EMBA Programme Outline

Team Building / Study Skills
The objectives of the Team Building module are to provide students with the foundational knowledge of functioning within a team and to give an opportunity to experience teams in action. The objectives of the Study Skills module are to provide students with an opportunity to become familiar with the SSE Riga academic culture and to assist students in revitalizing learning and academic skills required for success in graduate studies.

People and business processes
This course offers a social and cultural perspective on business processes with particular reference to some of the currents in business thinking, such as creative industries, cultural consumption, and the so-called happiness research. Social milieu and cultural models deeply affect the way people consume commodities and services, react to advertising messages, relate to each other in organizational settings and deal with each other across boundaries internationally. Sensitivity to the intangibles of business processes (values, norms, reputation, ideas, creativity and other) is much more than merely a lip service to the corporate culture conventions – it is rational modus operandi demanded by the modern market.

Creative Entrepreneurship
This course in Creative Entrepreneurship challenges the prevailing mindset and actions of most organizations today which still operate according to the deeply entrenched attitudes and behaviour that prevailed in the ‘industrial age’. Creative Entrepreneurship is about building systems and processes which reward rather than punish employees for creative and entrepreneurial behaviour. Such systems and processes go beyond transactional leadership mindsets and practices to transformational leadership mindsets and practices for creating and developing vibrant organizations suitable for the knowledge economy.

Global Economics
This course provides an understanding of the global economic environment in which managers operate. It explores the relationships among key variables that affect business decisions, including interest rates, exchange rates and inflation. Special attention is given to the impact of monetary, fiscal and exchange rate policies on the business environment and on the ways in which the effect of macroeconomic events are transmitted among countries.

Financial Accounting
The financial accounting course takes the users' perspective and the objective is to enable the participants to understand the contents, measurement and interaction between income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement and to analyze the above financial statements. Participants will also learn to evaluate the performance of a company in terms of profitability, financial position and liquidity, will get acquainted with the basic equity valuation techniques and will develop a computer-based financial planning model for a real company.

Marketing Management
Market success in the international economy requires a proactive understanding of political, economic and cultural influences in the business environment. This module recognizes the need for companies to create strong cross-functional internal teams that can strategically respond to customer needs, build global brands and effectively confront competitive forces. Module participants will be challenged in both individual and team settings to go beyond traditional constraints and assumed boundaries, to conceptualize analytically on global issues and propose solutions for their own organizations to effectively develop marketing strategies.

Managerial Economics
The managerial economics course focuses on a number of management tools and concepts, which are useful in dealing with different types of business problems. Key issues involve pricing and profitability analysis of products, cost concepts, capital investment decisions, budgeting, balanced scorecards, and the use of optimization models for a variety of decision problems.

Law for Managers
During the course participants will acquire a basic understanding of the European Union institutions and their roles as well as EU legal acts and legislative procedures. Further on, the course will concentrate on the issues that, in the light of potential integration into the EU, are of more relevance to the executives in the business sector, namely, four freedoms and the EC Competition Law. The implications of the EU law for businesses in the applicant countries after joining the European Union will be discussed.

E-strategies
The overall objective of the course is to expose students to new ways of thinking of the new economy, giving them an overview of developments as well as the present models to understand and analyze companies and business ideas in the new digital competitive landscape. In particular, it will allow students to understand new business strategies and models arising due to the new technological potential and to comprehend entrepreneurial ideas and their implementation in the technology sector.

Research Methods
This programme will acquaint the participants with methodological issues relevant when conducting any research. The main types of research methods (both qualitative and quantitative) will be presented and the factors for choosing an appropriate method discussed. As the result of this module, the programme participants should be able to apply and justify the choice of the right method when conducting their Final project.

Global Competitiveness - China
This module deals with various aspects of globalization with a special focus on China. Part of the material related to this module will be covered in other modules such as Global Economics. A particular challenge in dealing with China relates to cross-cultural aspects of doing business and this will also be addressed. The China study tour will include lectures by local experts, company visits, meetings with local and expatriate business persons, and a negotiation role play.

Organizational Behaviour
The course will enable participants to understand the general nature and importance of organizational behaviour, to identify the key personnel elements within an organization and to recognize how to implement changes within an organization. The first part of the course will deal with understanding the individual and discuss important considerations such as personality, emotions, motivation and stress – and how they affect an individual’s work performance. The second part will deal with group behaviour and discuss such areas as group dynamics, work teams and particularly how individuals will be impacted to change by others around them

Financial Economics
The course will introduce the essential elements of the theory of financial markets and institutions and explain their role in a wider social economic context. The course will develop theories of how to price equity, bonds, futures and options, cover basic issues of corporate finance and provide a comprehensive vision of how a highly developed and specialized financial system with well functioning markets and institutions for risk management works and develops.

YEAR 2

Strategic Management
The module on strategic management will focus on managers’ attempts and means to intentionally shape the future. It aims at developing strategic management skills essential to corporate success in both small and large companies. The module covers the three broad and interrelated areas of strategic analysis, strategic choice and strategy implementation. The focus of strategic management is on managing the entire organization.

Human Resource Management
The philosophy underlying the design of this course is that all managers are HR managers. The success of any policy and procedure depends upon the users’ understanding of its purpose and its impact. The course will review the recommended characteristics of several key HR responsibilities and have the participants analyze, critique, and propose modifications for their own organizations. Case discussions will illustrate the impact personnel issues can have on an organization success.

Change Management
To remain efficient and competitive, organizations must be able to change as the market demands. This need for constant adaptation can be gradual or radical and affect organizations of all types and sizes. But in today’s complex and dynamic corporate environments, change goes beyond simply introducing a new image, different products, flexible working patterns or cutting-edge machinery; change involves introducing a new way of doing things by changing the workforce’s attitude to work. In other words, managing change means managing people through change. The course explores how people in organizations perceive and deal with change, the principles and processes of change management, why change initiatives fail or succeed and how corporate factors interplay with the change initiative in complex ways.

Business Ethics
The objective of the business ethics course is to present the basic notions and argumentation on business core values and codes of conduct, the stakeholder model, ethical decision-making, international business ethics and corporate social responsibility.

Corporate Governance
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a critical understanding of current issues in corporate governance theory, relevant regulation and international codes of conduct. Board members today face increasing pressure to be accountable to their stakeholders while at the same time improving business performance. This intensive course is build around four key themes to equip today’s managers in a globalizing market place by developing an enhanced understanding of current tools for risk management and control: Governance and the role of the board; board accountability for financial reporting and audit; risk management and boards; and the board’s responsibility for control.

Diploma Project
At the end of the programme the participants will be required to produce a major project work, an empirical study that will incorporate their previous work experience and apply the theoretical knowledge acquired during the programme.