UDBMMKFY - BA (Hons) Business Management and Marketing (including foundation year)

The foundation of the BA Business Management (IFY) programme is developed under the School of Social Sciences and Professions for students who wish to enter Higher Education and may have non-traditional qualifications, lower UCAS points or are mature students. It exemplifies the university strategies of inclusive learning, widening participation, the aims of the ESJF and of serving our community, as the majority of our students are local. It is a large programme and forms a significant percentage of recruitment for the school overall, as well as contributing to courses in both SSSP and GSBL. Students will explore a wide range of social science, business and current affairs themes, whilst also developing the academic and digital literacies that will be of benefit to them in the following three years of study. The curriculum is structured to be confidence building, varied and inclusive, and reflects the lived experiences of our cohort. They will begin to develop an identity related to their subject choice and career aspirations. In addition, they will work on becoming self-motivated, proactive students, taking responsibility for their own progress and learning. Teaching and learning is through interactive workshops, practising compassionate pedagogy, that enable students to form strong communities with each other and the teaching staff. Students will have access to varied materials on weblearn, and other learning resources and opportunities tailored to their subject. To support success, the programme runs an extensive ‘assessment care package’ that guides students at all stages through assessments. Each student will have a personal academic tutor and access to a success coach, as well as informal peer support.

This degree course combines the cornerstones of modern business management with up-to-date marketing techniques. It encompasses the QAA Subject Benchmark statement for Business and Management 2024 which states that the purpose of business and management programs is to:

• Develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills – Equipping students with analytical abilities to address complex business challenges.
• Prepare students for leadership and decision-making – Fostering managerial competencies and ethical decision-making in diverse business environments.
• Encourage innovation and entrepreneurship – Supporting creativity and enterprise development for future business leaders.
• Promote global awareness and sustainability – Integrating responsible business practices aligned with sustainability and social impact.
• Enhance communication and teamwork – Strengthening interpersonal and collaborative skills essential for professional success.

Combining business management with marketing will intellectually challenge students and stimulate their interest in both subjects. The interconnecting subjects are taught through a mixture of interactive lectures and seminars and group work. The course provides the underpinning theoretical foundations in the subject areas of Business Management and Marketing, including organisations and the business environment. Students will develop their understanding of management and marketing theories, models, frameworks, tasks and roles, including the management of people and corporate social responsibility. Students develop their understanding of the purposes, structures, size, scale, governance, operations and management of the functions and processes of business organisations, as well as the corporate behaviours and cultures that exist within and between different organisations.

Teaching and learning are built around students’ activities in response to prepared tasks and students are required to apply knowledge, to discuss and to analyse business and marketing problems. Core skills and capabilities are developed through these complementary activities. Seminars will use a problem based learning (PBL) approach designed to foster student centred learning and engagement. This student-centred approach enables students to research, synthesise, analyse and to discuss core principles. It also provides the opportunity to obtain formative feedback. Students can develop their practical skills and decision-making through participation in on-line business simulations, which are embedded in the course. In addition to enhancing their theoretical understanding, managing a ‘virtual’ company is a powerful mechanism of feedback to students on their performance as well as enhancing their confidence as young managers.

The degree has a central all encapsulating theme of employability with the aim of providing students with the confidence and the transferable knowledge and skills required for their chosen careers. Students are offered the opportunity to acquire business experience in their second and final year through Work-Related modules. These modules are designed flexibly to allow students to acquire a diverse range of business experience and give them crucial skills relevant for their future careers. This aspect of the course underpins the importance of the employability agenda and demonstrates a deep commitment to the professional development of students.

Graduate of this course are expected to develop cognitive and attitudinal personal characteristics that align with the university broader aims of developing individuals who are confident, resilient, collaborative, creative, ambitious, socially and environmentally responsible and with a keen sense of social justice. These aims also align well with the university’s Education for Social Justice Framework.

Following consultations with students, subjects experts, careers, employability and student enterprise teams, the course highlight two dimensions that, although were tacit in previous descriptions of the course, it was decided to specifically include them among the learning outcomes. These are:

LO 9:  Utilise recent technological advancement – Gen AI to their fullest potential for the benefit of business organisations and global communities. (LO9)  

LO 10: Apply entrepreneurial thinking and innovative strategies to identify and exploit business opportunities.  (LO10) 

In lign with LO 9, the course also takes into considerations the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) six digital capabilities framework to encourage students to develop digital skills such as: working with ICT based tools and platforms, finding, evaluating and acting on digital information, working with and designing digital solutions, working with digital media and networks, developing own and others’ learning through digital means, projecting digital identity/reputation and adopting a healthy attitude to digital tools.

The course continuously reviews its teaching and assessment methods to remove any unnecessary requirements that may adversely impact some groups within the student population.

Unique Selling Points

The course shares many characteristics with other business courses but it particularly has the following very attractive dimensions:

• The course offers students the opportunity to have a strong background combining management and marketing that enables them to consider a career in either of these two directions.
• The course is accredited Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) as it gives exemptions for two out of three units (modules) to gain an extra professional qualification. This means students are only required to undertake a short training for to achieve the third unit, and gain an extra qualification.

The main aim of the Business Management and Marketing course is to provide a contemporary and dynamic programme of study which gives students knowledge and understanding of the fundamental subjects and prepares them for a wide range of careers in business management and marketing. The course aims to provide an integrated and broadly based business management and marketing curriculum. This will enable students to explore and examine key concepts and principles and link the multi-disciplinary subjects of business management with an emphasis on the marketing function. Students will have to opportunity to engage with leading edge themes of business management and marketing including sustainability, leadership, globalisation, entrepreneurship, innovation and corporate social responsibility. Optional modules at L5 & L6 will allow students to focus more directly on subject areas of particular interest to them.

Specifically, the course takes a progressive and critical approach in the context of the contemporary real business world and to the techniques used in business and marketing management. The aim is to provide a sound academic and professional practitioner base in the understanding of business management and marketing techniques, concepts and principles which go to making businesses successful and efficient. There will be an emphasis the development of commercial awareness, team and inter-cultural communication, critical thinking, problem solving, decision-making and self-refection skills. The curriculum aims to develop students’ intellectual and practical skills.

The degree is organised into three levels with specific aims, as follows:

Level 3 aims to explore a broad range of social science, business and current affairs issues. Learners reflect on the qualities needed to be a successful student in Higher Education and identify their own strengths and areas for development.

Level 4 aims to provide a firm foundation to support the more advanced studies of business management and marketing. This first level offers an introduction to knowledge of business management approaches and marketing principles, and these topics are positioned within the general business environment. Students are also introduced to key relevant quantitative approaches. It introduces students to critical analyses and self- reflection.

Level 5 aims to deepen the student’s specialist knowledge in business management and marketing with a focus on the more specialist nature of the subject matter. Students will learn about the decision-making process of business organisations and the social, cultural and ethical environment in which they operate. They will also examine customer behaviour / motivation and understand the role of operations in supporting the effective delivery of customer satisfaction.

The aim is to develop students’ intellectual skills, understanding, problem- solving capabilities and to promote the student's ability to analyse, synthesise and evaluate business management and marketing principles from a wide context.

Level 6 aims to challenge students intellectually and promote independent learning through an individual research project culminating in a dissertation. Students will be given an opportunity to explore wider and more advanced and specialist subjects in marketing and business management such as services marketing, global regulation, managing corporate reputation and small business survival. The aim is to enable the students to have a broader coverage of both disciplines of marketing and business management. In particular, students are encouraged to adopt a socially and environmentally responsible approach to management and marketing, as illustrated in the module of Social Marketing. Accordingly, students are encouraged to develop a wider perspective of the interrelated subjects and to enhance their ability to view the wider employability prospects and opportunities of the degree.

To support the employability perspective, Business Management and Marketing students are offered opportunities to undertake work placements prior to completing their final year of study.

The learning outcomes are based on the integration of the QAA Benchmark statement for Business and Management (2023) and the the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s “Certificate in Professional Digital Marketing”.

On successful completion of this course students will be able to: demonstrate confidence, resilience, ambition and creativity and will act as inclusive, collaborative and socially responsible professionals in their discipline. (ULO)

Thus, upon graduating with an honour’s degree in Business Management and Marketing, students will typically:

1. Have the confidence needed to take leadership decisions in challenging situations (LO1).
2. Possess the necessary communication skills that will help them adopt a global and multicultural perspective in their professional context (LO2).
3. Be cognisant of the effects of the social and environmental of their decisions and will remain active citizens of the places they live and work (LO3).
4. Demonstrate application of creative thinking skills to practical problems, and possess the analytical and organisational skills to translate creative ideas to operational business, management and marketing solutions (LO4)
5. Have a wide knowledge and understanding of the broad range of areas of business and management and the detailed relationships between these and their application in practice (LO5).
6. Consistently demonstrate a command of subject-specific skills as well as proficiency in generic skills and attributes (LO6).
7. Have a view of business, management and marketing influenced by a wide range of learning sources, based on a proactive and independent approach to learning (LO7).
8. Be distinguished from the basic standard (threshold) of achievement by their enhanced capacity to develop and apply their own perspectives to their studies, to deal with uncertainty and complexity, to explore alternative solutions, to demonstrate critical evaluation and to integrate theory and practice in a wide range of situations (LO8)
9. Utilise recent technological advancement – Gen AI to their fullest potential for the benefit of business organisations and global communities. (LO9)
10. Apply entrepreneurial thinking and innovative strategies to identify and exploit business opportunities. (LO10)

These undergraduate attributes will be delivered primarily through 15 credit core modules, supported by a choice of elective modules, and independent learning.

The QAA Benchmark statement for Business Management and Marketing March 2023

The BA (Hons) Business Management and Marketing course offers both formative and summative inclusive and authentic assessment that take a variety of formats including, coursework, portfolios, blogs, essays, exams, group presentations, business reports, problem-based activities, practice-based projects, group research projects, videos, computer-based tests, business simulations and a final dissertation or consultancy project.

These types of authentic assessments reflect real industry practice helping to develop practical skills and confidence by working on tasks similar to those graduates will face in their careers. They make learning feel relevant and prepare students for the expectations of employers.

Feedback is provided on both formative and summative in keeping with the university guidelines. Students are encouraged to engage in a dialogue through feed forward activities with staff on assessments. The aim is to encourage engagement support & constructive guidance from academic staff. This is also to facilitate and to ensure that assessment have an effective developmental impact on student learning and allow the student to reflect on their learning.

The university operates a marking and moderation process that are both rigorous and transparent to quality assure that:

Student work is assessed on a fair basis

Students are provided with supportive and appropriate feedback

Academic standards in relation to student work and final awards are maintained

Where possible work will be marked anonymously. Assessment work will be internally and externally moderated in accordance with the University’s marking and moderation policies and regulations as applicable.

For students interested in obtaining a second, Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), professional qualification, they get exempt from two CIM units (modules) and are only required to take a brief training to prepare them to obtain the third CIM unit and get another full qualification.

At Level 5, students can choose from three alternative core 15-credit work-based learning modules:

• MN5W55 Learning Through Work - For those looking to gain experience from undertaking and reflecting on work-based projects related to your career interest.
• MN5W50 Creating a Winning Business - Ideal for those seeking to understand how entrepreneurial knowledge can benefit those seeking employment or for those interested in how to be self-employed. Includes a short work-based project
• WL5W50 Empowering London: Working within the Community - For students interested in how societal issues affect London, including gaining work experience supporting a charity or community organisations.

Students can also apply for the option to extend their degree by completing a full Year in Industry module (MN6W04) after successfully finishing Level 5. This provides in-depth, real-world experience, professional-level skills development, and opportunities to build networks, helping graduates stand out in a competitive job market.

The course has a considerable tangible Alumni network and is visible on online platforms such as LinkedIn. Students have the opportunity to interact and work with graduates and practitioners and to be mentored by them.

There are no specified part-time structures for this course. Students on a part-time mode of study are required to take between 30 and 90 credits per academic year to complete the degree programme within the maximum time length allowed (6 years for a three-year course).

Programme planning is therefore agreed between the student and course team, in accordance with regulations on progression and completion.

Courses shall conform to both framework and University Academic Regulations. Where a course in addition has course specific regulations which have been formally approved by the University, these should be included below.

As part of our Undergraduate Student Promise, every student will benefit from accredited work-related learning (in either the form of a work placement or ‘live’ project with a partner organisation or practical small business planning) as a core, compulsory element within the study programme.

Standard University Regulations apply.

PDP and Reflective learning are embedded throughout the curriculum commencing at Level 4. Reflective learning and personal development planning is central to the students’ academic and career development – it is linked to assessment throughout the curriculum and is a formal element of formative feedback in several modules for the development of these key learning dimensions. Students’ experiential learning is encouraged throughout, and action learning sets are a feature at levels five and six, which promote reflective and Peer to Peer learning.

All modules have formative and summative assessment requiring varying degrees of critical self- evaluation and reflection in the context of business management professional practice.

FEHQ

Employability and workplace skills are inherent in all modules throughout the course, commencing with the business simulation at Level 4. At Level 5 along with the business simulation, there are work experience modules (see section 19 above).

In addition, the course includes a number of business management and marketing related activities during the academic year as well as a number of career-oriented workshops which help students to identify and develop key employability skills. Presentations by industry experts are included, and students are able to participate in workshops designed around identified self-development issues.

The Student Enterprise Team will be able to support students to consider freelancing and small business-start up opportunities during their studies. These initiatives are linked to improving the students’ employability and entrepreneurship prospects and their transferable skills.

Additionally, career development, employability and entrepreneurial education have been embedded and assessed in the curriculum, particularly through the activities such as work placement and authentic assessment, living CV, mock interviews, enterprise activities, gateway to success, employer events, linked in support and spotlight event.

This course is accredited by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), which is the largest professional marketing body in the world. It also provides exemption from two CIM units, so you’ll only need to complete one additional unit to receive the Certificate in Professional Marketing.

This course is also accredited by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). In addition to your degree, you’ll also gain the highly sought-after and widely recognised CMI Level 6 Diploma in Management and Leadership.

On successful completion of this course, you’ll be prepared for a range of business-related careers in both the commercial and public sector.

Our business and management graduates have gone on to careers as area managers, assistant management accountants, business, merger and acquisition analysts and directors at organisations such as Amazon, Office Holdings, E Movement and WizzAir.

Continuing your studies with us

The Guildhall School of Business and Law has a range of industry-linked postgraduate courses available on a full-time and part-time basis in business management, tourism and events, marketing and fashion, law, human resources and finance banking. These courses would be ideal for postgraduate progression:

• International Business Management - MSc
• International Business Management with Project Management - MSc
• International Trade and Finance - MSc
• Marketing - MA
• Global Human Resource Management - MA

In addition to the University's standard entry requirements, you should have:

• at least one A level (or a minimum of 32 UCAS points from an equivalent Level 3 qualification, eg BTEC Subsidiary/National/BTEC Extended Diploma)
• English Language GCSE at grade C/4 or above (or equivalent)