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Why choose the Graduate School of Business


Internationally recognised as the premium management qualification, helping to shape innovative leaders who excel in creativity and strategic free thinking.

Designed for experienced, mid-career professionals from a wide range of sectors seeking to progress into more senior roles or launch their own enterprises.

Includes the CMI’s Level 7 Diploma in Strategic Management & Leadership Practice; taught credits are mapped to the L7 Senior Leader Apprenticeship standard, opening up an alternative route to a Master’s.

About the course

The ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ has a long-standing reputation for innovation and, as our flagship programme, Bedfordshire’s two-year Executive Masters in Business Administration (EMBA) is a truly transformative MBA. It alters the way you view the ever-changing normal by developing how you think, lead and deal with uncertainty in a disruptive age. Entrepreneurial in spirit and practice, it fosters strategic skills, innovation and adaptability as well as free thinking and problem solving while addressing contemporary challenges such as digitalisation, AI and evolving work environments.

For further course information, contact David Williams at david.williams@beds.ac.uk

Course accreditation

BCS Accredited degree

The course is dual accredited by the , offering the opportunity to gain chartered management status. Successful students are awarded the Level 7 Diploma in Strategic Management & Leadership Practice.

Facilities and specialist equipment

  • Range of learning resources, such as the Harvard Business Review and Oracle OPERA, to support you on your learning journey 
  • Library resource service offering full support 24/7

Industry links

We work closely with the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), the UK’s leading organisation representing businesses.

Student experience

Learn from our highly experienced academic team of industry experts engaged in consultancy, business involvement and social impact.Ìý

Benefit from executive coaching to support your personal development and ambitions while developing your skills through group work guided by industry and academic experts.Ìý

Work on live consultancy projects with leading employers in organisations across private, public and not-for-profit sectors.Ìý

Learning supported by extensive Harvard Business Publication resources and simulations. Ìý

Acquire essential professional skills aligned with bodies like the Chartered Management Institute and chambers of commerce.Ìý

Enrich your learning journey through immersive visits to a range of organisations, offering first-hand exposure to diverse business environments and practices.ÌýÌý

Join our Global Guest Speaker series, featuring academics, industry leaders, and professionals from organisations like Luton Borough Council, the European Commission, and bodies such as the Association of Project Management (APM).Ìý

Solve real-life problems working with the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½â€™s Research and Innovation Service (RIS where you can assist local businesses and SMEs to up-skill and innovate.Ìý

Course Leader - David Williams

I love working in this sector with students and employers to have a real impact on skills and work place learning.

Executive Education, Entrepreneur and Enterprise, and Apprenticeships are my passion, along with diversity and showing respect for everyone.

I am the Chair of ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Staff LGBTQ Alliance Network, supporting colleagues and students.

Course Leader - David Williams

I love working in this sector with students and employers to have a real impact on skills and work place learning.

Executive Education, Entrepreneur and Enterprise, and Apprenticeships are my passion, along with diversity and showing respect for everyone.

I am the Chair of ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Staff LGBTQ Alliance Network, supporting colleagues and students.

Course Leader - David Williams

I love working in this sector with students and employers to have a real impact on skills and work place learning.

Executive Education, Entrepreneur and Enterprise, and Apprenticeships are my passion, along with diversity and showing respect for everyone.

I am the Chair of ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Staff LGBTQ Alliance Network, supporting colleagues and students.

What will you study?


ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ing the Bedfordshire Executive MBA course will equip you with the diverse knowledge and a range of skills in strategic management, entrepreneurship, leadership, business and innovation. As a premium management qualification, this course will develop your ability to think creatively, problem solve, innovate and lead in a range of complex business environments. Our unit in Creative Leadership will allow you to develop ‘next generation’ leadership and strategic thinking skills and abilities, including creativity, innovation, critical thinking, reflection, emotional intelligence, resilience, agility and many more. You will learn to adapt and evolve your leadership to effectively deliver results, shape organisational culture and lead transformational change. To add to this, Innovating in the Strategic Environment will equip you with the knowledge and skills to effectively lead and manage integrated innovation at operational and strategic levels. Here, you will explore how a strategic and innovative management approach can be used to address organisational dilemmas in a flexible, dynamic, sustainable and integrated way.

Moving on to an equally challenging and stimulating unit, Critical Debates in Business will allow you to explore core business functions and engage in debates organisations face resulting from strategic pressure. This is an opportunity for you to develop your confidence to debate and deliver creative, commercially successful projects. In addition, you will explore elements of accounting, finance, how to interpret accounting information, understand accounting conventions, budgets and learn how accounts are prepared. Alongside this, you will be exposed to marketing approaches and techniques, branding and media. With applications in the HR field, our unit in the Future of Work and Management will prompt you to question how and where to source required talent with flexible skills, and how to retain them for organisational sustainability. The unit will discuss the influence of AI in the future workplace and consider what makes a manager effective in the business world through looking at the wider considerations, wider issues and the human value of work.

In other areas of study, our unit in Entrepreneurialism aims to support your aspirations to finance and launch and enterprise. You will work with specific techniques to develop a business idea, create a business model and a business plan as you reflect on your entrepreneurial potential. In doing so, you will develop critical, analytical, problem-solving skills while developing a first-hand understanding of entrepreneurship practice. Through integrating your knowledge on people management, marketing, accounting, finance, strategy and more, you will aim to successfully plan for launch and grow a new business, product or service. Our career and employability-focused unit, Your Professional Future, will focus on facilitating your continued personal, professional and organisational leadership development. facilitating your continued personal, professional and organisational leadership development. This will support you in realising your ambitions using key research tools, skills and behaviours such as reflective practice, collaboration and building a personal brand.

Furthermore, you will be able to tailor your own development according to your goals with the opportunity to collaborate with people from a diverse range of managerial backgrounds on the course that will help with cross-sectoral understanding. To complete your learning from this course, you will undertake an MBA Project as an opportunity to investigate a work-based problem with a creative and innovative approach. Engaging with either a research or work-based project, you will explore a topic that adds value to your organisation or is a relevant problem in the field of business. You will be able to explore new ideas and create a distinct piece of research with a potential for impact. The MBA Project encompasses into reality the aim of applying academic theory intro real world work-based practice. Many previous MBA students have, upon the unit’s conclusion, had their work implemented by their employer or published by their sector organisations.

How will you be assessed?


The assessment strategy is forward looking and deliberately innovative both to best test the intended learning outcomes and to reflect complex tasks undertaken in practice. Students are exposed to a range of assessment types and individual assessments within units are clearly identified and provide an effective measurement of performance with an acceptable and balanced overall student workload.

The underpinning philosophy of all the assessments is to develop the skills to support students success in the new economy foster collaboration and reflection as well as the ability to learn how to learn. For this reason there are no traditional exams on this course instead challenging and stimulating tasks that will develop participants. Tutors will provide timely feedback on formative and summative assessments to support students skills knowledge development and understanding.

To maximise learning for all students a range of innovative assessment methods appropriate for developing the professional skills and knowledge of an Executive MBA are used throughout the course including:

  • Writing a detailed analysis to a constrained word limit Acting as consultant for another participants organisation
  • Generating solutions to real world business problems emerging from the local economy barometer
  • Organisation of an academic/professional practice colloquium
  • Producing a poster on an innovative topic
  • Keeping a reflective journal
  • Experiential learning by planning a venture pitching ideas or acting as consultant or leader

Such a strategy avoids mechanistic formulaic assessment; stimulates creativity; underpins the applied focus of the course; and supports enquiry-based learning. Students will receive constructive feedback from course tutors and student peers. The team will support students to use this feedback as part of continuing professional and self-development.

The culmination of study is the MPA Project which enables students to engage in a focussed investigation leading to a distinctive analysis of a selected problem and will be supported by classroom sessions aimed at focussing the project and supporting research techniques. There will also be scheduled Research Methods workshops to develop your research capabilities. The notions of accountability and academic integrity will be an integral part of this course; plagiarism and any other attempt to deceive in the context of assessments will not be tolerated and the courses will be managed in this respect in line with current university regulations. The assessments designed are new require interaction and cooperation and are difficult to plagiarise.

Careers


Graduates typically join when they are on a mid-level management position and aspire to move into senior executive-level posts within their current organisation or to pursue a change of career at senior level. Many students use the Executive MBA to help them develop their own businesses social enterprise or to begin an entrepreneurial career. Elsewhere the MBA could be part of a route back into employment after a career break - for instance following a period as a full-time parent.

Entry Requirements

2.2 honours degree or equivalent in related area

Entry Requirements

2.2 honours degree or equivalent in a related subject area

Entry Requirements

2.2 honours degree or equivalent in a related subject area

Fees for this course

UK 2024/25

The standard fee for the Executive MBA (2yr course) for students starting in the academic year 2025/26 is £17,350. This is the cost of the whole two year course.

Alternatively if you have any questions around fees and funding, please email admission@beds.ac.uk

Fees for this course

UK 2024/25

The standard fee for the Executive MBA (2yr course) for students starting in the academic year 2025/26 is £17,350. This is the cost of the whole two year course.

Alternatively if you have any questions around fees and funding, please email admission@beds.ac.uk

Fees for this course

UK 2024/25

The standard fee for the Executive MBA (2yr course) for students starting in the academic year 2025/26 is £17,350. This is the cost of the whole two year course.

Alternatively if you have any questions around fees and funding, please email admission@beds.ac.uk

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