The program comprises five stages, avoiding the traditional approach based on "courses" and "management functions". Instead, an integrated approach is used to tackle problems and the most suitable choices made in the light of the company's circumstances.
The business world is a complex one, hence the need for various perspectives when seeking solutions. We strike the right balance between techniques and disciplines, and the practical application of concepts. Each stage of the program includes intensive week to cover a key management and personal development theme. Three of these are held outside ESADE. Two of them are study tours at top business schools in the USA and UK. The third week is dedicated to Outdoor Training activities.
FASE 1: General Management
Courses
Learning Skills Inventory
Each participant will draw up their own individual learning plan, which will enable them to gain a better understanding of their receptiveness and style of capturing knowledge. This methodology is based on the LEAD Programme and has been adapted to the executive profile of EMBA participants.
Financial Analysis and Planning
Making the right economic and financial analysis allows one to judge both the state of the economy and a company's solvency. Economic planning, analysis of forecasts, and financial strategy provide key information for company planning and for presenting and defending investment projects. Disciplines that were hitherto the preserve of specialists have become decision-making tools for senior management.
Managerial Economics
This provides the economic foundations for managing modern companies. The importance of the subject can be gauged by the fact that it gave rise to all the other management disciplines and their concepts and perspectives. The latest developments in microeconomics are discussed, based on criticism of the neo-classical theory of the firm, the application of games theory, agency theory, imperfect contracts, and limited rationality.
Geopolitical Thought
This module gives an approximation to the geopolitics of globalisation and is based on three main strands : an analysis of the techno-economic, socio-political, and cultural setting; the various theories of change drawn up by authors such as Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Benjamin Barber, Ignacio Ramonet, Edward Lutwak, and Zbigniew Brzezinski; and the values and trends emerging from globalisation.
General Management (intensive period)
This provides a deep reflection on the move away from a functional perspective of company activities towards a global and systematic vision of the firm and its setting. The course covers the incorporation of functional strategies within business strategies, and the implications of corporate strategy in its broadest sense.
FASE 2: Integrating Resources
Courses
Operational Marketing
Development of the fundamentals of marketing management from the standpoint of designing strategies, planning measures, and management of the marketing mix. The role played by marketing in a company is examined, as is the discipline's relationship with other areas of the company, and new management trends.
Business Information Systems
Business information systems pose one of the biggest challenges facing management. The decisions taken in this field have far-reaching consequences. The discipline allows evaluation of the alternatives available and analysis of the interrelationships between all areas of the company and their implications for management processes.
Financial Markets
This covers various kinds of markets, including: monetary and stock markets; fixed interest markets (bonds, Treasury Notes, debentures, etc.), and a brief introduction to derivatives markets (particularly futures and options).
Competing through Operations
This course establishes the role of operations as a key activity. Operational focus and management sometimes provide the key to a company achieving and consolidating competitive advantages. The analysis is based on three concepts underlying industrial and service companies: operations strategy in the context of business strategy; logistic processes and their focus; and various models regarding quality.
Staff and Organizational Development (intensive period of Outdoor Training)
This intensive period employs outdoor-training and focuses on Personal Development and Management Behaviour. Participants' personal competences are developed and individual group values are strongly shaped through the course's experience-based approach. Experience in previous Outdoor Training courses is used to reflect upon learning models, which assume critical importance in open-air activities of this kind. Feedback on the practices and concepts acquired helps transfer the lessons learnt to participants' normal work setting and provides a basis for future personal development. Outdoor Training is an excellent activity for developing 'people skills'.
FASE 3: Designing the Strategy
Courses
Corporate Finance
Creating shareholder value is a vital task for any company manager. Management must understand which decisions create value and which destroy it. Investments in assets must be guided by the extent to which it increases the company's overall value. An optimum structure for liabilities will also contribute to creating value.
Corporate Governance
The course examines the corporate governance of large companies and firms quoted on the stock exchange. Structure, workings, legal regime, and conflicts of interest. Shareholding types Boards of Directors and independent councillors. Supervision of the management team: appointment, evaluation, regulation, responsibility, and remuneration (incentives and stock option schemes). Regulation of stock markets and operators. Corporate operations: stock exchange flotations, mergers, takeovers, etc.
Managing Organisations
Strategic implementation methodology based on Performance Management models. The case studies of three companies are examined and their practical application to the model is discussed. The main themes on which the presentations and subsequent group debate will focus are: change management, mergers and acquisitions, company growth and leadership, and variable remuneration schemes.
The Market and Customer Behaviour
The complex combination of factors affecting customers' purchasing decisions requires new ways of creating value in goods and services. The brand is a company's main asset for differentiating itself from its competitors and represents a basic tool for communicating with the market. Building brand value implies great knowledge of one's customers. Such knowledge is required to create a framework for customer relations and for deploying communication and relational marketing strategies.
Supply Chain Management
The course explores models and methodologies for Supply Chain Management (SCM), and takes into account the impact of new technologies on the supply chain (purchasing, suppliers, ordering, auctions), manufacturing (postponement, virtual manufacturers, and contract manufacturers), distribution (CRM, smart logistics, associated logistic operators) and supply chain planning (supply chain design, demand planning, and advanced planning systems).
Negotiation
This practical course provides techniques, tactics and strategies for getting what you want and for establishing a sound basis for future business dealings. The ground covered includes: devising a strategy; preparation; the interplay of interests; creating synergies; and implementing the outcome of negotiations.
Competitive Strategy (Intensive period - international)
This intensive period is an integral and compulsory part of the program and will be held in one of the UK's top business schools. It covers processes for reflection and strategic decision-making, providing the concepts and tools required to make strategic reflections (at both internal and external levels) on key decisions. Interrelationships and application methodologies are also examined in the same context.
FASE 4: The Global Company
Courses
International Economy
Exposition and analysis of the main problems affecting today's international economy: globalisation, financial crises, the European monetary union, the international monetary system, trade and protectionism, direct investment and industrial relocation, foreign debt of the poorest countries, the impact of trade blocks, etc. The emphasis is placed on a theoretical analysis of problems and outcomes, as well as the policies pursued and their implications for companies.
International Business Law & Taxation
Introduction to International Taxation. International anti-tax avoidance measures, under-capitalization, transfer prices, exchange of tax information, clauses for preventing abuse of Double Taxation Treaties. Spanish holding companies (ETVE) as a tax-planning tool. Comparison of the different holding company regimes found internationally.
Global Finance
Internationalisation decisions, investment in assets, and financing policies are virtual indispensable in companies, whatever their size. It even includes companies that are not apparently directly affected, since interest rate trends and exchange rates tend to affect all firms in one way or another. The course also covers the strong interrelationship between international financial instruments and the options facing companies.
International Strategy
The course analyses the challenge posed by internationalisation. Subjects studied include: strategies for entering foreign markets; the role of alliances; internationalisation strategies based on direct investment; and various strategic options and organizational models for multinational companies.
Leading Change (Intensive period)
This course covers the implementation of strategy. This is the art of turning change projects into reality and devising implementation strategies. Leading and managing strategic change are undoubtedly the most complex and far-reaching tasks facing a manager in any company.
Global Marketing & Branding
This module discusses management capacity for value, brand and customer awareness, and develops strategies and business empathy. It also responds to the complexities derived from the marketing process and sales channel, structures and competition, and the ability to boost relative positioning and the differentiation of the value proposition launched onto the market. These phenomena, presented from the supranational perspective, offer new challenges and conceptions for management.
New Emerging Realities.
Asia. New Emerging Realities (intensive international period in Asia)
During this optional international study period at one of the region's most important business schools, we offer an academic and practical perspective of the new emerging realities. This module, delivered by local faculty and Western academics and professionals, has been devised to create contrasts and discover new management tools.
First stage. Tools for managing structured activities, such as projects. Start of the individual company project.
FASE 5: Leading the Future
Courses
Business Process Performance
This covers key concepts that are of increasing importance in all kinds of companies: process management; benchmarking; re-engineering; the EFQM excellence model; and development and implementation of excellence indicators.
Corporate Citizenship
This course covers strategies for ensuring that companies fully assume their social responsibilities, and deals with economic, social, and environmental aspects. The growing importance of Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) is due to two factors: (1) markets and consumers penalize companies that behave irresponsibly, and (2) firms are becoming increasingly aware that their behaviour has a social impact. Responsibility and sustainability are examined from broad social perspectives.
Marketing Integration
An innovative approach is adopted in this course, providing students with the knowledge they need for marketing management in post-boom markets and economies. It also covers the use of new tools for striking up a closer relationship with customers. The purely transactional approach to customer relations is no longer appropriate and business models need to be modified and co-ordinated with a company's off-line activities in order to meet the needs of mature markets.
The Networked Company
The course deals with the strategy firms need to adopt in dealing with digital markets and virtual forums. Such settings allow companies to find new suppliers and/or buyers, standardize terms and technical specifications, delivery time scales, payment terms, etc., and to use more efficient price mechanisms (e.g. auctions).
Future Challenges in Marketing
A series of tools and approaches aimed to develop a closer relationship with the customer and move away from mere transactions through new definitions and environments, capacities and needs, and roles and responsibilities. This programme is intended to develop and adapt business models, integrating and coordinating them with other management disciplines, the company's activities and its relationships with the environment.
Mergers and Acquisitions
The course familiarizes students with the formation of strategic alliances from a financial standpoint, and the bearing of human resources and business policy on company strategy. All stages of an acquisition are analysed and special emphasis is placed on the integration problems that arise after a takeover.
Risk Management
All companies are affected by market risks, whether these are interest rates, the price of raw materials, exchange rates, or payment default by customers. Decisions need to be taken quickly and this can lead to expensive operational mistakes. The issue boils down to deciding what risks need to be covered and at what cost.
Executive Skills. The Learning Organisations (intensive international period in the US)
Each participant will have the opportunity to evaluate his management skills in the light of his personal career plan and during a study tour at one of the leading management development centres in the US. This training forms an integral part of the EMBA program. The course applies the concepts covered in Personal Development. The programme's third international study period, held at leading business schools in the United States, and specialising in the specific field of knowledge of each edition.
In-Company Project and Corporate Entrepreneurship
This module, which starts in Phase 3, continues in Phase 4 and concludes in Phase 5, is based on project development and presentation, and aims to encourage participants to apply their acquired knowledge to resolving strategic problems within their organisation. The projects are initially defined as a reorganisation process from the perspective of project management or the implementation of new activities within the company, taking advantage of available resources and opportunities and leading to corporate entrepreneurship. The result is a series of benefits both for the manager as well as for the company: the company achieves the immediate application of a consultancy project designed specifically to meet its needs, or the momentum of a new initiative from within its own structure.
