Full-time MBA

Connect with your new MBA classmates during this activity-packed team building weekend. Start developing many of the key skills you will employ throughout the programme, including teamwork, communication, and time management. 

This module is based on the assumption that understanding and applying the global macroeconomic environment and policies is important for the decisions of managers. Firms operate in the complex environment of the entire economy, and indeed of the world economy and the global financial markets. On completion of this module, students will acquire the skills that enable them to successfully consider long-term growth trends as well as short-term business cycle movements and respective policy changes when making strategic business decisions.

Lecturer

Horst Löchel Leiter des Sino-German Center Fakultät

This module combines lectures and case studies exploring and applying the theoretical frameworks on the basis of strategic analysis. These frameworks help evaluate firms’ strengths and weaknesses, the intensity of competition, the relative bargaining power of firms’ buyers and suppliers, the nature of strategic interactions, and changes in scope (diversification and vertical integration). The mastery of these analytical tools has relevance to individuals seeking a career in business as a manager, entrepreneur, or consultant.

Lecturer

Gianluigi Giustiziero Assistant Professor für Strategie Fakultät

The Organisational Behaviour module introduces students to key concepts and issues associated with behaviour in work organisations in order to improve organisational effectiveness. The first part of the module focuses on the responsibilities of managers including motivation, engagement and team performance. In the second part, we focus on issues of managing and leading, using power, reforming corporate culture and managing across borders. The impact of behaviour, relationships and organisation culture on individual and organisational performance are emphasised throughout the entire module. The course is taught in a highly interactive manner using cases, experiential exercises and role play.

Lecturer

Roland Koch Professor of Management Practice in Regulated Environments Fakultät

This module is based on consolidated financial statements under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Students will gain knowledge on the most relevant IFRS rules. The course will lay emphasis on understanding how real or fictitious business cases will have to be transferred into the language of accounting. On completion of the course, students will be able to understand complex business issues such as M&A transactions, and how they are treated under the IFRS rule set, decide how business cases will be reflected on the face of the balance sheet and in profit and loss statement and understand where earnings management (or even fraud) might happen. 

Lecturer

Edgar Löw Professor of Management Practice in Accounting Fakultät

Intended as a complement to Global Competitive Strategies course, the New Technologies & Business Trends course examines the impact of novel digital technologies and business models on strategic analysis. Drawing from recent scientific developments in the field of Strategy, the course combines lectures and case studies examining the new theoretical frameworks necessary to evaluate the strategic implications of platform business models, artificial intelligence, automation, and crowdsourcing. As such, the course sheds light on the some of the different and far-reaching ways technology is shaping the modern organisation and its strategy.

Lecturer

Gianluigi Giustiziero Assistant Professor für Strategie Fakultät

Firms increasingly rely on vast amounts of data to make informed business decisions. The module therefore provides students with the fundamental skills for a career where analytics and data-driven decision making replace management by intuition. Students directly apply relevant quantitative methods to solve managerial problems with available data. This allows you to leverage statistical software in order to plan and conduct quantitative data analyses as well as understand, interpret, and discuss the corresponding outputs, arriving at better-informed managerial decisions.

Lecturer

Alexander Bleier Assistant Professor für Marketing Fakultät

This module introduces techniques to analyse major financial decisions made by enterprises. The module focuses on corporate finance concepts that can be applied directly to real-life financial decision making. Main topics covered in the course include hurdle rates and the cost of capital (i.e. the investment decision), the mix of debt and equity and the choice of the right kind of debt (i.e. the financing decisions), basic valuation concepts (i.e. discounted-cash flow and multiples valuation), mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. The course enables you to make and assess complex corporate financial decisions.

Lecturer

Zacharias Sautner Professor für Finance Fakultät

The Organisational Behaviour module introduces students to key concepts and issues associated with behaviour in work organisations in order to improve organisational effectiveness. The first part of the module focuses on the responsibilities of managers including motivation, engagement and team performance. In the second part, we focus on issues of managing and leading, using power, reforming corporate culture and managing across borders. The impact of behaviour, relationships and organisation culture on individual and organisational performance are emphasised throughout the entire module. The course is taught in a highly interactive manner using cases, experiential exercises and role play.

Corporate success largely depends on a well-chosen strategy that is based on a thorough understanding of customer needs. This module highlights customer needs and how firms can address them through customer-centred marketing decisions. The course will cover strategic and operational marketing issues and use both B2B and B2C examples.

After completing this course, participants will be able to design coherent marketing strategies based on a thorough understanding of customer needs and quantify the benefits of marketing investments in financially meaningful terms.

Lecturer

Christian Schulze Associate Professor für Marketing Fakultät

The core of this module equips students with knowledge of the underlying transformation process of a company, by which inputs are converted into outputs, i.e. the production of physical goods or services. In this module, students learn the key aspects for improving the transformation process through content and operation methods, and the key aspects of technology. On successful completion of the module, students will have a wide range of tools which enable them to improve the underlying processes of a company.

This module deals with the basic concepts of ethics and its role in business transactions. We discuss social responsibility, ethics and morals, and their position in society in general and the business world in particular. You will do an in-depth analysis of major ethical approaches, by applying real-world case studies and giving group presentations. On completion of the course your will have a thorough understanding of how to be an effective leader and overcome daily ethical dilemmas in your career.

Every successful business needs to internally manage its performance. In this module, we cover the important steps of performance management and strategy execution. This starts with strategic investment decisions, followed by implementing and communicating the strategy, measuring the achieved performance and closing the learning loop by adjusting future investment decisions based on prior performance.

Lecturer

Matthias Mahlendorf Professor für Managerial Accounting Fakultät

International exposure enhances cultural understanding and an international business mindset. Our Full-time MBA students therefore complete an intense five-day module at SDA Bocconi. On completion of the Leading Innovation and Change Management module, students will be able to recognise and eliminate organisational constraints through creativity, innovation and corporate entrepreneurship, in order to structure and lead the change management process. Find out how our students found the module abroad here. 

A Consulting Project is performed by a group of three or four students working in consultation with their supervisor and a project leader of a respective external company or organisation on an agreed strategy or management problem. It is expected that the Group Consulting Project results in practical, implementable recommendations for the organisation providing the project.

Group Consulting Projects have taken place with Daimler, DFB GmbH, Eintracht Frankfurt, Heidelberger Druck, Linde Material Hdlg GmbH, OMMAX Digital, Paul Hartmann AG, Rheinmetall Automotive AG and Zalando SE.

An Entrepeneurial Buisness Plan is a comprehensive business plan for the establishment and start-up phase of a new enterprise/ initiative, according to a set format, developed by a team of MBA student

A Research Project is a study of a practical business problem, preferably in conjunction with an external company or organisation, completed in teams or individually.

The Sigma Challenge is a fully computerised business simulation set in a highly competitive and international environment that requires participants to take a comprehensive and global view of the business to be successful. It allows to see and experience the linkages across strategy, finance, marketing, operations and cross-cultural team dynamics, and to experience first-hand the leadership competencies required to build a high-performing team, and essential attribution of successful companies from start-up to continuing operations.