EXECUTIVE MBA
FURTHER YOUR EXECUTIVE POTENTIAL
ALLOW NEW POSSIBILITIES TO EMERGE
EMBA CURRICULUM
Five courses and a minor dissertation Technical skill alone is no longer enough for those at the top. The Executive MBA programme at the UCT GSB works with emerging areas of scholarship to equip leaders and executives with the necessary soft skills and organising principles to enable you to build resilience and make better decisions. The interactive nature of the programme requires you to attend
Systemic Executive Practice
This first course enables you to start the construction of a conceptual framework for systemic management practice, which subsequent courses will develop further. The learning processes and projects are designed to introduce and embed systemic practices in your own management practice.
Managing for Shareholder Value
In this course you will explore opportunities for future value creation. The course integrates key concepts from the fields of economics, finance, globalisation and entrepreneurship into a game plan. It guides the establishment of a strategic intent and identifies and organises the activities, resources, capabilities, structures and processes needed to realise this.
Managing for Customer Value
Focusing on operations, this course gives you in-depth understanding of how internal and external customer value is created in terms of quality, cost, volume and timing. The course aims to construct a cybernetic conceptual model of operations and shows you how to apply this to the value chain of the organisation and its different functions.
Designing Sustainable Business Models
This course focuses on enabling you to develop a new way of being in strategic management and leadership. By allowing you to reflect on particular experiences using relevant theoretical concepts, as well as through trying out various heuristics and thought experiments, you will begin to experiment with different ways of being that unlock new competence, agility and resilience in the workplace.
Managing for Societal Value
In this course, you broaden your focus to take in the wider socio-economic context in which business and other institutions operate. It is designed to instil an appreciation that an organisation is only as viable as the socio-economic system of which it is a part.
Research Report
In addition to coursework, students will complete a research report on an international management topic of their choice, under the supervision of a UCT GSB faculty member. This allows students to deeply explore their area of interest, conduct rigorous research, and make impactful, data-driven recommendations – all key skills that are relevant to today’s workplace.
EMBA ELECTIVES
UCT GSB Executive MBA students have the unique opportunity to do an international elective in partnership with the Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM). They can select an international elective between the EMBA Global Network weeks and the small network online courses at any one of our 32 Global Network partner schools.
Global Network (GN) Weeks give UCT GSB EMBA students the opportunity to pursue intensive study at another network school, in a focused course that leverages the perspectives, programmes, and faculty expertise of that school – tuition-free. Alongside their counterparts from elsewhere in the network, students attend classes, tour local businesses, and meet with experts focused on current business problems. The EMBA Global Network Week takes place annually in June. Each school offers a week focused on a specific topic designed to address the current challenges senior-level professionals may face in their respective fields. Topics on offer during previous EMBA Global Network Weeks can be found here.
GNAM small network online courses (SNOCs) are for-credit, elective courses offered virtually by a member school open to students from throughout the network. The courses connect students from multiple member schools online for lectures, discussions, and collaborative team projects that support the development of teamwork skills and cross-cultural perspectives. In contrast to the massive online open courses (MOOCs) offered by many institutions, in which unscreened participants have varying degrees of interest and capabilities, SNOCs enroll a select group of top-tier EMBA students engaged in a common effort to build management skills. Topics on offer during previous EMBA SNOCs can be found here.