The UCT GSB offers six MBA specialisation streams, allowing you to enhance your generalist MBA training with a set of in-demand specialised skills. This way you can tailor your degree to match your areas of interest, knowledge and unique skills. As employers are increasingly looking for a balance of generalist and specialist skills, this may increase your employability and help you define your career path.
The specialisation streams are made up of specific combinations of MBA core courses and electives. Please note that each specialisation stream has core course minimum grade requirements, so we cannot guarantee that you will be accepted into your first choice of specialisation stream. Also, due to timetabling, logistics and minimum class sizes, specific electives may not be run every year.
Management consulting skills, whether performed as a career or used as part of a managerial toolbox, are a key MBA competency. This stream focuses on the depth and breadth of knowledge and skills required for strategic business management; and those needed to become an effective management consultant.
The complexities of modern business mean that executives don’t always have the capacity or knowledge to tackle every aspect of their business. This reality has given rise to the management consulting industry which supports executives in dealing with a range of challenges whether relating to strategy development, profit enhancement, productivity improvement, organisational redesign or facing competitive threats.
The Management Consulting specialisation stream offers:
You will find this stream highly beneficial if you:
On completion of the core courses and electives in this stream, you will be able to:
Core courses
Electives
Course Convenor: Athol Williams
This stream allows students to specialise in all aspects of marketing and marketing strategy. This is valuable for those choosing a career in marketing, particularly in senior management roles, or for entrepreneurs needing the skills to grow their businesses in a competitive environment.
Businesses face increasing competition and creating and delivering customer value is an essential component for success. The Marketing Management stream will equip you to make good strategic decisions based on relevant data, strategically manage brands in the complex emerging market context and use digital marketing tools to create maximum customer value.
The Marketing Management stream offers specialised knowledge in:
You will find this stream highly beneficial if you:
On completion of the core courses and electives in this stream, you will be able to:
Core courses:
Electives:
Course convenor: Associate Professor Mignon Reyneke
An entrepreneurial mindset, whether applied to creating new business ventures or innovating within an organisation, is a critical component to success in any business context. The Innovation and Entrepreneurship stream is a future-looking specialisation that focuses on innovation and the creation and scale-up of new ventures. The overall aim is to provide excellence in the entrepreneurial process – a skill that is essential for a fast-moving environment.
The world is full of opportunities to create new firms. And in a world facing major challenges, we also need individuals who can provide solutions through new ventures. Large corporations, too, are in dire need of individuals that can lead and develop new income streams and new products and services. This stream focuses on the creation of venture opportunities, covering key components from the creation of the actual venture to the launch and establishment of the firm. It focuses on real impact and targets societies greatest challenges from a business perspective.
The Innovation and Entrepreneurship stream is research and experience based, offering:
You will find this stream highly beneficial if you:
On completion of the core courses and electives in this stream, you will be able to:
Core courses:
Course convenor: Associate Professor Mikael Samuelsson
Global businesses need ethical, responsible and self-aware leaders who are able to balance the business’ financial success with its social, environmental and ethical impact now more than ever. The Leadership and Change specialisation stream will equip you with the necessary skills to lead in times of change and disruption.
Personal resilience and self-care, complex decision-making, adaptive problem-solving, and the courage to work with imperfection are increasingly more important for high-performing organisations. You will find yourself having to make ethical decisions in ambiguous situations, working with diverse others and having to shape inclusive environments grounded in values and compassion. To succeed, you will have to hone your personal purpose alongside your ability to switch between dialogue and negotiation and leading and implementing change. It is essential to know how to manage yourself in order to manage others and, ultimately, organisations. This stream supports the personal development and maturity necessary for effective leadership.
The Leadership and Change specialisation stream offers:
You will find this stream highly beneficial if you want to be an effective leader in a complex world.
On completion of the core courses and electives in this stream, you will be able to:
Core courses:
Electives:
Course convenor: Professor Kurt April
There is a large and growing demand for managers who are able to steer complex, ever-changing and frequently disrupted business operations, particularly in emerging markets. The Operations and Supply Chain Management specialisation stream focuses on the analytical and practical skills needed to meet these challenges and find innovative ways to get services and products to the end consumer.
The advent of new types of companies, ways of working and platform businesses (such as Uber and Airbnb) have transformed traditional concepts of operations management, supply chains, customer needs and business processes. Now more than ever, organisations are looking at their operations and supply chains to survive. This stream equips business leaders in a volatile emerging market context, particularly with regards to mobilising new technologies for competitive gain.
The Operations and Supply Chain Management stream offers specialised knowledge in:
You will find this stream highly beneficial if you:
On completion of the core courses and electives in this stream, you will be able to:
This stream will prepare you for operations and supply chain management roles in diverse service and manufacturing industries.
Core courses:
Electives:
Course convenor: Associate Professor Hamieda Parker
Financial acumen is a cornerstone of an MBA graduate’s business acumen skills and is therefore a very popular area of study on the UCT GSB’s MBA programme. Many students assemble an informal stream of finance-related electives in order to build their skills so that they can enter into lucrative and impactful careers in the finance field. Thus contemporary students are increasingly demanding specific, relevant workplace skills in addition to generalist management training. Formal acknowledgment of these specialisation streams increases the value of students’ qualifications to existing employers who are increasingly looking for staff who have a balance of generalist and specialist skills.
The Corporate Finance specialisation offers specialised knowledge in:
You will find this stream highly beneficial if you:
On completion of the core courses and electives in this stream, you will be able to:
Core courses:
Electives:
Course convenor: Associate Professor Sean Gossel