Introducing the pioneering MBA programme by GBS – a transformative journey designed to shape visionary leaders of the business world. With an array of five distinct pathways, this MBA offers unparalleled specialization options, catering to diverse ambitions and interests.
This MBA with specialist pathways provides a rigorous, intellectually demanding and vocationally relevant programme of study in business and administration. It has been designed to develop high levels of transferable skills, analytic and critical appreciation and evaluation of theory and practice of management in the context of an international and global environment. The programme of study enhances participants’ critical understanding of their knowledge, experience and strengths and how to deploy these to become effective managers in a range of different organisations.
All participants will take four core modules (10 ECTS each):
Two modules are also taken reflecting the MBA pathway chosen. All participants take a major dissertation/project module (30 ECTS) on a topic related the pathway chosen.
The achievement of the MBA qualification will enable you to further enhance your career as a socially and ethically engaged, globally connected professional who is creative, enterprising and innovative.
| Intakes | February/May/October |
| Duration | One year full time |
| Mode of Delivery | Face-to-face learning |
| Awarding Institution | GBS Malta & MFHEA |
| Awarded Qualification | Master of Business Administration |
| Level | Comparable to Malta Qualifications Framework (MQF) / European Qualifications Framework (EQF) Level 7 |
| MQRIC Accredited Status | Recognised |
| Locations | Malta |
| Fees | €10,000 per year (Scholarship available*) |
GBS Malta is offering students access to the Malta Get Qualified Scheme, enabling students to benefit from tax credits that help lower overall study costs. This scheme is highly valuable, giving back 70% of tuition fees after graduation.
Credits needed to earn the degree:
| ECTS Credits | UK Credits |
|---|---|
| 90 ECTS | 180 Credits |
This MBA includes the following Compulsory modules:
In this module participants will develop and demonstrate expertise in their critical understanding of the global business environment in which modern organisations operates. Participants will be able to build their skills in developing and evaluating global strategies and associated marketing plans that harmonise an organisation’s objectives, capabilities and resources within the external opportunities of the market. This module will provide participants a critical understanding of global operations including business entry modes, opportunity analysis and market selection, global sourcing and off-shoring, and emerging economies. Participants will be able to identify, categorise, and assess the factors determining the extent to which strategic business implementation is required for success.
The Managerial Finance module is aimed at developing knowledge and critical understanding of the principles and concepts of accounting and finance for managers. This module aims to provide a working understanding and appreciation of how statements of profit or loss, statements of financial position and cash flow statements are prepared, interpreted, and analysed for decision making, including points of weakness and their shortcomings. This module is designed to provide participants with a critical understanding of how management accounting can assist managers in planning, control and decision making amongst others. In this context, financial information is used to inform strategic decision making in several ways. It also forms the backbone of many corporate performance monitoring systems. This module explores the synthesis of financial and managerial accounting information in a variety of strategic and performance monitoring contexts. The role of non-financial information is also explored.
The effect of globalisation influences many aspects of the business world. Leadership Teams have responsibility to respond and to develop approaches that prepare organisations for the effects of and opportunities offered by globalisation. The purpose of this module is to provide participants with knowledge, critical understanding and to develop their leadership skills, including an understanding of their own leadership styles and how these may change according to situational circumstances. The module will cover: theories of leadership, the effects of leadership on organisational behaviour, situational circumstances and leadership style, an evaluation of published research on leadership and cultural differences as applied to leadership. The module will also cover effective team working and leadership styles, leaders and followers, and the role of leaders in organisational change.
Top management has a central task to recognise and meet the expectations and needs of stakeholders. In this context, applied digital marketing plays a central role in the efficient running of a competitive organisation. This module is designed to develop in-depth knowledge and critical understanding of fundamental marketing concepts, assess decision-making implications in the digital world as well as offer rigorous training in the skills and techniques that will enable participants to apply theory and concepts in a wide range of practical contexts.
This module introduces marketing as an integrative management function. It draws together the activities of all areas of an organisation concerned with the planning, development, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods and services. This module examines the comprehensive perspective essential to Applied Digital Marketing decision-making, through relationships with customers, suppliers, competitors, society, and other organisational functions. This module covers significant areas within applied digital marketing, such as research, buyer behaviour, product planning, marketing planning, pricing, and distribution, focusing on managing these elements within an overall integrated marketing strategy.
Following the successful completion of the taught module assessments and the taught phase of the MBA programme, participants will commence work on a dissertation/project which will be written up and submitted to a set deadline. An MBA dissertation/project must demonstrate a balance between management-related relevance and the intellectual and academic rigour. The dissertation/project aims to develop participants’ ability to analyse management issues of relevance to their work (or hypothetical issues in the case of participants not in work situations). Emphasis will be placed on scoping, developing, planning, procedural and evaluating skills. Participants will be required to conduct their research by prioritising various sources of published information (journal articles, specialist book chapters, website and other publicly available information), utilising quantitative and/or qualitative research methodologies, appropriate data analysis and data presentation, and empirical analytical approaches to discuss research findings and relate to appropriate published research findings.
Participants will be provided with one-to-one and small group supervision whilst conducting their dissertation/project. Participants are expected to show a high level of independent, self-directed study in their work with guidance and critical discussions with their tutor on their progress over the timeline of this module
Each of the five pathways consists of two additional 10 ECTS modules which are pathway-specific:
This module is designed to address the importance of an organisation’s mergers and acquisitions decisions. Such decisions are highly valuable and to some extent can damage value in an organisation. This highly important decision cannot be made without the critical and incisive analysis by financial and business-analysts in the mergers and acquisitions. This is taken one step further with the consideration given to private equity investments and the similarity and conceptuality of how they achieve their strategies through mergers and acquisitions.
Participants initially will be exposed to the analysis of financial statements and data using both hypothetical and real-life data. This module is meant to crystallise such early formative learning using a more advanced level of analysis to analyse and value companies in a mergers and acquisitions scenario. As such, this module has been designed to embrace the above topical areas in mergers and acquisitions and private equity.
Global capital and investment professionals must have a working knowledge of advanced corporate finance and equity instruments to carry out insightful analysis for value creation. In this module participants will be taught with a practical hands-on approach, problem solving and investigative enquiry skills in Advanced corporate finance and equity instruments. Participants will carry out critical analysis and evaluation with a view to designing and undertaking critical investigations into value claims. The aim of this module is to examine a range of topics and issues in corporate finance including capital budgeting, capital structure, cost of capital, dividend policy, long-term financing, corporate governance, corporate restructuring, and short-term financial management to equip participants with tools and techniques to undertake independent and advanced investigations in corporate finance. Emphasis will be placed on how investment and financing decisions interact with each other and how those decisions have implications on capital structure, takeovers, and corporate bankruptcy.
This module also provides participants with the technical and cognitive skills for undertaking critical analysis and valuation of simple and complex Corporate Finance and Equity Instruments, required for strategic planning, control and decision-making.
These are challenging times for the practising marketing manager. With economic uncertainties impacting marketing budgets and technological change outpacing managers’ capabilities in keeping up, there is a real need to re-evaluate the role of the modern marketing manager and to understand how to achieve efficiency, effectiveness and enhanced credibility in that role going forward.
This module engages participants in an active learning environment through exploring and examining contemporary marketing practices in organisations through interactive teaching sessions (for example, interactive lectures, team activities and workshops). Teaching sessions will include a number of marketing topics presented by academics, including practitioner guest speakers. Teaching sessions will engage participants in a series of advanced contemporary issues in marketing practices and related ethical considerations. Marketing ethics which will be discussed, and participants will critically reflect on their key learning, research and transferable employability skills. This module examines the typical remit of a contemporary marketing manager and the skills and competencies required of the job in today’s challenging environment. Using modern technology can help marketing managers better communicate with customers and make more and better-informed decisions.
The Marketing Management module provides participants with a critical understanding of key contemporary theories and approaches of marketing management practice. This module will enable the building of knowledge together with the application of the tools and techniques required to analyse different markets and factors that affect them. Participants will identify target groups and formulate appropriate marketing mixes within the marketing planning framework. The module explores the functions which embrace developing, planning, and coordinating marketing decisions to reach marketing goals and objectives required to build competitive advantages. Additionally, participants will gain an in depth and critical understanding of marketing strategy development, marketing auditing, marketing planning, service marketing, marketing management and domestic and global marketing environments.
This Procurement, Leading and Management Project Teams module allows participants to evaluate projects and develop proposals for project management in industries of interest or within their own industries. Participants will learn about the nature of project management along with appropriate approaches, skills, tools, and techniques that can be applied as a project manager. Participants will consider projects within the wider context of programmes and portfolio management and on the process aspect of the curriculum by evaluating these and formulating and presenting proposals for the application of theory and for managing a project. Participants will consider the people aspect of the curriculum by evaluating related factors and how to formulate an individual report considering a specific project scenario.
The Executing, Controlling and Closing a Project module provides a comprehensive level of key skills used by project managers to manage projects successfully together with a critical understanding of project management. The module is not specific to any one industry but covers the core principles of project management that apply in all industries and to projects of varying sizes. Participants will consider the evaluation and application of appropriate strategies for the delivery and management of projects at intra- and inter-organisational levels. An important aspect of this module is the identification and evaluation of standards used in project management, together with an analysis of the importance of planning, controlling, and closing of projects in a particular environment. This will enable participants to identify practical applications of project monitoring, control systems, and the management of control issues, such as, scope creep, risk, quality, baseline changes in the context of project outsourcing, oversight, and contract closure.
Management and Practice of Consulting: Facts, Theories and Issues, and Lifecycle module is designed to explore the relationship between top management consultant teams and their clients. This module takes a wholistic view of management consulting ranging from both the private and public sectors, best-practice consulting at the sharp end of contemporary management across all management disciplines. The module will require participants to deconstruct and negotiate a new consultancy project task, apply a range of frameworks to structure analytical thinking, apply techniques to complete the required research, and demonstrate effective presentation skills in communicating the final results to their client. The principles of effective consultancy and project management will be introduced alongside the barriers to successful intervention and how consultants manage risk. Case studies will be used to explore unique business situations and how businesses overcome and respond to challenges and the unexpected lessons they learned. The case studies are embedded within an explanatory framework that draws out common themes, relates the case studies to generic models, and discusses how their approaches can be applied in other businesses.
The Managing Entrepreneurial Ventures module provides participants with an integrated strategy framework for entrepreneurs, knowledge on how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and managing entrepreneurial ventures. This module identifies the skills and competences required for an effective entrepreneur and managing entrepreneurial ventures in dynamic environments.
The module is structured around three areas: Strategic Planning and Management; Human Resource Management; and, Entrepreneurial Teams and Experience, Learning and Innovation. The building blocks put in place by this module will enable participants to develop management strategies based on SMEs and larger companies’ organisational and business requirements.
Entrepreneurial Finance module provides participants with knowledge and a critical understanding of the principles and concepts of private equity, venture finance, accounting and finance for managers working in an SME business or larger organisational environment. This module will provide a working understanding of how key financial statements are prepared, interpreted, and analysed for decision making, including points of weakness and their shortcomings. This module also aims to provide participants with a comprehensive critical appreciation of how management accounting can assist managers in financial planning, financial control and decision making.
Assessment will be through a range of different types of coursework. Across the core and pathway modules of this programme the range of coursework assessment will include:
Formative and summative approaches to assessment will be employed. Formative assessment tasks will be used in all modules and will be aimed at supporting participants to understand and prepare for the module summative assessment requirements. In this way, participants with different learning styles and abilities will be able to gain a good understanding of the summative assessment requirements and on their journey to submitting their summative assessments.
Assignment briefs will be produced for each of the summative assessments required by each of the modules on this MBA programme. Assignment briefs will set out the learning outcomes being assessed, appropriate material, context, etc. for the assignment.
Suggested reading will include book chapters, published articles and published research, weblinks to companies, and case studies, as appropriate, to the assignment brief. Each assignment brief will include marking/grading criteria so that participants have a clear understanding of what is required to pass the assessment and what is required to achieve higher grades. Grading of a participants assessment will be made using the pass, merit, distinction and fail criteria common to MQF/EQF Level 7 programmes of study.
Feedback will be provided to each participant on their assessed work identifying both areas of strength and areas that could be improved. Where a fail grade is awarded the participant will receive detailed feedback on the reasons for awarding such a grade and the areas that would need to be addressed for improvement.
Generic learning outcomes:
The learner will be able to:
Skills learning outcomes:
| Test | Overall | Reading | Listening | Speaking | Writing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IELTS Academic (in centre and Online) | 6.0 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 5.5 |
| TOEFL iBT (at test centre and Home/online) | 60 | 8 | 7 | 16 | 18 |
| PTE Level B2 (in centre and Home/online) | 52 | 48 | 43 | 42 | 51 |
| Duolingo (online) | 105 | 95 | 95 | 95 | 95 |
This MBA programme is designed to prepare you for a wide range of occupations in general management across all industry sectors and the international environment as well as employment in your chosen pathway.
Career paths after the course:
– Senior management roles in all sectors
– Management training
– Management consultancy
– Strategic roles in any context
