BA Hons Business Analysis and Technology & Finance

Topics

First Year aims to help you make the transition to the university context. Semester 1 is the Thematic Semester: The World of Business Today and covers topics such as:

• Social-Ethical-Environmental Governance (SEEG)
• Business Ethics
• Disruptive Technologies

Semester 2: Functional Semester: Organisations Today covers topics such as:

• Creativity & Responsibility
• Marketing & Sustainability across Domains

Class description

The first year of the programme is centred on the construction of knowledge in classroom setting with theoretical constructs developed. For each topic we’ve recorded a video by a Strathclyde academic who is a leading expert in the field.

You’ll watch these lectures in advance of each session and complete a pre-sessional activity. The pre-sessional work then forms the basis of team based activities work in the classroom (groups of 50 and teams of six-seven) where you develop an agreed understanding of the topic and present this to the group.

The feedback gained from this activity then feeds directly into the assessment for the block. You’ll complete 16 assignments in the two semesters of the class.

Business Analysis & Technology is the study of how analytical thinking, scientific method and tools can be used to help decision making. This class aims to introduce a variety of analytical methods that form the basis of analysing any business problem as well as provide students with an overview of technological change and how it affects all aspects of an organisation.

The aims of this class are:

• to raise awareness of the real world problems encountered by industry that can be solved through management science methodology
• to develop an understanding of the tools and techniques used by business analysts
• to provide students with an awareness of why and where organisations use technology
• to highlight the integrative role of technology within organisations
• to demonstrate the dynamic nature of technology

Students will receive an introduction to:

• finance and accounting, which covers the basic principles of investment and value
• the valuation of bonds and shares
• investment decisions in business companies
• accounting methods

Topics

Semester 1 topics include:

• Working in Business Organisations
• Working Business Research & Consultancy
• Working Internationally
• Working in the Third Sector
• Rhetorics & Oratory

Semester 2 is about developing the proposal of MDP3; with a presentation and a final report.

Class description

The second year concentrates on developing understanding through industry-specific contextualisation. Sessions are weekly and three hours in length.

The sessions are thematically linked to the pathways for individualised experience in third year whilst also drawing on the theoretical knowledge developed in MDP 1. In order to develop understanding, organisations will deliver a half-day session. This consists of a one hour plenary introduction where the company and case study are introduced. This is followed by the group sessions where you undertake activities in relation to the case study set by the company.

This class is one of the two undergraduate Business Analysis & Technology classes before the Honours year that apply various approaches to operations management problems. Following on from the fundamentals in the first year class, this class introduces you to the subject of operations management in detail and provides opportunity for you to apply some of the basic decision analysis techniques, including simulation, in this context.

This class forms a bridge between the first year class and more advanced classes in Enterprise Resource Planning, Business Process Outsourcing, the role of ICT in business environment, etc.

The class will seek to combine conceptual and technical skills, and it will provide the basis for a series of classes in third and Honours years, especially in areas of Business Process Integration with ERP, organisational innovation and E-commerce.

Second year classes cover:

• investment and financial decision-making and policies in business
• risk and return and the pricing of company shares
• portfolio selection and the efficiency of financial markets
• the valuation of bonds and bond portfolio management
• equity trading strategies
• statistical and spreadsheet methods of analysing financial problems and strategies

The third year of centres on individualised experience in an organisational context through one of the following pathways:

• Internship/Charities - gain practical experience in a private or third sector organisation. You need to negotiate and locate your own organisation and experience – this is one of the key learning points of the pathway.
• Research and consultancy - a facility for local small businesses to gain from the experience and expertise of those within SBS. You work on two live business consultancy projects (one in each semester) and, as a team of 6, develop solutions and strategic initiatives for the local SME economy.
• International experience – only available for students who are undertaking an international exchange for either one semester or full year.
• Vertically Integrated Projects - working on a cross-faculty basis to research longitudinal projects (including the ‘Bill Gates Toilet Challenge, Solar Panels for Gambia and Enterprise in Schools) you work with a team of students from all levels of study (first year undergraduate to final year PhD) to further the work of the project.

In addition, you’re required to undertake a social responsibility element (this accounts for one quarter of the overall workload).

These have been designed to provide support to the Curriculum for Excellence and the Widening Access to Higher Education programme. There are no formal classes for MDP3 although there is pathway support with the pathway leads and tutor support.

The first part of the course will introduce and build experience in two problem structuring methods, SODA and Soft Systems Methodology. The second part will establish an overall understanding of how supply chains work as well as appropriate modelling approaches to address various operational challenges. The third part of the course will introduce basic mathematical optimisation modelling and present how it can be used to tackle problems in different business systems, including applications in supply chains.

The fourth and final part of the course will introduce the students to the ideas of Multi-criteria Decision Analysis to make students aware of the importance of carefully defining objectives when intervening in business systems. Overall, the course will equip students with the qualitative and quantitative analytic skills and techniques in order to make action recommendations for performance improvements in complex business systems.

In this class, students will develop a comprehensive picture about knowledge and innovation. It goes to the very basis of what constitutes knowledge and knowledge work, and, based on this, develops the notion of creativity, as creation of new knowledge, and subsequently conceptualises innovation as new value created from the new knowledge.

Areas covered in third year classes include:

• advanced corporate finance and financial markets issues
• valuation of derivatives, such as options and futures and swaps
• the operations of derivatives markets
• hedging strategies
• treasury and international financial risk management in business

Advanced methods of empirical analysis, such as event studies, and access to historic and live data are also included.

Identifying and managing risk is a fundamental skill required by managers. Many models exist for supporting risk assessment and this is a major area of interest within the Management Science department.

This class will introduce you to the general concepts of risk and common measures used as well as considering ways of modelling and interpreting technical risk within the context of managing complex systems in areas such as transportation, aerospace, health.

It'll develop knowledge and skills introduced in years 1-3 in operations, statistics and modelling classes by integrating and extending them within the context of risk assessment.

This class builds upon students understanding of information systems. It'll provide you with the opportunity to develop analytical approaches for mining data using commercial software that'll be intellectually challenging and useful.

This class focuses on the methods used for mining data, complementing the other Honours classes that provide business context and processes.

This class investigates the application of sophisticated business technology systems to the management and, more particularly, integration of business processes.

In doing so, it builds directly on the knowledge and skills acquired as part of Management of Business Processes and, in a more indirect manner, on classes like Technological and Organisational Innovation, Information Systems in the Knowledge Economy, and Information Systems Support for Managers.

An important aspect of this class is the experiential learning element, where you'll work in teams on management science projects, directly for external clients.

The clients will introduce their problems, provide information during the project, and listen to your recommended solutions. These client projects will be chosen to highlight the differing nature of individual practice, allowing comparisons between qualitative and quantitative projects to be explored.

Alongside the experiential learning will be a reflective element, which will focus on issues relating to client, consultant relations and implementation of management science, as well as addressing more conceptual issues relating to problem structuring, modelling, data collection, and choosing and mixing methods in the light of your growing experience.

Professional and ethical considerations will be highlighted, introducing you to the areas of agreement and debate within the profession. This class will also include an individual or small group project, where you'll select a technique or method they haven’t previously studied to research in more depth, mirroring professional development that they will undertake in practice. This component of the class will be managed through learning contracts.

You can either specialise in Finance as a Single Honours subject or continue to a Joint Honours degree in Finance and your other principal subject. In order to gain entry to Honours year, you must meet specified performance criteria in Years 2 and 3.

Students taking Single Honours in Finance will do a research dissertation in Finance, while Joint Honours students typically have the choice of doing their dissertation in either Finance or their other subject. Honours classes cover advanced topics in the following areas:

• corporate investment
• corporate financing
• asset pricing
• portfolio analysis
• derivatives
• international financial management
• behavioural finance
• international corporate governance
• financial quantitative methods

Electronic commerce has had a major impact on the management of organisations and the business environment in which technology is used. This class seeks to explore this growing area, and provide a critical appraisal of the relationship between electronic commerce, technology and business model that has been adopted.

The explores the inter-relationship that exists between a theoretically grounded understanding of technological adoption and the changes that have been created by electronic commerce.