Managers Academy - Module Description

Module Description

Marketing

New Product Development – Creating Value through Innovation

This unit addresses the theory and the practice of developing and launching new products, emphasizing the process of planning. Fundamental concepts are analyzed and real life cases are discussed thoroughly in an attempt to link research findings with application. Students will be exposed to strategy, concept generation, concept testing, launching and all other aspects of new product introduction. This unit provides the managerial approach to acquaint students with the steps and processes involved in product development. The steps and processes introduced apply to products and services as well as to consumer and industrial products.

Marketing Driven Strategies for Sustainable Growth

This unit aims to make students aware of the major aspects of the planning and controlling of marketing operations. It aims to locate marketing planning and control within a strategic content, to demonstrate how the available range of analytical models and techniques might be applied to marketing planning and control to produce superior marketing performance

Developing International Market Presence

Today, organizations are obliged to operate within a globalized market environment. Whether they actively participate or not, firms are subject to international influence. There is one unarguable fact – the rapid changes within the international environment, and the development of complex, external, uncontrollable factors, together with the considerable growth of global competition, have had a significant impact on an organization’s market perspective. This unit concentrates on the issues that arise during the formulation of international corporate marketing strategy. The unit will focus on the development of marketing plans for foreign countries aiming to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the international marketplace

E-Commerce and Digital Marketing

The development of E-business and Internet-based applications is one of the most striking changes affecting companies during the last two decades. It has radically changed the firms’ “modus operandi” either by adding efficiency to already existing processes or by introducing entirely new business models. This unit is designed to help students realize these changes and explores the opportunities that Internet in general and e-business in particular provide to several business functions (eg. procurement, manufacturing, marketing, distribution and customer service) with emphasis being placed on Internet marketing. It also presents the requirements for new working methods, organizational structures, and management styles.

Integrated Marketing Communications

This course focuses on integrated marketing communications. It provides the students with command of the terminology, concepts, theory, recent developments and innovations and management implications of the communication element of the marketing mix with particular focus on the elements of advertising and sales promotion. Examples and cases will be drawn from the international industry.

Managing Brands in a Changing World

This unit addresses issues that relate to the importance of brands, what they represent to consumers and alternative strategies that can be implemented by companies to manage them properly. Although brands may represent invaluable intangible assets, creating and nurturing a strong brand poses considerable challenges. The concept of brand equity can provide students a valuable perspective and a common denominator to interpret the potential effects and tradeoffs of various strategies and tactics for their brands. Strategic brand management involves the design and implementation of marketing programs and activities to build measure and manage brand equity.

Strategic Negotiations in Marketing

Negotiation is a comprehensible social process and not a mystical process in a black box; it can be analysed, understood, and modelled. Negotiation is a earnable and teachable skill. Negotiators are made, not born, and skills can be improved and relearned throughout life. As in most decision-making, the aim of effective negotiation is not simply to reach an acceptable outcome for all participants, but to create maximum value in the deal making process. The major purpose of this module is for students to gain insight into their own negotiating style and to become more effective negotiators, as well as more astute observers of this social process. This module will involve extensive use of cases, roleplays, and related participative activities, enhanced by self-review and introspection.

Public Relations Strategies and Tactics

The unit offers an in-depth study of the theory and practice of public relations. It analyzes the operation of public relations in the context of modern organizations and its impact on the various publics – internal and external. The unit will also focus on professional development on the field as well as in core issues and principles such as corporate social responsibility, media relations, planning, employee relations and consumer relations.

Management

Strategic Management for SMEs – Building Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Unlike other business units that concentrate narrowly on a particular function of business – accounting, finance, marketing, production, human resources, or information systems - strategic management is a course that integrates all these functions. It cuts across the whole spectrum of business and management. The center of attention is the SME – the industry and competitive environment in which it operates, its long-term direction and strategy, its resources and competitive capabilities and its prospects for success. The mission of the unit is to explore why good strategic management leads to good business performance, to present the basic concepts and tools of strategic analysis, and to inculcate the methods of crafting a well-conceived strategy and executing it competently.

Strategic Change Management

Change management can be viewed from two perspectives – from those implementing the change and from the recipients of change. These perspectives vary dramatically from the executive’s point of view demanding the change, to the front line employee who may be unsure why a change is even needed. In many cases at the onset of a new change, neither the executive nor the front-line employee is knowledgeable about managing change. The executives want the change to happen now; the employees are simply doing their job. Strategic change is one of the most critical and complex processes that a manager must implement. Change is critical because it is fundamental to the long-term survival and competitiveness of an organization and it is complex because of the human resource and cultural barriers that must be overcome if the change process is to be successful.

Strategic People Management

This unit will critically review the periods of dramatic HRM change that have been occurring in SouthEastern Europe and those that are still to come. By focusing in on the impact of intensified global competition, technological change, currency fluctuations, deregulation, and rapidly shifting organizations are attempting to focus more on their critical internal resources, especially people. Organizations consist of people whose actions, relationships, and attitudes shape organizational capabilities; this course will concentrate on these skills and practices as well as on the theories that help to explain and sustain their effectiveness given the dramatic shifts occurring. This unit aims to bridge the divide between key areas of organizational behavior and human resource management and focus in on how to better strategically manage people.

Developing International Market Presence

Entrepreneurship: Successfully launching and managing new ventures

This unit presents an overview of entrepreneurship and innovation both as a process and as a style of management. It examines the challenges and issues that both independent entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial managers encounter from a theoretical and practical perspective. The unit initially examines the factors that influence and support entrepreneurial activity and entrepreneurial & innovative initiatives and behaviors. It explores the entrepreneurial process with particular focus on opportunity recognition and development and the critical factors that interplay and interact during this process. Further, it presents a framework through which new ventures and growth firms can create entrepreneurial organizational systems, structures and cultures.

Financial and Management Accounting for Strategic Decisions

Accounting information is a critical instrument in presenting a firm’s financial picture to external and internal groups or users for the sole purpose of enhancing the decision making process. This unit focuses on the understanding and the interpretation, rather than the preparation, of the accounting information. It links theory with practical examples and case studies drawn from real life business situations in service, retail and manufacturing industries and assists future managers to read behind accounting data so as to create and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage for their company.

Strategic Negotiations in Management

Technology and Operations Management

Technology and Operations Management, is concerned with creating the products and services upon which we all depend and creating products and services is the very reason for any organization’s existence, whether that organization is large or small, manufacturing or service, for-profit or not-forprofit. Operations management is also at the centre of so many of the changes affecting the business world – changes in customer preferences, changes in supply networks brought about by internetbased technologies, and changes in the extent of environmental responsibility that we expect from companies. Promoting the creativity that will allow organizations to respond to so many changes is becoming the prime task of operations managers.

Finance

Bank Management and Financial Services

This unit focuses on the functions and management of commercial and investment banks, their role in the economy and the forces that are continuing to change them worldwide. It examines in detail issues such as consumer and commercial credit analysis, asset and liability management, liquidity management, risk management, loan policy management and capital adequacy and regulation. Furthermore, topics covered include investment banking activities, such as, raising capital, advising on mergers and acquisitions, brokerage/dealership activities, asset management and proprietary trading and investment. Finally, the main factors that might have contributed to the recent financial crisis along with potential remedial measures are assessed throughout the unit.

Financial Management

Overall the unit focuses on the principles of corporate finance such as investing in projects that yield a return greater than the minimum acceptable hurdle rate, choosing a financing mix that minimizes the hurdle rate and matches the assets being financed. Furthermore it deals with capital structure and dividend policy decisions. It also takes a practical approach to valuations of entities.

Financial Statement Analysis

Accounting information is a critical instrument in presenting a corporation's financial picture to external and internal groups or users for the sole purpose of enhancing the decision making process. The unit explains the construction of accounting information in accordance with International Accounting Standards (IAS) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), and thereafter within each section, the analysis and interpretation. It thereby encourages a critical rather than automatic acceptance of the underlying assumptions behind accounting. It links theory with practical examples and case studies based upon real life business situations in service, retail and manufacturing industries and trains future managers to read behind accounting data so as to create and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage for their company whilst complying with IAS and IFRS.

Hedging Strategies with Derivatives

This unit provides students the opportunity to understand the theoretical and practical aspects of the markets for financial futures, options and other derivatives. These instruments have become extremely popular investment tools over the past 25 years and have generated a profusion of innovative products and ideas. Derivatives have become one of the most important tools of modern finance, from both the academic and the practical standpoint. This unit focuses on the techniques for the valuation of futures and options aiming to uncover many practical aspects of their use. In particular, it defines the main kind of derivatives, shows how they are used to achieve various speculating and hedging objectives and familiarizes students with a framework for pricing derivatives.

Investment Analysis

This unit will contribute to a thorough understanding of the areas of portfolio management and security valuation and analysis. Students will familiarize themselves with the investment background and recent developments in investment theory, capital markets and asset pricing. Furthermore the will gain access to modern quantitative methods of security and portfolio valuation. Security analysis will focus on fixed income and equity. Important empirical and theoretical evidence will be examined along with practical implementation of tools and methodologies.

Modern Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments

This unit provides an advanced analysis of the role and structure of financial markets and institutions within the context of financial intermediation. This is put in perspective with recent market developments and innovations. The purpose is to describe a wide array of financial instruments available in today’s markets for investing, financing operations, and controlling the various kinds of financial risk. The main theoretical emphasis is on asymmetric information while the role of the government in financial regulation will be emphasized. Although the unit does not explicitly discuss the current financial crisis, the theories discussed provide tools with which to analyze some elements that contributed to the current crisis. Examples and cases will be drawn from the international financial system while the idiosyncratic character of the Greek financial system will be stressed.

Strategic Management of Financial Services

Unlike other business units that concentrate narrowly on a particular function of business – accounting, finance, marketing, production, human resources, or information systems - strategic management is a course that integrates all these functions. It cuts across the whole spectrum of business and management. The center of attention is the total enterprise – the industry and competitive environment in which it operates its long-term direction and strategy, its resources and competitive capabilities and its prospects for success. The mission of the unit is to explore why good strategic management leads to good business performance, to present the basic concepts and tools of strategic analysis, and to inculcate the methods of crafting a well-conceived strategy and executing it competently in the financial services environment.

The Balkan Economic Environment in Banking and Finance

In this unit, students are exposed to issues related to money and banking theory. The structure of the unit is such that students will gradually build a good background in monetary economics and become fully acquainted to controversial topics in monetary theory and stabilization policy. The main focus of the course will be on the conduct of monetary policy, as it constitutes the core of the macroeconomic framework within which banks and other financial institutions operate. Further insight will be gained through elaboration on certain important aspects in banking and finance at both European and international level.