations; Corporate Strategy and Processes – applying strategic principles and frameworks to develop concrete recommendations and proposals.
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Is a topic of direct relevance to the participants' project work. After linking environment to strategy, structure and system, a pragmatic approach is developed to define a sustainable, competitive advantage in industries. Emphasizing consulting project principles, the course emphasizes how the effectiveness of professional management advice can be increased b rigorous and skillful application of analytical tools in the field of strategy and change management.
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Teaches participants how to maintain ethical standards, and how to apply principles of corporate governance. In addition to other leadership topics addressed through different courses throughout the Program, this course includes ethics in relation to organization’s stakeholders, rules and codes governing the relationship between an organization and its stakeholders, as well as ethical challenges faced by business leaders engaged in leading business transformations.
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Course is a collection of lectures and discussions with prominent artists and thinkers. The objective of this course is to raise awareness among the participants of arts as source of reflection, inspiration and motivation for management and creative leadership, as well as to offer fascinating parallels between the world of arts and world of business.
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Offers a different point of view to the issues of managing and leading. It is all about taking the Leadership Point of View, which means to see a situation in all its scope & complexity from the perspective of a person who would make a difference, to understand the underlying forces that affect the situation and act so to make a difference.
Art & Leadership
High speed, ever-changing circumstances, and constant demand for new solutions define business reality today. Experience and professional knowledge alone are not enough to face these challenges successfully. To constantly adapt and respond to business demands, we need a deeper source of inspiration. IEDC uses art as a platform for leadership development: it inspires exploration and enhancement of the sources of personal inspiration and creativity. At IEDC you will work with artists who are able to transmit lessons of creative leadership through art. By making artistic experiences relevant, you will be invited to think more deeply and thereby open new creative channels for innovation in an era of rapid change.
EMBA Project
The IEDC considers the EMBA Project as one of the cornerstones of the Program.
During the EMBA Program, participants will work as consultants to the top management of selected client organizations. The objectives of this project work are to enhance the practical side of the learning process, to allow participants to further internalize managerial concepts and to develop creative and applicable solutions. While the projects play an important role in the learning process, it is important to remember that projects are intended to be of real value to the client organizations.
Applying their recently acquired management concepts and skills, and working in teams, participants will conduct the EMBA Project in three stages with the ultimate goal of providing an applicable solution to the client organization. The first stage consists of an industry analysis, aimed at identifying key success factors and alternative strategies for competing in the industry. During the second stage, participants conduct a company analysis to determine the competitive position of the client organization and to identify priorities and areas of possible improvements. The third stage consists of issue analysis and implementation. During this stage, participants will develop and evaluate alternative actions and propose recommendations supported by short and medium term plans.
Participants are assigned to a project team and a client organization in the fourth module and will continue to work in their respective teams afterwards. Time is allocated for project work from the four to the last module. However, approximately five working days and several weekend days should be set aside for the EMBA Project during the breaks between modules. During the breaks, participants are encouraged to maintain contact with other members of their project team by using e-mail, telephone, fax, or video-conferencing.
Extra curricular activities
The IEDC provides participants with the opportunity to attend many optional activities: career development sessions, guest speakers, sporting events, and social events. Participants are strongly encouraged to participate in these optional activities.