Block 3: Business information management and finance
This block consists of the following modules:
Digital Technology and Business Innovation
Over the last decade digitization has led to a dramatic reduction in the costs of creating, transmitting and consuming information along with the development of novel solutions to manage and process it. This emergence of technology based information management has not only changed the firm environment as we know it, but even altered the rules of competition in the market.
To thrive in an environment that is increasingly hypercompetitive and uncertain, managers need to first understand and then unlock the competitive advantage that technology can bring to their business.
This course aims to target this goal by integrating knowledge at the crossroad between technology management and business and corporate strategy, offering a guide on how to use technology to capture value from a business idea.
- Understanding how well-designed ICT supports and enables an organisation
- Learning how future applications will drive value
- Understanding key emerging issues and their application in the workplace
- Understanding the roll of information technologies in improving customer relationships
- Using frameworks for fitting IT in to your business strategy
- Demonstrating ability to apply key tools and techniques developed in the context of digital businesses
- Demonstrating effective presentation and report writing skills
- Working effectively in groups
- Demonstrating competence in structured thinking and offering challenging perspectives on organisations' future courses of action in the digital business context.
- Lectures: 30 contact hours (scheduled); 70 self-directed study hours (independent).
- Assessment includes: One piece of applied coursework; 2 hour unseen paper; Quality of workshop group participation (observation)
- 50% written coursework, 50% written examination.
Financial Markets and Investments
You will be introduced to the theory of how financial assets are valued and be shown how to apply this to practical problems. You will understand how volatility and risks arise, how they can be managed, and about developments in the economic environment.
- Computing fair values for financial assets
- Quantifying the risks involved in investing in these assets
- Development of investment and hedging strategies
- Understanding the limitations of current models of equity prices
- Understanding and reacting critically to commentary by financial market analysts.
This module is about the financial decisions made by corporations. Such entities face three broad financial questions: What investments should they make? How should they pay for those investments? And how much should they return to their shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. The objective of the financial manager in helping make, or advise on, these decisions is to maximise the wealth of the shareholders by increasing the value of the firm. You will learn how to do that efficiently and the complexities that emanate from the agency conflicts, information asymmetries and behavioural issues that may lead the managers to pursue other objectives in making these decisions.
- Understanding the primary objective of the corporate firm
- Demonstrating analytical skills
- Demonstrating communication skills
- Demonstrating awareness of and sensitivity to the assumptions made in corporate finance
- Understanding the broad criteria to be used for the financing, investment and dividend decisions of the firm
- Demonstrating team working skills
- Demonstrating presentation skills
- Understanding how these three decisions are interdependent
- Demonstrating communication skills
- Knowing the investment decision consists in accepting projects that exceed a hurdle rate and how to calculate this in practice
- Demonstrating decision making skills
- Knowing that the financing decision consists in a choice of the appropriate financing mix; in the matching finance types to the assets being financed; and to be able to do this in practice
- Demonstrating team-building and leadership skills.