Strategic Management

This unit covers the field of strategy-making and strategic management. You will consider current issues and challenges facing directors, senior managers and entrepreneurs in guiding the long-term development of organisations. The objectives of organisations and the means of achieving these objectives through the mobilisation and deployment of assets and resources and the integration of the various functions of the organisation will be the focus of the unit.

Performance Achievement Planning

This short course is a professional development course that is designed to support all PG students in the University of Bedfordshire Business School to enhance their employability and develop a professional profile through their journey in the Masters. The specific aims are to:

1. Enhance students’ professional, personal development and communication skills.  
2. To support students to evidence how their experience at masters level has contributed to the development of their professional profile as required after graduation.
3. To support students to develop the necessary academic skill required for successful completion of postgraduate research

Marketing And The Digital Future

Digital marketing has become an increasingly vital ingredient for business success. Organisations that neglect their digital marketing activities and operations are doomed to failure.

Digital platforms are not only revolutionising marketing, but creating new business models and new methods of social interaction. This unit explores the effects on management, business, economics, sociology and ethics. 

For organisations some of the key questions are: what do my customers want; how do potential and actual customers view my offering; how do I make my product or service different; how much shall I charge for it and where/how do I 'talk about' it and make it available?

All of these questions are of course posed in a context of competition and in a political, economic, socio-cultural and technological framework that is constantly evolving. The motto for organisations often is 'change or die'. A key component of any digital marketing is the ability to communicate effectively online via social media, thus bringing together new technological developments as well as economic, sociological and political changes combined with the extent to which academic theory matches practice.

The unit therefore aims to engage you with a critical understanding of 21st century digital marketing and communication in practice.

Tourism Policy And Practice

The unit critically evaluates how tourism interacts with global society and how its impacts are realised on an international scale.  Whilst tourism may generate significant income and development opportunities, dimensions of economic and social justice encompassed within sustainable development demand that its benefits reach as wide a spectrum of stakeholders as possible.  The unit will create knowledge and understanding of how a more harmonious balance can be achieved between natural resources usage and tourism whilst fulfilling wider economic and social objectives. Subsequently, the aims of this unit are to enable the student to:

• Critique development theories and evaluate the theoretical frameworks that underpin tourism’s role in international development;
• Develop insights into the socio-economic and environmental challenges facing developing countries;
• Comprehend the economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts of tourism at a global and international scale;
• Evaluate the application of tourism to global policy as a medium for poverty reduction and alleviation; and
• Formulate planning frameworks for sustainable tourism development that integrate inter and intra-generational economic equality with environmental conservation and community participation.

Tourism, Society And Culture

The aim of the unit is to serve as a forum for the discussion of local and international issues, and a font for many new kinds of insights and intelligences about the effectivity of tourism and travel on our societies and on ourselves. In addition, the unit provides you with a deeper and broader critical insight into the role and function of tourism. This unit provides an overview of the creative authority and power of tourism to make peoples, pasts, and presents. In covering the collaborative internationalities of contemporary tourism management and development (and of related projective/inscriptive industries), it analyses the effect of the representative and communicative forces of the post- industrial/post-colonial moment, and the function of tourism in helping produce new understandings of place and space. The unit will review how the role of tourism in the representation of the public culture, the public heritage, and the public nature of places has conceivably changed under the new interpretive climate of the so-called postmodern, post-industrial, and post-colonial mood(s).  Current examples from tourism research and the tourism industry will be used throughout this unit.

Business Dissertation

Aims:

• To bring theory and practice together to formulate a  topic of your interest whether it is a research-oriented topic or a more clinical topic that is relevant to the context of business and conduct research on your choice of topic relevant to your field of study
• To stimulate you to reflect on issues critically and to identify aspects that need further research
• To provide you with the opportunity to explore a topic and appreciate the importance of literature review in the learning process
• To critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of other people’s research to formulate your own study
• To enhance skills in time-management, research management, project organisation and decision-making
• To apply and reflect on the practicalities of research including access to sources and ethical considerations

Relevance

An important aim of a Master’s degree is to master and apply your knowledge and skills independently so that you can successfully carry out research. This dissertation provides you with the opportunity for sustained independent study that builds on your research proposal and represents the culmination of your Master’s level studies.