Business and Management (with a placement year)

Develop the skills you need for a managerial career in any sector, both in the UK and internationally.

You’ll build a broad foundation of knowledge on all aspects of business and management, ensuring you graduate as a well-rounded professional with excellent commercial awareness.

The programme covers core business concepts in the first year of study, including:

• Accounting

• Marketing

• Business economics

• Operations and information systems management

You can then tailor your studies to emerging areas of interest or career aspirations through a wide range of specialist modules.

A sandwich placement year, taken in year three of the programme, enables you to develop your skills and professional confidence - and boosts your employability on graduation.

There is a strong emphasis on teaching that is informed by the latest research and commercial best practice, as well as a focus on employability, sustainable development and global corporate responsibility.

Placement
This 4-year programme offers you the opportunity to take up a placement year working in business in your third year.

Placements are real, paid jobs in a wide variety of organisations in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors and offer you an invaluable opportunity to experience first-hand how business and management concepts are applied in practice, and to give you direct exposure to real issues in the workplace. It can also be done abroad.

In a competitive graduate market, valuable experience and employability skills gained from a year’s work placement will differentiate you from the thousands of other graduates seeking work.

We find that students return from their placement year with their confidence and personal skills enhanced and ready to implement their focused plan for the future.

The School of Management has an excellent network of organisations that offer placements including:

• IBM

• Vauxhall

• NHS

• GE Money

• Arris (formerly PACE)

• Enterprise Rent A Car

• Cummins

• Peugeot

Together we ensure your placement is appropriately challenging and that you can make a real and positive impact on the business.

Professional accreditation
We are proud to be in an elite group of business schools to hold the triple accreditations of Equis, AMBA and AACSB, often referred to as the "Triple Crown".

A number of professional accountancy bodies give exemptions for examinations taken at different stages of their professional qualification, including ICAEW, ACCA, AIA and CIMA, and CPA Australia. Depending on specific accounting modules taken, this programme may entitle students to be eligible for exemptions.

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) accredit this programme. This means that, by successfully completing your degree, you are eligible for exemptions from some ACCA fundamental level examinations.

Year one (all core modules) - Business Economics, Foundations of Marketing, Introduction to Accounting, Operations and Information Systems Management, People, Work and Organisations, Quantitative Methods in Information Management, Student Self-Development.

Year two - Two core modules, Business Law and Employability and Enterprise Skills. The remaining are options, Business Information Systems, Capital Markets, Investment and Finance, Company Law and Administration, Consumer Behaviour, Econometrics and Business Forecasting, Economics of Industry, Employee Relations, Financial Accounting, Financial Management, Fundamentals of Decision Support, Integrated Marketing Communications, Management Accounting, Management of Service Operations, Marketing Management and Strategy, Marketing Research, Organisational Analysis, Organisational Design, Principles of Personal Finance, Resource Planning for Operations, The Transformation of Work.

Year four – Students are required to choose from the following: Applied Strategic Management, Auditing, Brand Management, Contemporary Issues in Accounting, Corporate Marketing , Corporate Reporting, Creativity and Innovation, Creativity in Marketing, Decision Support, Electronic Commerce, Enterprise and Innovation in Practice, Ethics in Business and Society, Global Business Environment, Human Resource Development, Human Resource Management, International Accounting, International and Comparative Employment Relations, International Business Strategy, International Finance, International Marketing, Managing Business in Europe, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Organisational Change, Personal Financial Planning, Portfolio Investment Management, Retail Marketing, Services Marketing, Strategic Information Systems, Sustainable Operations Management, Taxation, The Financial Services Sector and its Environment, Understanding Strategic Management, World Class Operations. Please note that not all options will be available every year as they depend on student demand and staff availability. Students will be given the opportunity to state their preferences and the School of Management will do its best to accommodate these.

Most modules use a mixture of formal lectures, tutorials and seminars. All modules require students to undertake independent study, supported through distance learning technologies such as our Virtual Learning Environment. Reading lists and suggested resources for independent study provide further direction for students to undertake this work, and regular contact hours and informal feedback throughout the courses provide opportunities for further guidance for learners.

Assessments involve a combination of coursework assessments and formal examinations held at the end of each semester, the first-year assessments aim to measure your progress and the assessments that count towards the classification of your degree are held in the second and final years.