This module introduces you to ideas, examples and theories from the world of entrepreneurship. The modules reviews the importance of entrepreneurship and provides an overview of the history of entrepreneurship. The module takes a critical approach, looking at evidence, confirmation and conflict in academic theories as well as giving you opportunity to learn from practising entrepreneurs. The module introduces you to a range of thinking and supports you in evaluating alternative models and applying them as analytical tools in the understanding of entrepreneurial business.

Specifically, you will learn about the main classical theories of entrepreneurship, new research on the causes and promotion of entrepreneurship and the economic impact of new business.

Indicative topics:

Governments and society are increasingly expecting business organisations to step up and assist in building cohesive societies through the application of more sustainable forms of capitalism. This module introduces you to the global economic, societal, technological and environmental challenges of the 21st century, and identifies how, through greater alignment of business interest with that of society and the economy, business can be a “force for good” as well as best prepared to ‘Take on Tomorrow’. You will focus on how contemporary businesses, broadly defined to include public, voluntary, not-for-profit and social enterprise, interact the economy and society though examination of topical news stories and events. In doing so, you will develop a deep understanding of the relationships between business, the economy and society and the global challenges we all face. You will explore a range of cultural, governmental and ethical issues that arise from current and developing global and national contexts through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Key issues include business ethics, the role of business in society, green issues, stakeholder theory, capitalist variants, the nature of globalisation at firm, economic and societal level and the interrelationship between business and government. By the end of the module you will be able to evidence critical thinking and analysis skills while bringing your own experiences as a citizen into your discussion and inquiry.

This module is the key to your entrepreneurial learning in your first year. The module supports you to develop your ideas and entrepreneurial mindset through team learning. You will work in coaching teams and with support from your Team Coach you and your peers will work on integrating learning from your other Level 4 modules to support you to test and develop ideas which will build your entrepreneurial skills. Combined with this is the all programme activities which support your entrepreneurial and team learning, through a residential and Bootcamp as well as student led enterprise events.

You will use developing your own trading business or by working on enterprising type activities such as through entrepreneurial societies to tests out your learning in a practical setting.

This module is self-directed so you and your peers will direct your own learning in coaching sessions by drawing in learning and topics form your other level 4 modules. With support from your team Coach however some of the topics you may cover are;

Team formation topics (from all programme activities)

Venture development Topics (From Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Financial Decision making and Introduction to Marketing)

Team development Topics (From Business, Economy and Society and Preparing for Professional Practice)

Your programme aims to ensure that you are learners for business, not just of business, upon graduation. This module starts you on this journey by supporting your professional development. It aims to increase your awareness of and sensitivity to personal and employability/entrepreneurship/enterprise skills. It does this by focusing on programme-specific graduate career opportunities that require you to work on projects similar to those that graduates within your field will undertake once in employment. You are taking an experiential, team-focussed, project/problem-based approach. The module will support you in identifying and developing the essential skills, behaviours, and understanding required to sustainably and responsibly manage organisations and their people. These might include generic areas such as leadership, project management, management, resilience, empathy and professional judgment, and discipline-specific capabilities.

You will use this understanding to evaluate, practise, develop and re-evaluate your capabilities in these skills, behaviours and acumen areas, enabling you to build your own graduate identity. This approach underpins your successful future employability, entrepreneurship or enterprise activity. In addition, the activities provide you with authentic insights into the importance and challenges of team-working within organisations as you work to address real organisations’ issues.

Learner/team-led, tutor-guided sessions aim to support you in enhancing your employability and upon building your graduate identity. During the practical development of the key attributes and behaviours central to your future success within your chosen profession within a project-based environment, you will receive support from the programme team. In addition, by documenting and reflecting upon your progress towards achieving your own team defined KPIs, you will enhance your skills, behaviours, capabilities, and understanding.

In short, at the end of this module, you will:

This module is the key to your entrepreneurial learning in your first year. The module supports you to develop your ideas and entrepreneurial mindset through team learning. You will work in coaching teams and with support from your Team Coach you and your peers will work on integrating learning from your other Level 4 modules to support you to test and develop ideas which will build your entrepreneurial skills. Combined with this is the all programme activities which support your entrepreneurial and team learning, through a residential and Bootcamp as well as student led enterprise events.

You will use developing your own trading business or by working on enterprising type activities such as through entrepreneurial societies to tests out your learning in a practical setting.

This module is self-directed so you and your peers will direct your own learning in coaching sessions by drawing in learning and topics form your other level 4 modules. With support from your team Coach however some of the topics you may cover are;

Team formation topics (from all programme activities)

Venture development Topics (From Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Financial Decision making and Introduction to Marketing)

Team development Topics (From Business, Economy and Society and Preparing for Professional Practice)

You will learn how financial information can be used to assist managers and external user groups in their decision-making processes. You will initially look at the informational needs of outside user groups, the nature of the information they are provided with, and how this information can be analysed and interpreted in order to enhance the effectiveness of their decision making.

 

Topic areas will include:

 

The reporting frameworks and ethical principles that underpin financial reporting

The nature of international financial reporting standards

Format and content of the statement of profit or loss and statement of financial position

The statement of cash flows

Analysis and interpretation of financial statements using ratio analysis

 

You will then examine how financial information can facilitate managers in making operational decisions in relation to planning and control.

 

Topic areas will include:

 

Costing (full and variable costing)

Cost, volume, profit analysis

Relevant costs for decision making

Budgeting and variance analysis

Balance scorecards

Working capital management

 

Finally, you will explore the motivations for entrepreneurial activity and techniques that can be used to appraise investment decisions.

 

Topic areas will include:

 

Investment appraisal techniques (payback, accounting rate of return, net present value and internal rate of return)

Practical aspects of investment appraisal (inflation and capital rationing)

Risk and uncertainty

In this module you will gain a comprehensive understanding of the nature and practice of creativity and innovation and how it can be applied, whether within the context of a new venture or an existing organisation. The module will cover theories relating to innovation and its management within a strategic management context. This will be combined with an introduction to processes of stimulating creativity in a variety of business contexts. The module will seek to facilitate the development of practical skills to promote creative thinking through practice-based elements in which real world problems are introduced for the testing of creative teamworking techniques.

Specific topics will include:

Innovation in a strategic context:

The process of innovation and creativity:

The creative environment:

Innovation and creativity policy:

Successful entrepreneurship requires a broad understanding of management processes and techniques ranging from finance to strategy, HR and organisational behaviour. This module provides you with an overview of key management techniques and ideas which will be useful in your future entrepreneurial career. You will learn some basic concepts from a range of management disciplines with a focus on essential skills and their application in the entrepreneurial business.

Topics will include the following:

The module focuses on The Entrepreneur and the Role of the Entrepreneur in Entrepreneurship Theory.

It will develop your learning from Introduction to Entrepreneurship in year one. It is also the module which will help you to increase your capacity to think on your feet and be innovative; it will develop your life-long learning skills and your self-awareness and teach strategies to develop your psychological resources, such as hope and resilience.

Additionally, you will learn you how to create and participate in action learning sets which form the bedrock of the start-up pathway and decide whether this more experiential approach to learning is right for you.

Through this module you will learn about:

This module is the key to your entrepreneurial learning in your first year. The module supports you to develop your ideas and entrepreneurial mindset through team learning. You will work in coaching teams and with support from your Team Coach you and your peers will work on integrating learning from your other Level 4 modules to support you to test and develop ideas which will build your entrepreneurial skills. Combined with this is the all programme activities which support your entrepreneurial and team learning, through a residential and Bootcamp as well as student led enterprise events.

You will use developing your own trading business or by working on enterprising type activities such as through entrepreneurial societies to tests out your learning in a practical setting.

This module is self-directed so you and your peers will direct your own learning in coaching sessions by drawing in learning and topics form your other level 4 modules. With support from your team Coach however some of the topics you may cover are;

Team formation topics (from all programme activities)

Venture development Topics (From Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Financial Decision making and Introduction to Marketing)

Team development Topics (From Business, Economy and Society and Preparing for Professional Practice)

This module focuses on ways to conduct independent research, together with the key academic skills of analysis, synthesis and criticality. You will be able to learn about processes and practices of conducting research from the initial idea to reporting results as well as understand the purpose of the research projects. The module examines the principles of research design before progressing to a more detailed treatment of data collection and analysis. You will be challenged to develop research ideas and critique existing literature primarily from academic sources. You will gain an understanding of various means of undertaking a research enquiry specifically to provide insights to solving a relevant problem, including activities as defining hypothesis/research questions, designing research objectives and research design that involves also budgetary limitations, primary and secondary data collection, research methods, and structuring of the final results.

This module is the key to your entrepreneurial learning in your first year. The module supports you to develop your ideas and entrepreneurial mindset through team learning. You will work in coaching teams and with support from your Team Coach you and your peers will work on integrating learning from your other Level 4 modules to support you to test and develop ideas which will build your entrepreneurial skills. Combined with this is the all programme activities which support your entrepreneurial and team learning, through a residential and Bootcamp as well as student led enterprise events.

You will use developing your own trading business or by working on enterprising type activities such as through entrepreneurial societies to tests out your learning in a practical setting.

This module is self-directed so you and your peers will direct your own learning in coaching sessions by drawing in learning and topics form your other level 4 modules. With support from your team Coach however some of the topics you may cover are;

Team formation topics (from all programme activities)

Venture development Topics (From Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Financial Decision making and Introduction to Marketing)

Team development Topics (From Business, Economy and Society and Preparing for Professional Practice)

This module is the key to your entrepreneurial learning in your first year. The module supports you to develop your ideas and entrepreneurial mindset through team learning. You will work in coaching teams and with support from your Team Coach you and your peers will work on integrating learning from your other Level 4 modules to support you to test and develop ideas which will build your entrepreneurial skills. Combined with this is the all programme activities which support your entrepreneurial and team learning, through a residential and Bootcamp as well as student led enterprise events.

You will use developing your own trading business or by working on enterprising type activities such as through entrepreneurial societies to tests out your learning in a practical setting.

This module is self-directed so you and your peers will direct your own learning in coaching sessions by drawing in learning and topics form your other level 4 modules. With support from your team Coach however some of the topics you may cover are;

Team formation topics (from all programme activities)

Venture development Topics (From Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Financial Decision making and Introduction to Marketing)

Team development Topics (From Business, Economy and Society and Preparing for Professional Practice)

The Dissertation module aims to equip you with the necessary intellectual and practical skills for undertaking an individual student-led, ethical investigation into an accounting, economics or finance (AEF) related problem or issue. In addition, the Dissertation aims to equip you with key transferable, employability skills, time management, project management, communication (written and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and influence, discovery, initiative, creativity and innovation in problem-solving and analysis.

The module is student-led but you are supported by, introductory lectures and workshops as well as guest lectures which introduce undertaking AEF research followed by one-to-one or small-group supervision meetings with an academic from the AEF subject discipline.

The lectures and IT workshops will provide a thorough grounding into undertaking an extended piece of researching, focusing on:

Upon completion of the AFM Dissertation module you will be able to:

This module aims to provide you with the knowledge and skills to understand the start-up and development of companies operating within digital markets. The module is delivered through lectures and seminars.

The module will cover the following issues:

Through this module you will gain skills enabling you to analyse the growth and developing of digital entrepreneurial activities. On completing the module, you will understand how companies grow and appreciate the dynamic and complex nature of the relationship between the digital enterprise and its wider context.

This module offers an opportunity to develop an understanding of and interest in contemporary issues in entrepreneurship.

The word “entrepreneurship” has evolved over recent years and the term now covers a diverse range of social and economic actors, processes and situations. Entrepreneurship as an academic domain has exploded in diverse ways. This module aims to introduce you to some of the key themes of contemporary entrepreneurship research. The content will be flexible in order to showcase the current, leading-edge research interests of faculty and will have three broad themes:

Entrepreneurial performance and growth: Consideration of the links between economic and entrepreneurial performance, and lessons for growth, prosperity, economic policy and job creation. Possible topics will include creative/rural industries entrepreneurship, small business creation and development,innovation, incubation and networks, supporting small business, and SME finance and venture capital.

Entrepreneurial actors: Consideration of the person of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurial behaviours as well as socioeconomic dimensions such as labour markets, demography and entrepreneurial heterogeneity. Possible topics will include gender, entrepreneurship, social, community and ethnic entrepreneurship, management and leadership skills development and growth issues.

Entrepreneurial frameworks: Consideration of entrepreneurship theoretical frameworks and the ethics of entreprenership, as well as the impact of culture (organisational, regional, national and international) including entrepreneurship education and training. Possible topics will include entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurship education, sustainability and environmental issues, and entrepreneurial philanthropy.

On completion of the module you will be able to demonstrate critical thinking skills and oral & written communication skills.

This module will introduce students to all aspects of family business studies. It will cover seminal issues including the evolution of family businesses and differing interpretations of family business including the distinction between family and non-family business. The role of family businesses worldwide and how they operate in different socioeconomic, political and cultural contexts. Drivers of longevity in family business including succession planning/management, next-generation engagement, innovation, transgenerational issues (such as transmission of skills), change management and entrepreneurship. Finally, there will be special focus areas such as: emotions in family business (including socioemotional wealth); values in family business (including governance and CSR); family business strategy and competitive advantage (including Resource-Based View); and the function family business history (including identity creation/maintenance, branding and impression management).

The dissertation module aims to equip you with the necessary intellectual and practical skills for undertaking an individual student-led, ethical investigation into an applied business (or the named degree) problem or issue. In addition, the dissertation aims to equip you with key transferable, employability skills, including: time management, project management, communication (written and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and influence, discovery, initiative, creativity and innovation in problem-solving, analysis.

The module is student-led but you are supported by, initially, weekly lectures and seminar-workshops which provide an introduction to undertaking Business-Management research followed by one-to-one or small-group supervision meetings.

The lectures and seminar-workshops will cover the following topics:

Upon completion of the module you will be able to: