Course overview

At the heart of the Postgraduate Diploma in Management Studies, subjects such as strategy development, leadership and change, supported by individual choices for either specialisation or preparation for advancement to the Masters stage of the MA, provide real challenges for the manager of the future.

You will be encouraged to demonstrate the ability to generate practical solutions, and exercise managerial and ethical judgment, for increasingly complex and integrated market-led scenarios.

Many students choose to progress from this Postgraduate Diploma to the Masters stage.

Additional course information

The course is most likely to suit people who are aged 26 or over, and who have a minimum of two-three years' management-related experience, ideally at the middle management level. Typically, course participants are able to draw from their real-world experience to be able to tackle a range of current work-related problems and investigations, and to develop new ideas, concepts and models as aids to problem solving and performance improvement.

The course focuses on the functional and strategic aspects of general management and their integration, building on modules delivered at the certificate stage. A key integrative theme of the course for both public and private sector participants is business planning and finance. As with the certificate-level programme, participants are encouraged to demonstrate the ability to generate real practical solutions to work-related issues, and to exercise managerial and ethical judgment in increasingly complex and integrated scenarios.

A variety of contemporary learning and teaching strategies are used that involve you in current management problems and issues. Learning from and through real-life case studies is used to build on your own experiences, as well as to broaden horizons as to the role and function of a general manager operating within an organisational context.

Proactive teaching strategies enable you to think critically about real-world management problems and to develop strategies for more complex problems encountered at more senior managerial levels.

The course enables you to build up a body of practical and theoretical/best practice knowledge with respect to general management which can be applied to your own professional practice and development. Furthermore, the philosophy of the course, which is embedded within a reflective practitioner model, both supports and encourages the transfer of learning back to the organisational context. As such, diploma-level study is a vehicle for personal development and future career progression as well as preparation for masters-level study.

The course has been specifically designed to enable you to integrate diploma-level study into your working life while remaining a productive and contributing member of a management team. You are able to apply your learning directly to a range of work-based situations and contexts potentially adding significant value to the organisation with respect to its mission and purpose, and more importantly with respect to making a stronger and more visible contribution to performance-related business development.

Assessment

Assessment strategies are designed to enable you to develop and evidence practical and cognitive skills that are essential to longer-term career progression. Particular emphasis at diploma level is placed on more in-depth problem analysis and on the synthesis of solutions to a variety of operational, tactical and strategic planning and delivery-related problems. The methods used for assessment include both written and oral forms of submission/presentation. Media used range from individual and group management reports to presentations.

Features

Our striking, award-winning business school in Chelmsford, as well as our brand new building in Cambridge, offer the most advanced state-of-the-art learning environments.