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A Sound Basis for Your Success
The Mannheim Full-Time MBA is a one-year, full-time program. It is an overarching, professional program that focuses on all aspects of general management, from strategy and marketing to finance and corporate social responsibility, enabling you to speak the language of accountants, HR, operations, etc.
The curriculum builds on a comprehensive range of relevant business and management theories that are firmly linked to the practical world of management, and includes a mix of case studies and inductive and deductive learning. In the course of your MBA journey, you will become a management generalist and thus be able to advance your career according to your academic, professional and personal experience, regardless of your background, be it business, engineering, IT, etc.
Perspectives
Sample Schedule of a Typical Week in Our MBA
Pivotal Elements of Your MBA Experience
Business Master Project
The Business Master Project gives you the unique opportunity to develop a solution for a complex business issue in your Multi-Competence Team, a diverse team of your classmates, by applying all your experience and newly gained knowledge and methodologies. You can either slip into the role of consultants and work on a business challenge being faced by a sponsoring company or develop a business plan for a completely new entrepreneurial idea. In the past, the projects involved topics such as business development and innovation, business strategy, market intelligence and change management, and industries such as consulting, consumer products, financial services and banking, technology and telecommunications, energy and utilities, automotive, and pharmaceuticals and diagnostics.
Sustainability in Action
The Social Class Project is an integral part of the Mannheim MBA curriculum. You will develop, plan, organize and execute your project over the first three terms of the program, working together with your class toward a common goal. Irrespective of the nature of the project, which may be humanitarian, social, educational or ecological, you will need to directly apply your management skills. Previous classes have planted trees to combat climate change, worked with socially disadvantaged children and developed ways to reduce food waste. One class even wrote and designed a children’s book to raise children’s awareness of diversity and social cohesion.
Study Trip
The program includes a study trip to a business school located at an international business hub where you will attend a mandatory course. You will be exposed to the corporate world and the cultural richness of the respective area through guest speakers and company visits, as well as cultural activities and social events.
Flexibility: Optional Fifth Term
Participants of the Mannheim Full-Time MBA have the option to complete the program in 12 months or prolong their MBA experience by three months. During this period, they can also lay the foundation for their own company, take courses at one of our renowned partner institutions abroad, complete an internship or improve their language skills.
Program Overview
Academic courses offered are subject to change.
Academic Courses
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods is designed to introduce participants to the key concepts and methods of empirical business research. Companies and managers can rely on various sources of “small” and “big” data, and methods to obtain a better empirical basis for their decision-making or even for the automation of key business processes. Participants will acquire a profound knowledge of how to evaluate the overall quality of empirical studies conducted by internal or external experts (e.g., market research companies, business intelligence departments, etc.). Participants will also critically discuss these issues in the light of “big” data. They will learn how to design an empirical study that best addresses a particular research problem. This course will discuss key qualitative and quantitative methods that can be used to analyze market, company or customer data from multiple sources, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of these methods and sources of data. Participants will apply this knowledge and address specific business research problems on their own.
Fundamentals of Financial Accounting
Knowledge of financial accounting is essential in understanding a company’s communication with its stakeholders (e.g., capital market investors, private lenders, regulators, etc.). However, presenting a company’s accounting information is often complex and understanding it requires some basic skills. The focus of the course is on these fundamental accounting concepts and principles, particularly how managers have to report the company’s most important economic transactions in financial statements. It will also address managerial flexibility in applying these accounting rules and ethical issues that may arise as a result of this flexibility.
Marketing Fundamentals
Marketing Fundamentals is designed to introduce participants to the key concepts, tools and practices of contemporary marketing. Effective implementation of marketing concepts requires knowledge of key relationships between internal (company) and external (competitors and customers) environments, and how they are impacted by marketing management. This course will specifically address issues pertaining to marketing strategy, innovation management, branding, pricing, sales management, CRM and communication decisions.
Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility
This course provides participants with an overview of the concepts and theories related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and managerial discretion at an individual level. Competing positions will be juxtaposed and discussed in an interactive course format. Participants will form groups to work on real-world managerial problems pertaining to CSR and subsequently present their findings.
Fundamentals of Corporate Finance
The purpose of this course is to provide participants with an introduction to the major financial decisions companies are faced with and the methods and tools they use to solve these problems. The topics covered include capital budgeting, financial statement analysis, valuation of securities, working capital management as well as financing and capital structure decisions.
Fundamentals of Strategic Management
How companies manage to gain a competitive advantage and thus superior financial performance relative to the industry is the issue at the heart of strategic management research. The course discusses the various building blocks that may help a company generate a competitive advantage, such as the company’s competitive positioning, resource and capability base, etc. The course also familiarizes you with various tools, concepts and analytical frameworks that are meant to enhance your ability to define and analyze strategic problems and identify sources of competitive advantage from both an industry and a company perspective.
Macroeconomics
The main objective of this course is to acquaint students with the challenges of economic globalization. Applying basic economic theories, it will demonstrate that, on average, an increase in international economic integration will lead to an overall increase in economic welfare, although not everyone stands to gain from this. The analysis will also show that with a country’s increased openness, its national economic policies become less efficient. Consequently, international economic policy coordination is the appropriate answer to economic globalization.
Operations Management
Operations management develops management, analytics and engineering approaches for the effective planning of resources and activities from the strategic level down to the control level. It focuses on systematic capacity planning and operations planning of supply chain activities and production processes in manufacturing and service systems to match supply and demand.
Organizational Behavior and Change Management
Organizational Behavior and Change Management is designed to familiarize MBA participants with the behavioral aspects of business administration. Issues related to behavior in organizations will be addressed to help MBA participants reflect upon their own work experiences and analyze them using applied psychological and sociological frameworks. The course will first focus on individual processes in organizations, particularly on personality, motivation and achievement orientation. It will then proceed to group dynamics and team performance, and finally end with an examination of organizational issues, focusing on organizational culture. Leadership issues including how to lead a team and how to lead in a larger unit such as a department. Common leadership mistakes that should be avoided will be also highlighted. The last part of this course will focus on change management, discussing a step-by-step process for introducing change, communicating change and finally, dealing with resistance to change.
Managerial Accounting
An organization’s long-term competitive success is critically dependent on the availability and efficient use of information about its products, services, processes, organizational units, suppliers and customers. Managerial accounting includes the concepts, models and systems that provide the information and use the gained insights for internal control. The course will familiarize participants with the terminology and basic concepts of managerial accounting, touching on topics ranging from development and use of cost information for decision-making, all the way to performance measurement and financial planning. The design and use of internal reporting systems varies substantially across different companies and industries. To shed light on the various practices, the course integrates a number of real-world cases accompanied by interviews with managers. Applications include both the manufacturing and the service sectors.
Global Corporate Strategy
Global strategy is about formulating a link between a company’s vision, mission, objectives and actions, and implementing the actions to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. When this happens between HQ and the subsidiaries of global companies, it becomes a complex exercise for corporates. Thus, the corporation needs to assess the global and domestic environments in which it operates, take the industry dynamics into consideration, find the resources it needs and develop its competences. Some of these competences can then be converted into winning capabilities that will not only focus on customer needs but also evaluate competition and make choices. Any choice involves risk, especially in constantly changing national and international environments.
To mitigate the risks associated with global business, the discussion about global strategy includes any problem or opportunity that arises in the areas of finance, production, marketing, information technology and human resource management. The course draws on the external and internal environment, the company’s macro- and microeconomics, and the exogenous and endogenous variables that are the drivers of the strategy-making process. Consequently, this course is both interdisciplinary and integrative.
Mergers and Acquisitions
For decades, mergers and acquisitions have consistently been the primary vehicle for reshaping companies’ business portfolios. However, both the rationale and the economic outcomes of mergers and acquisitions have remained a source of controversy in academia and business practice. The purpose of this course is to unpack which of the “received wisdom” on mergers and acquisitions really holds up to rigorous scrutiny and which does not. To serve this purpose, the key determinants of acquisitions and the deal-making process will be systematically reviewed and the economic outcomes of acquisitions coupled with the key contingencies influencing acquisition outcomes discussed. Moreover, some of the key tools for analyzing and completing acquisitions will be discussed and applied.
Global Digital Technology Management
The objective of this course is to provide MBA students with a substantial overview of key topics in global digital technology management (GTDM) with a focus more on strategic and tactical issues than on operational and technological ones. Subsequently, participants should be able to initiate and lead strategic digital initiatives, evaluate the role of technology in digital transformation, understand the relevance and responsibilities of the Chief Digital Officer and the Chief Information Officer, and incorporate external sources of digital technology. They should also be able to independently prepare, analyze and decide on digital initiatives in all these areas.
AI and Machine Learning Fundamentals
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is disrupting how companies do business. This introductory course will provide the essentials of a broad spectrum of machine learning methods and insights into diverse real-world applications as well as ethical considerations of AI applications. In addition, it will cover recent trends in AI leveraging unstructured data such as images, text, voice and video.