Structure
You will typically complete the AGSM MBA in 12 months.
Core courses
Eight core courses completed over the first two terms
Foundations of Management
An intensive three-week core course providing an overview of the role of a general manager, and the skills you need to be a successful manager. Develop your team skills, leadership capability, communication skills, and managerial effectiveness. There is a specific focus on business ethics and the role it plays in equipping managers for business success.
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This course consists of three modules: 1.Reflective Practice 2.Skills 3.Teamwork The first module introduces students to the main theories, models, and tools of reflective practice including self-awareness, relating to others, emotional intelligence, culture and diversity and ethics. The second module consists of written and oral communication, presentation skills, creative and strategic thinking and case analysis. Students are given the opportunity to practise and reflect on their own creative thinking and communication skills under varying circumstances. The third module introduces students to teamwork. This module encourages students to explore self and group efficacy, teamwork skills and their capacity to handle the demands of the course and their personal life. In this way the course aims to encourage students to focus attention beyond graduation and strengthen student's commitment to the program.
The remaining core courses are:
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Course available in T3, 2021
Entrepreneurship and Innovation are today key drivers of business transformation and disruption. This course provides the fundaments of an entrepreneurial organisation, looking at the elements for success, how a startup is conceived, grows, and is funded. All stages of the entrepreneurial lifecycle are dealt with. It will examine in detail corporate innovation, looking at the upside, the barriers and the corporate antibodies that can stifle innovation if left unchecked.
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Teaches the basic concepts and principles underlying accounting and the economic issues in reporting. It focuses on how accounting information is collected, processed and presented to users outside the organisation, as well as the trade-offs that a manager faces in deciding how to present financial results.
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Provides an introduction to the three basic ideas in finance: the time value of money, diversification and arbitrage. These ideas are used to evaluate investment and financing decisions. In particular, we look at how managers can apply these concepts to add value to the firm.
This course was previously known as ‘Finance’.
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This course develops expertise in a standard set of statistical and graphical techniques, which will be useful in analysing data.
These techniques are widely applied in a number of areas of management, including marketing, finance and economics.
The course provides a change in mindset from "statistics can be used to show anything" to "statistics provides a methodology to cope with uncertainty" via the art of statistical thinking, that is, the ability to collect, understand and use data.
This course was previously known as ‘Data Analysis and Statistical Modelling for Business’.
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Seeks to develop an awareness of major marketing problems faced by a variety of organisations, with an emphasis on sound approaches to addressing these problems. The course focuses on the factors influencing marketing decision-making to cultivate proficiency in articulating aspects of the marketing mix, and developing customer-orientated and competitive marketing strategies and plans.
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Organisational behaviour draws on concepts from the social sciences to identify and solve some of the challenges faced by managers. Learn how to design effective work units and gain an insight into how leadership influences individual and organisational performance. Each of the topics in this course provides the tools for building and sustaining high performance at the individual, group and organisational level.
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Looks at the competitive strategy of the firm, examining issues central to its long and short term competitive position. It explores a variety of conceptual frameworks and models to analyse and gain insights about how to achieve or sustain competitive advantage.
Electives courses
Four elective courses
Tailor your MBA experience by choosing courses from the following:
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This course provides students with frameworks and practical examples so they can design an organisation to successfully deliver on its strategy. This includes organisation structure for large and smaller organisations, ranging from conglomerates to more focussed enterprises, and organisations in only one country as well as multi-national organisations. The course then covers key enablers including organisation culture, job and team designs, corporate governance and joint ventures. The students consider different approaches to implementing changes in organisation structure and which approaches work best in which situations. Finally the course considers particular situations such as mergers and acquisitions and downsizing and outsourcing as part of the overall approach to restructuring to assist students in their current and future careers. The course follows MNGT5201 Economics in Management Practice and MNGT5272 Organisational Behaviour. It will also fit well following any of the strategy electives as the course focusses on how to align the organisation to deliver on the strategy.
This course was previously named MNGT5180 Strategic Restructuring.
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This course builds on MNGT5202, providing a hands-on internship experience, allowing for immersion in a real-world startup environment. Students undertake an internship in a local startup, experiencing first-hand the thrill of growing an entrepreneurial business. The challenge in the course is to provide the startup with expertise that they may not have, while at the same time living and breathing the startup world from the inside.
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The exact type and structure of a 'financial analysis' depends largely on the specific decision making context in which the analyst is placed - is it equity investment, credit extension, analysis of supplier/customer health, competitor analysis, regulatory overview or intervention, or valuation for take-over or restructuring purposes? However, many of the techniques of financial analysis are common to each. This course devotes considerable attention to these 'techniques' and the difficulties associated with their application; primarily in the context of equity investment/valuation and credit extension decisions. The emphasis is on sharpening analytical abilities in financial statement analysis from a managerial standpoint. Particular attention is placed on developing an ability to 'pierce the accounting veil' to get at the underlying bottom line - cash flow and the inherent volatility thereof. The Core Finance and Core Accounting courses are prerequisites for this elective.
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The venture capital and private equity industry has expanded by at least 3000% over the past fifteen years and is playing a critical role in shaping our economy and supporting innovation. Yet venture capital firms often operate in mysterious ways, with little real public visibility. This course seeks to understand what venture capital is, what venture capitalists do and the way venture capital organisations work. This course is primarily geared towards students interested in working in venture capital, or other private-equity organizations. It is also intended for students who expect to work alongside venture capitalists or other private equity investors, whether as managers of firms financed by such investors, as investment bankers taking their firms public, or as money managers investing in these funds. Finally, it is designed for students interested in exploring how aspects of private equity investing can be transferred to the management of projects in established organizations.
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The aim of this course is to improve decision-making skills and to provide strategies for further improvement in the future. We cover how individuals and groups make decisions and solve problems, individually and in organizations. By the end of the course, students will understand their own decision styles and personal dispositions, make decisions more deliberately and systematically will be able to use decision analysis techniques and group processes, integrate their values into their decisions, and, generally, have increased confidence in their decision-making.
UNSW Online Handbook Summary
UNSW Class Timetable -
Negotiation is a central element in managerial life. Negotiations are required not only with external parties but also within the firm. The course will consider both co-operative and competitive dimensions of negotiation and examine the ethical issues which arise.
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The aim of this course is to provide students with the skills required to model and analyse business problems that have financial (revenue and cost) implications and to enable them to effectively present data for effective communication to a business audience.
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The aim of this course is to provide students with the skills required to model and analyse business problems that have financial (revenue and cost) implications and to enable them to effectively present data for effective communication to a business audience.
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The objective of this course is to introduce students to Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) and the requisite knowledge for the development and execution of corporate transactions particularly within equity capital markets. Typical transactions include Takeovers (and Schemes of Arrangement), Acquisitions, Divestments, Initial Public Offerings and Secondary Raisings. Each of these types of transactions will be addressed within the course.
Students will utilise common corporate finance tools and knowledge as applied within the context of considering, developing and executing M&A transactions.
Participants will apply insights and skills taken from previous courses in finance. The course includes negotiation within the context of M&A.
Case studies are used extensively throughout the course – including the use of current or recent transactions involving listed companies.
The course is a mixture of lectures, class discussions, case studies and group exercises – all with an emphasis on the practical applications of corporate finance skills and knowledge within the context of M&A.
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The Individual Study in Management course is offered as an elective of the AGSM MBA program. Students may select a business topic to research under the supervision of an AGSM faculty member.
This one-to-one working arrangement allows the student to carry out in depth analysis of a topic relevant to their career aspirations.
Projects may be one of the following:
- a case study
- a report on a workplace project
- a pilot research study, or an alternative project as agreed between you and the Academic Supervisor.
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The Strategic Consulting Project course is offered as an elective of the AGSM MBA program and it provides students the opportunity to apply the analytical and theoretical skills developed in the MBA to a company-based project. Students work in teams of five to six, supervised by an Academic Supervisor. It provides students an opportunity to demonstrate to the supervisor their ability to apply the management skills learnt during their MBA program, in addition to drawing on their considerable experience acquired in their earlier careers.
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*By application only
This course will help you develop strategic thinking and analysis skills that you will apply in formulating effective growth strategies for your organisation. You will do this by applying tools and frameworks from the field of strategic management and using aspects of customer centred innovation, including empathy, ideation and prototyping to identify, evaluate and plan the implementation of value-creating growth options available to managers.
Primary paths for organisational growth include expansion into new products/services, and expansion into new markets (i.e. geographic locations and customer segments). For each of these two expansion paths there are several alternative vehicles for growth, including organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships or alliances. Many organisations employ all of these vehicles in their growth strategies. In the course, we will discuss each of these paths and vehicles for growing organisations and identify and evaluate growth options in a variety of sectors and contexts. We will also consider a resource perspective as well as the role of strategic innovation in helping to identify new strategic growth options.
However, identifying attractive growth options does not automatically translate into success. Managers also need to be able to successfully implement their growth strategy. An integrated growth strategy therefore includes a plan for obtaining the capabilities needed to succeed in each growth option, and the timing and phasing of each step of expanding the organisation. An integrated growth strategy also requires identifying and analysing the risks that may prevent the capture of expected economic benefits. We will discuss how to limit risk by identifying growth options that leverage the existing strengths of the organisation, evaluating whether an organisation is the natural or best owner of a given business, and avoiding paying too much for an acquisition.
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*By application only
This course will focus on disruption and transformation of industries and organisations.
In this course, students learn to accept and embrace uncertainty. Industry disruption is challenging many incumbent businesses while simultaneously creating opportunities. In disruptive environments, many organisations find they need to transform their business model and their organisation. Transformation means dealing with the challenges of change and uncertainty, sensing the situation, seizing the opportunities, and transforming the organisation. This requires critical thinking to deal with the frequent paradoxical choices in today’s business environment where transformation is increasingly an ongoing activity rather than a once-in-a-career event.
You will build important skills and mindsets to understand disruption, lead organisational business model shifts, and direct organisational transformation projects with confidence. In a world besotted with disruption, exponential technology change, globalisation, and the digitalisation of the economy, the concepts addressed in this course are of paramount importance to any leader looking to run a successful organisation into the future.
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Leading Change for Sustainability is a course designed for future leaders who are passionate about creating positive social and environmental change.
Your ideas and passion for sustainability and resilience are just the first step. You need skills in leadership, creativity, systems thinking, communication and models for cultural change so that you can influence key decision-makers, build networks and make your idea a reality. You need an awareness of change processes and an understanding of ethics and human rights to lead sustainable change, locally and globally.
How do you lead cultural change towards a sustainable future for all organisational types?
How do you pursue social and environmental goals from within a multinational company?
What are the ethical and human rights implications of cultural change?
Sustainability has become a key driver in many organisations, from large foundations of investment banks to social enterprises, not-for-profits working with government to provide services, and small to large businesses supporting their local communities.
This course explores how to create and implement sustainability strategies for different organisational types. We take a broad view of sustainability based on the Sustainable Development Goals, acknowledging the human, social, economic and environmental elements of positive cultural change.
The course uses in-depth case studies and examines complex aspects of sustainability leadership faced by leaders from business, government and civil society. As a result of the learning strategies drawn upon throughout the course, you will complete the course with a broad understanding of sustainability leadership and be able to strategically identify the keys to initiating and sustaining positive cultural change.
UNSW Online Handbook Summary
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This course examines the accelerating economic relationship between government, business and the third sector to deliver social (including environmental) value in communities and the way in which this drives social innovation.
The course first examines the social economy through the emerging spectrum of organisational forms that generate both social and economic value: from traditional charities, to social enterprises, through to socially responsible business and traditional corporations. Second, the course examines trends and drivers re-shaping the dynamics of social impact.
The course examines the ways in which these changes drive social innovation and it concludes with a review of global trends and organisations that effect social change and impact.
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Major changes are reshaping the role of philanthropy both internationally and in the Australian context:
Global economic realignments, the privatisation of community services
New patterns of wealth distribution and of inter-generational wealth transfer
Greater expectations of the role of corporate citizenship and of corporate philanthropyThese forces are also extending the meaning of philanthropy by encouraging the growth of new forms of social investment, in which commercial enterprise is being shaped by social as well as financial goals, to create innovative, and sometimes hybrid, models of sustainable community services, environmental protection and social development, as well as new business opportunities.
This course will introduce the history, core concepts and current issues in the fields of philanthropy, fundraising and social investment. It will also examine patterns of fundraising and giving, ethical and philosophical perspectives and the management and legal aspects of social investment programs.
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Demonstrating Social Impact is an elective subject for the Graduate Certificate in Social Impact and M Com or AGSM MBA programs. It provides an overview and introduction to evaluation and social impact assessment, the underpinning principles of evaluation and social impact assessment and examines some of the key social impact measurement approaches increasingly used by leading Third sector organisations in Australia and internationally, including Logic Models such as LogFrame; Social Return on Investment (SROI); and Social Accounting and Audit (SAA). Other frameworks used to measure the impact of corporate social initiatives will also be discussed.
The course will provide the knowledge and tools necessary to understand and apply social impact frameworks and methodologies at a project and organisational level.
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Social innovation, the outcome of the work of social entrepreneurs and others can be developed in almost any context. It is often a response to an identified problem, issue or opportunity. Design thinking and methods take a whole systems, rather than a silo, approach to offer different perspectives to the traditional business tools.
Design for Social Innovation offers participants the opportunity to learn and apply design tools and methods to real projects with a focus on social outcomes.
This course is an elective subject for the Graduate Certificate in Social Impact, and an elective available for all postgraduate students. It provides an overview and introduction to the role and application of design concepts in social innovation and social enterprise.
The course will provide the knowledge and tools necessary to understand and apply design principles at a project or organisational level.
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Corporate Responsibility and Accountability is a specialist course for the Graduate Certificate in Social Impact and an elective for those undertaking the Master of Commerce or MBA or MBT Programs. It examines how business manages its social, environmental and economic impact on society.
The course first reviews the historical evolution and development of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship and why it is now a key part of managing the business enterprise.
Second, the course examines what acting responsibly means for corporations in terms of the market, community, environment, workplace and government. Issues covered include business and human rights, business-community partnerships, corporate philanthropy, the human resource management implications of CSR, business and the environment and businesses’ relationship with government.
Third, the course examines how business accounts for its behaviour and impact in society through sustainability reporting and the role of external assurance and outlines debates on the appropriate role of government policy in either regulating and/or enabling responsible corporate behaviour.
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Creating Shared Value (CSV) is a business strategy aimed at enhancing a company's competitive advantage. A company can achieve this by finding opportunities to increase revenue or decrease costs by addressing social or environmental problems relevant to their business. As an organisation and business ethos, CSV seeks greater integration of organisational economic imperatives with the identification of social needs that can be addressed via the expansion of economic markets and business innovation.
Complementing existing strategies of corporate philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, CSV can be applied at 3 levels: reconceiving products and markets, increasing productivity in the value chain, and enabling development of clusters of stakeholders. This course will examine the fundamentals of CSV and how businesses can create both sustainable and simultaneous financial and social value.
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This course examines key concepts and frameworks of cross-sector collaboration and develops your capacities to undertake effective collaboration with existing and emerging partners. Primary topic areas include: cross-sector adaptive leadership, building and sustaining strategic partnerships, creative collaborative practice, collaboration dilemmas and tensions and effective collaboration design and implementation for system change.
In completing this course, you will gain a deeper understanding of the knowledge and frameworks required to develop and sustain cross-sectoral collaborations to achieve social impact. You will also have the opportunity to develop a range of skills and competencies that can be applied to build collaborative partnerships with government, business, community and the third sector within your workplace
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Leadership is not about popularity, but it does rely on influence.
Leadership is not the sole territory of formal leaders and bosses, but they do set the tone for the organisational culture.
Leadership is not just about how you work; it's about how you live your life. It's about relationships and human connection.
It's how you bring the personal to the professional and practice moral courage, mindfulness and creativity at work.
Whether you work in the corporate, NFP or government sector, your approach to leadership can be purposeful and ethics-based. Leaders from all sectors can create positive social impact. As the sectors increasingly work together it is useful to understand the leadership styles preferred by different types of organisations.
This course is underpinned by the idea that leadership is not a position you have; it is a set of values and behaviours that you practice. We explore your leadership practice at all stages of your career, whether you are an intern, consultant, manager or CEO.
Through in-depth case studies and leadership theories, you will compare and contrast the dominant approaches to leadership in each sector. You will be able to recognise complexity and its role in your leadership practice.
At the conclusion of the course, you will understand the different approaches to leadership and how to implement leadership initiatives in your personal and professional endeavours.
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Project management involves the overall planning, control and coordination of a project. It is the process by which the responsibility for all phases is combined within one multidisciplinary function. This course introduces you to the project management skills needed during the lifetime of a project. It explores some key concepts of project management, including project risk management.
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This course focuses on advanced financial decisions of corporate managers. First, the course expands on the traditional project evaluation criteria by introducing real options and valuation techniques in the presence of uncertainty. Second, it discusses the use of debt and equity as financing instruments and how to assess leases. Third, it explains how to hedge a company’s cash flows and balance sheet from both domestic and international exposures. The course uses case studies to illustrate the application of theoretical concepts to real-life.
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In this course, financial-statement information is discussed as a tool in a wide range of business decisions. We will discuss financial statements from a user’s perspective, and use a variety of tools to break apart financial reports into meaningful units for analysis, forecast financial statements, and value a firm’s shares. We will also look at the role of managerial incentives and accounting rules in assessing the quality of financial statements.
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The course will provide information and analysis on the latest development in the world of finance and its implications for business strategies. Live financial data and other information from various financial institutions are provided to teach a number of issues that influence global finance and the way multinational companies build their global business networks, their activities and strategies. The Course also brings a fresh perspective from eminent scholars from various leading business schools and financial organizations.
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Financial Modelling intends to make managers more confident and effective users of financial models, helping them to better understand and communicate the practical value of financial models, and to build this literacy for their future work. Key to this is a critical pedagogical approach that develops and refines students' high-level critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills, alongside providing them with a set of practical tools and techniques to help them make effective judgements about a business's current financial situation and future performance based on best-practice financial modelling principles.
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In this course, students will first learn the fundamentals of innovation and technology, including the impact of technology on organisational strategy, internal and external factors influence a firm’s technology strategy, diffusion of technology and technology disruption. Students are next introduced to the stages of the entrepreneurial life cycle, categories of entrepreneurial opportunities and processes for generating new business ideas. After translating opportunities into a well-crafted plan and pitch, students will learn various financial strategies to support new business and how to design experiments using minimum viable products to test market-driven hypotheses and refine multiple aspects of the business model. Next, students will explore essential factors influencing customers to adopt new products in the current business environment and approaches to scaling businesses built on new products and services. Finally, the course concludes by analysing how startups can embed globalisation into the foundations of their ventures and looking at strategies of established firms in creating breakthrough innovations.
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The course is divided into two key themes. Weeks 1-5 focus primarily on the strategic role and organisational value of digital technologies. Weeks 6-10 focus on the strategic management of digital technologies to realise this value potential. Every week there will be a mix of readings and/or case studies that form the foundation of discussions and activities. Some written preparation in the form of a blog post is required every week to ensure students have done the pre-work necessary to engage in these class discussions, which are facilitated face-to-face or via the course forum.
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Managing Digital Technology increases technical literacy of managers and leaders. The main objective of this course is to give managers a high-level overview of the fundamental concepts, main topics and problems in computer science and information technology and how they relate to business settings, and thus equip them to make better decisions regarding applications of technology, even if they are not technologists themselves. This course takes a top-down approach and emphasises high level mastery of important concepts in computer science and information technology. Students who successfully complete this course will feel confident in any technology organisation and will have an appreciation for the problems in the field, how they affect or constrain business decisions and how it all works.
International exchange program
During the last term, you may also apply to go on an international exchange program at one of our partner schools in Europe, North America and Asia. These partner schools represent 30 of the world’s leading business schools, including London Business School, Wharton, Stern (NYU) and ESADE.