MBA Phase 1: Management Fundamentals

Management Fundamentals

This phase prepares students to operate in a management environment by covering the basic tools and frameworks required for management decision-making. The following modules are delivered in this phase:

Business Fundamentals

  • About this module: This module provides foundation work to prepare you for the entire programme ahead. It gives you an overview of business basics, and explains the principles, concepts, theories and issues that you need to understand to operate in the business world.
  • What you will learn: Background to management theory – the value chain; competitive forces and positioning; market dynamics; the manager's functions in a dynamic, interrelated and continuously changing work environment; global management issues; principles of strategic decision-making; a world view of the information age; analysis of complex problems through systems thinking; systemic principles and methods of organisational development; the case method as a mechanism to explore complexity and cross-functional characteristics of business challenges.

Personal Skills Development

  • About this module: Success in the business world depends on effective articulation in written and spoken communication. The aim of this module, which will be initiated here and which will be evaluated throughout the MBA programme, is to develop your ability to present yourself professionally – which means speaking and writing well. It also includes information literacy to help you make the most of technology.
  • What you will learn: Dimensions of proper communication; self-reading on verbal communication skills; oral presentations techniques and resources; adaptive assessments of individual presentation skills; self-reading on professional written communication with emphasis on report-writing; continuous feedback and adaptive assessment of report-writing skills; self-study of resources supplied to acquire proficiency in office productivity software and the US enterprise collaboration software; information literacy, dealing with the proper methods of finding, using, passing value judgements upon, and referencing information resources.

Economics for Managers

  • About this module: This module provides an overview of economics – the social science that examines how people choose to use limited or scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants.
  • What you will learn: The meaning of economics and economic systems, and how economics influences all stakeholders in society; the meaning and challenges of globalisation and international economic integration, especially with regard to an open developing economy; the application of the principles of supply and demand in a market economy; the implications of the interaction between changes in one or more of a wide range of macro-economic forces; economic growth and development; inflation; unemployment; the balance of payments and exchange rates; the reasoning behind economic policy decisions, and the impact of such decisions on the managerial function.

Decision Analysis

  • About this module: How do you make a logical choice when there are various options available? This module will deepen your understanding of decision-making by providing you with the theories, methodologies and tools to streamline the way you make decisions.
  • What you will learn: Data, data collection and description; probability theory; probability distributions; sampling and sample distributions; statistical estimation; hypothesis testing; linear programming model formulation, solution and sensitivity analysis; integer programming; goal programming; critical path methods; simulation; decision theory.

"Tools and frameworks for
management decision-making"

Management Accounting

  • About this module: This module explores how you use accounting information to make informed day-to-day and short-term business decisions, and to deal with management and internal control functions. These information reports typically show statistics on available cash, outstanding debt, orders, inventories, trends and variances.
  • What you will learn: Elements of cost and cost systems; break-even analysis; budgeting control; cost behaviour, variance analysis; in-depth analysis and interpretation of financial statements of listed South African industrial companies; focus on cash-flow analysis and management of working capital; traditional ratio analysis; value-added statements and analysis of historical performance reviews.

Leadership Orientation and Context

  • About this module: This module is the start of your personal leadership development journey while doing your MBA. It explains the groundwork and principles, and marks the beginning of your personal leadership learning curve.
  • What you will learn: The aim of this module is to establish a clear understanding of the leadership development process and assessment requirements. It includes the principles of the New Economy Leadership and Values Shift, and discusses the primary challenges facing leaders in the New Economy. It also initiates the leadership development process on a personal level.

Research Methodology

  • About this module: Your MBA culminates in a research report on a business-related issue, and this is the start of this process because it explains how to go about systematically investigating an issue to solve a problem or to gain a better understanding of the issue.
  • What you will learn: This module instructs students to master the scientific principles underlying business and management research. These principles must be applied in developing a research approach and in choosing a research strategy within the context of a specific question. Hence, the required steps in the research process must be implemented in order to reach a scientific conclusion. This information must be documented in the form of a final research proposal. This module includes the logic of the research process and the different forms of reasoning; stages in the research process; formulating the research question; and research design, conceptualisation, sampling, and data collection. Approaches in data analysis are included: qualitative, quantitative, non-parametric, parametric and time series analysis. The module includes hypotheses, models, theories and report-writing.

Further information

 PDF of comprehensive MBA brochure in English [Read / Download]
 PDF of comprehensive MBA brochure in English [Print]

 PDF of comprehensive MBA brochure in Afrikaans [Read / Download]
 PDF of comprehensive MBA brochure in Afrikaans [Print]

The USB reserves the right to modify the contents of subjects and to combine subject matter for better integration of learning areas. This is in the interest of continuous improvement of the curriculum.