Course description
PGCert
Accredited by the CIPD as meeting the core management syllabi of the CIPD Professional Qualifications Scheme. Completion of the Certificate in Management will enable graduates to join Year 2 of the Diploma
The Oxford Brookes Certificate in Management course is recognised by employers as providing good-quality management education with a range of possibilities for further progression onto other courses, including the Diploma in Management and Leadership; the Diploma in Human Resource Management (which is accredited by the CIPD as meeting the core management syllabi of the CIPD Professional Qualifications Scheme. Completion of the Certificate in Management will enable graduates to join Year 2 of the Diploma), and a number of other master’s courses. The Certificate in Management is, however, a widely accepted qualification in its own right.
Management is a broad subject and its academic study combines theory, research and practical application, reflected both in the teaching staff and in the participants. Teaching staff combine a wealth of professional and practical experience with research interests, while participants are drawn from a wide range of technical specialisms (e.g. information technology, engineering and human resource management) as well as general management. Further diversity results from public sector and private sector recruitment, adding to the richness of the educational experience as participants are encouraged to bring their own experiences to the course.
Course content
All elements of the course are compulsory and are studied in sequence:
Developing Personal Effectiveness provides core personal effectiveness skills needed by managers in an organisation’s environment. These skills will also support your learning during the course. The emphasis is on developing the capabilities to reflect on your style and approach and to take responsibility for managing your own learning. The module will introduce you to the concept of continuous development, identifying your personal development needs and producing action plans to meet those needs, as well as developing capabilities in specific areas of personal effectiveness. This module should provide you with the foundation for the management of learning, self-development and action planning throughout the programme.
Managing Service Quality. All organisations need to manage and constantly evaluate their activities in order to identify and satisfy the needs of their stakeholders (clients, passengers, patients etc, as well as funding bodies and the wider community). Likewise, work teams and departments within an organisation have internal customers with needs to be identified and satisfied. Management of the quality of service provided is a major task carried out by staff to meet needs and standards. In this module you will investigate the planning, designing, monitoring and evaluating of activities required to provide a quality service.
Managing People and Organisations enables you to develop an understanding of contemporary issues of organisational behaviour and the underpinning skills of effective people management at a team and departmental level. Trends related to current organisation design have increased the complexity of managerial activities in pursuit of organisational goals. Such intensification has placed additional emphasis on the effective management of activities at a departmental, team and individual level. Furthermore, the decentralisation of staff departments has resulted in managers also taking responsibilities for activities formerly the province of personnel specialists. Similarly, personnel specialists are required to justify their activities in terms of the contribution towards overall operational effectiveness. Such developments show some blurring of the once distinct responsibilities of line and personnel managers. This module is therefore about the management and behaviour of people in organisations centred at the level of the work team.
Strategic Management in Context introduces a strategic perspective relative to how organisations analyse the internal, external and competitive environments, and how they determine and implement change and the strategic choices available to them. You will consider this from both a national and international perspective.
Finance and Information Technology are integrated within the core modules of Managing Service Quality and Strategic Management in Context and take the form of both skills based and strategic applications in both subjects.
Teaching, learning and assessment
Teaching is organised on a module-credit basis, each normally involving approximately 200 hours of student input which includes approximately 36 hours of staff contact, normally delivered through two three-hour teaching blocks over a six-week period.
Learning methods include lectures, seminars, workshops, group work and case studies. Study is related to participants’ own work experience and place of employment wherever possible.
Each course module is assessed individually, generally on the quality of written assignment reports, both formative and summative.
Quality
The reputation of the Business School is underpinned through membership of and programme accreditations received from the Association of MBAs, the Association of Business Schools, and professional associations such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, and the European Foundation for Management Development. The Business School is, therefore, widely regarded as one of the best within its peer group.
The Business School’s programmes benefit from rigorous quality assurance procedures and regularly receive excellent feedback from external examiners, employers, students and professional bodies. In 2005, Business and Management achieved ‘Broad Confidence’, the best possible result, in the discipline audit trail as part of the Quality Assurance Agency Institutional Audit.
Many students who graduate from Business School programmes go on to achieve high status in the industry of their choice.
The Business School has an active programme of research based around six key research areas:
* Accounting, Governance and Information Management
* Economics and Strategy
* Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism Management
* Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour
* Marketing and Operations Management
* Pedagogy
The School maintains a rigorous and dynamic doctoral programme leading to the higher degrees of MPhil and PhD. Postgraduate students join a supportive, friendly and multicultural research environment.
