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Curriculum of the Executive MBA
Two-Tier Structure
This part-time Executive MBA is structured into two tiers:
The Business Core offers essential economic and business administration expertise alongside up-to-date management and leadership tools and techniques with emphasis on the concept of responsible leadership.
Subsequently, participants choose one of the specialization options - enabling them to study a specific industry or function in depth.
To maximize the opportunities for networking, we are pooling the participants of the various specializations of the Executive MBA during the Business Core. This increases the variety of professional perspectives and the number of business contacts.
BUSINESS CORE MODULE / 30 DAYS:
Team Building
The program starts with team building, helping you to get to know your classmates, reflect on your development needs and understand how best to contribute to high-performing teams.
Self Assessment
Two weeks before the start of the Business Core, participants will be asked to complete an online self-assessment. Apart from showing a student's current strengths and weaknesses, this analysis will also be helpful later when it comes to identifying potential and possible approaches to problem solving. In addition, the self-assessment will provide a basis for reflecting on different behavior patterns, strengths and challenges, and can be used to draw conclusions about a participant's leadership behavior, social skills, behavior under stress and conflict-handling skills. A personal introduction during the first module will teach students to interpret the results and identify avenues for action. Thus, each student will be able to see how he or she grows as an executive in the course of the Business Core.
Peer Coaching
At the beginning of the Executive MBA, students will form groups of three that will stay together throughout the Business Core. The members of a group are to establish a close and trusting relationship with one another, thereby creating the basis for peer coaching: over the 6-month period, each group is to hold two or three out-of-module meetings to discuss and reflect on how much the members of the group have grown as leaders in the course of the program, allowing students to get feedback from equals whom they know well. What makes this input particularly valuable is the fact that in the day-to-day work of managers there very often is no framework for such feedback.
Managing People
Optimize individual performance management with theories and frameworks such as talent management.
Learn recruiting best practices and performance evaluation systems. Understand the foundations of a successful international career, including 360° feedback and various career coaching processes. In-depth analysis of group and team dynamics to create those conditions perfect for optimal team function. Manage cultural team diversity with emphasis on aligning people, culture, and strategy.
Managing Organizations
Comprehend the structures, processes, culture and politics of modern organizations, emphasizing change management in a global context. Study modern knowledge and innovation management by identifying new technologies and fostering corporate flexibility through organizational adaption. This modules' content includes corporate restructurings, mergers and acquisitions.
Leadership
Management is basically about getting things done through people. And we recognize today that sustainable competitive advantage comes largely through intangible assets – people and how they are managed. The goal of this course is to help participants gain a better understanding of the foundations of leadership and the dynamics of interpersonal relations, team processes, and organizations; and to help them to be more effective in leadership roles in their organizations. This entails developing knowledge and skills to analyze key issues in motivation, influence, decision-making, interpersonal relations, team processes, and organizational change.
Analysis of real-life case studies will demonstrate that effective leadership involves four critical processes: setting direction, aligning people behind it, setting and maintaining values, and growth of self and others. These leadership tasks require self-awareness and self-management, therefore this module will also provide participants with an opportunity to reflect on their leadership style, assess their personal development needs and create a personal development plan.
Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility
An introduction into the system of behaviors and rules of conduct between companies and their main stakeholders.
Gain a deeper understanding of the ethical and social responsibility of business, considering ethical challenges in the corporate world, learn to recognize enablers of ethical behavior - individuals and in organizations, responsible leadership and social entrepreneurship.
Leadership Lab
The Leadership Lab is a mostly virtual module that extends through the entire first year. It helps you understand how your learning can make a positive difference concerning various domains of leadership impact: you as an individual, your immediate social network (friends, family, community), your organization, and society. The Leadership Lab comprises online reflection "interventions" which are activities closely linked to the learning experiences and knowledge acquired in the Executive MBA modules. The interventions combine traditional and unconventional assignments, and encourage the adoption of an overall reflective and holistic perspective outside the usual boxes.
Competitive Analysis & Strategy
Implement state-of-the-art tools to assess the external and internal context of an organization and its implications for strategy on an organizational, industry-wide and international level.
Key issues include competition and collaboration, diversification and focus, strategic thinking, strategy formation and strategic change.
Controlling
Examine key controlling concepts from two perspectives: the accounting perspective, i.e. the interpretation of financial statements and traditional controlling tools based on accounting ratios (linked to the Financial Reporting module). The finance perspective, covering value-based controlling methods (linked to the Financial Management module). These two perspectives are compared and evaluated against each other. Other topics are performance measurement and a brief overview of the balanced scorecard.
Data Analysis & Decision Making
Understand the power and limitations of numerical data in decision-making processes.
Topics include the application of exploratory data analysis, applications based on the normal distribution, basic inferential and sampling procedures, regression analysis and analytical models supporting the decision-making process.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The force of ‘creative destruction’ is key to success for start-ups, companies and societies.
Understand the strategic impact of ‘the new’ in terms of marketing and organization, and the specific interdependencies between an innovation’s success and the entrepreneur initiating and driving it.
Gain vital knowledge on innovation resistance and resistance resolution.
Financial Management
Gain an overview of the major concepts in finance for national and global companies and participants in the international financial market.
Focus is placed on the valuation of various securities, the opportunity cost of capital principle and the improvement of both private and corporate investment decisions (e.g. financial mathematics, criteria of investment decision-making and capital budgeting).
Financial Reporting
Examine the fundamental principles and elements of accounting alongside procedural issues, vital in the preparation and presentation of financial statements, practical and theoretical matters in the evaluation of accounting income, inventory, fixed assets, investments, leases, and earnings management.
Global Markets
Gain a comprehensive overview of the business environment of global markets and understand the complexities of various economies around the globe - to better assess business opportunities and global market environments.
Information Systems Management
This module covers information system resources and technology management.
Participants gain insights into key information technologies and their applications (e.g. ERP, CRM, Knowledge Management Systems, e-Commerce).
Internalize the competitive advantages inherent to information technology and its related organizational and managerial implications.
Marketing Management
This module provides in-depth analysis of marketing as a discipline. This includes modern concepts and strategic marketing management tools for market-driven and customer-focused companies.
Emphasis is placed on consumer behavior, marketing research, an optimal marketing mix, and marketing & sales organizations.
Managerial Economics
This module provides a problem-orientated understanding of macroeconomic business environments.
Topics include the global monetary system, in particular the role of the dollar, the impact of current account imbalances, fluctuations of asset prices, exchange rates and commodity prices and their impact on economic performance.
Study basic concepts behind US and EU macroeconomic policy.
Operations Management
Internalize up-to-date methods for the optimal management of both production and distribution of goods and services.
Examine fundamental interdependencies between IT, operations, human resources and corporate strategy - focusing on concepts of productivity and tools for improvement, such as supply chain management and process management.
Managing People and Organizations, Leadership, Ethics & CSR
The progress made in responsible leadership is consolidated by returning to the topic at the end of the business core. Composed of three days dedicated to leadership, managing people and organizations, and ethics & CSR, respectively, it enables double-loop learning by integrating the measures presented during the Business Core and providing students with an opportunity to reflect on them together. The aim is for the individual participant to identify those measures/ideas that he or she has found most effective and to continue taking advantage of them.
CHOOSE A SPECIALIZATION (20 DAYS):
Digital Transformation & Data Science
In the Executive MBA Digital Transformation & Data Science, executives embrace cutting-edge topics and the practical leadership skills that are essential today to best prepare for the unique challenges of digitalization, data science, big data, and digital strategy.
Energy Management
You will learn key global energy issues faced by policy makers and businesses across the globe and you will develop the tools to handle these issues. Your specialist understanding of the energy market will help you establish sustainable energy models and develop a responsible strategy within your organization.
Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Innovation does not happen out of the blue. It is driven by entrepreneurs – individuals who spot innovation opportunities earlier than others, recognize the big picture, and develop the opportunity with passion and the right tools. This program provides the right equipment: strategy, methods, insights, practical skills, cases, and network access.
Finance
Expertise, know-how and management tools enabling you to succeed in the dynamic field of finance. The curriculum has been specifically designed around the implementation of applicable content and is taught by an international faculty of top experts from the finance sector (eg. Harvard, University of Texas, Copenhagen Business School, ...).
Public Auditing
Ideal education for financial officials in the public sector in cooperation with the Austrian Court of Audit.
Strategic Marketing & Sales
Knowledge and skills to master marketing challenges and reap the benefits through sales excellence.
Strategic Project Management
Key expertise, enabling you to enhance and perfect your project management and social skills.
Writing a scientific paper
At the end of the Executive MBA program, students have to write a master's thesis in order to receive the academic degree of Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA). The intention of the master's thesis is to guarantee that the graduate of the Executive MBA program is able to write scientific papers on his or her own.