PG Dip Business Administration (Senior Leader Apprenticeship)

Program Overview

This Senior Leader Apprenticeship is a two-year part-time program designed to enhance leadership skills through a curriculum covering strategy, innovation, finance, and people management. Participants gain practical knowledge through action learning and coaching, and upon completion, earn a Senior Leader Apprenticeship Award and potential Chartered Manager Status. The program aims to accelerate career progression and equip learners with the knowledge and capabilities for senior management roles.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

This Senior Leader Apprenticeship programme provides you with the knowledge, skills and capabilities required to be an effective leader. The Senior Leader Apprenticeship in Business Administration (SLA BA) is a part-time 2-year programme that will help you respond to complex organisational issues at a senior management level. The programme supports you in examining strategic responses to organisational issues to create value & pragmatic solutions within your organisation. It develops you to become a confident, competent, forward-thinking senior leader who can identify & critically analyse data, prospects, and balance strategic thinking with excellent operational focus. The central underpinning themes of the programme are transformation; both individual and organisational. It is intellectually challenging, insightful, and focused on improving practice in the workplace across all areas of management, leadership, and functions of a business. In consultation with employees, the curriculum has been developed to cover a broad range of business disciplines, including strategy, leadership, systems, innovation & finance that prepares and enables you to take a strategic perspective in senior leadership.

Objectives:

The apprenticeship aims to:

• Develop the knowledge, skills, and behaviours to prepare learners for senior leadership and strategic management roles.
• Provide learners with a holistic view of business using both theoretical knowledge and practical application.

Outline:

Content:

The curriculum has been developed to cover a broad range of business disciplines, including strategy, leadership, systems, innovation & finance that prepares and enables you to take a strategic perspective in senior leadership.

Structure:

The programme is delivered part-time, block taught over two years.

Course Schedule:

The course is taught in a block of three days each month over two semesters as well as an induction at the start of the programme. There will also be masterclasses and additional apprenticeship touch points throughout the 2 years.

Individual Modules:

• Individual Development and Reflection (10 credits): This module is a integrated and holistic part of the first year of the MBA programme and seeks to facilitate personal and professional growth and act as catalyst for reflection on learning from other first year modules and the wider aspects of the programme.
The module will explore how wider environmental developments in technology, ethical and sustainability awareness and social and cultural shifts have all impacted the role of the leader within organisations. Learners will consider how the role of the leader has developed over time and will reflect on what the future of leadership looks like in an increasingly digital environment. Learners will use critical reflection to consider how they can develop personally and professionally as a leader within their current organisational context.
• Strategic Management (20 credits): The module aims to provide an analysis of the theories, concepts and frameworks associated with strategic management.
Learners will develop a detailed knowledge and understanding of the complexities of creating, evaluating and maintaining ethical and sustainable business growth strategies within a dynamic internal and external environment. The module will encourage learners to consider the wider societal impact of strategic change as well as the role of new technology and digitalisation in organisational transformation. The authentic nature of the assessment enables students to put their learning into effect in the workplace, to apply their understanding to their own organisational context and to develop practical management skills.
• Digital Marketing and Communications (10 credits): This module will critically analyse and evaluate strategic marketing and digital communication approaches by: understanding the nature of contemporary integrated marketing communications; understanding the organisational customer and stakeholder; identifying market strategies for managing corporate brand and reputation; considering ethical practice in sustaining responsible customer and stakeholder relationships.
• People: Planning and Engagement (10 credits): Learners will critically investigate the developments in ethical leadership and people management and practice in the context of a continuously evolving business context.
Students will critique a wide range of literature which explores the future world of work which will include the advancement in technology, sociodemographic changes, political and economic impact and influences. Learners will also explore the role of values, behaviours and organisational citizenship and how this can drive business effectiveness and performance. It aims to enable learners to examine the use, application, and impact of systems and process improvement within organisational contexts. In addition, learners will appraise the application of system and process improvement methodologies and tools within an organisational context to impact outcomes, waste, variability, and cost.
• Innovation (10 credits): Building on innovation theory and best practice, this module aims to develop your ability to think and act innovatively in a range of organisational contexts.
It will provide learners with a grounding in the financial tools used for decision-making and data analysis and consider how these can be used to meet complex organisational challenges. Learners will use critical analysis to consider the limitations of financial tools and will evaluate the role of values, ethics and sustainability in creating appropriate financial reporting structures. In the module, learners will critically reflect on their own experience as well as that of their peers to enhance their personal understanding of financial practice. On completion of this module, students will have developed into more successful, financially literate senior business practitioners and will be able to apply their learning to their current role.
• Work-Based Change Project (20 credits): This module will have action learning at its core and learners will take responsibility for convening and managing the action learning process.
Learners will begin the module by identifying a focus for the change project through negotiation with key stakeholders within their organisation and spend time refining the parameters of their project across two semesters using peers to both support and challenge their focus. They will also identify theory and models that will inform their analysis and deploy a suitable research strategy to produce quality results and detailed reporting of their findings. Tutor support will be provided to monitor progress and refine the parameters of the identified project.
• Applied Business Research (10 credits): The module will provide learners with an understanding of how to design and produce applied business research scholarly-practitioner projects.
Learners will be provided with the knowledge and tools to be able to effectively design organisational/business/management research projects that apply to their own organisations or organisations which they are familiar with - learners will have a better awareness of how to become 'scholarly practitioners'.

Assessment:

• The creation of a portfolio of evidence demonstrating apprenticeship standards throughout
• Coursework
• Undertake an End Point Assessment at the end of their 2nd year to gain the SLA award

Teaching:

Teaching Methods:

• Face-to-face teaching and facilitation
• Blending online support & live online sessions for individual and group tutorials
• Classroom sessions are devised as an interactive, learner-centred experience with group activities playing a large part in the learning experience.
• The teaching approach will utilise a ‘flipped learning environment’ as well as technology, when appropriate, to maximise learning opportunities.
• Critical examination of case studies, examples of successes and challenges within the real world, and engagement in simulation activities.
• Use of a variety of tools to encourage self-reflection.
• Action learning and coaching are a key part of the programmes.
• Strong emphasis is placed on the workplace as a place to learn.
• Personalised approach to learning so that you can apply your learning to your own workplace projects and tasks.

Unique Approaches:

• Action learning
• Coaching and peer-to-peer coaching
• Flipped learning environment

Careers:

• Improved career trajectory
• Higher salaried position
• Ability to move more quickly and with confidence up the career ladder
• Work at board level, or in new enterprises
• Confidence in decision making, contributions to idea generation and business improvement.

Other:

• All students and alumni benefit from membership of Liverpool Leadership Network.
• Senior Leader Apprenticeship Award.
• Chartered Manager Status (Chartered Management Institute).
• Top- up your award to the full MBA degree (Additional Fee £2650- Fee subject to change).
• Apprenticeships are open to any organisation, small or large, from any sector whether that’s public, private or voluntary.
• Organisations with a wage bill of £3m or more will be paying into the Apprentice Levy.
• Employers can then use this levy to pay for their employees to undertake a degree or higher-level apprenticeship.
• AACSB International is a global association of leaders in education and business dedicated to supporting and advancing quality business education worldwide.
• Through membership, accreditation, research, thought leadership, professional development, and advocacy, AACSB partners with over 1,500 organizations, from more than 90 countries globally.
• The postgraduate diploma and senior leader apprenticeship is a respected and globally recognised master’s level qualification in business and demonstrates to employers that your professional practice is underpinned by academic knowledge and evidence-based research.
• Another benefit of studying at the Liverpool Business School is joining a network of senior professionals.
This enables alumni and staff to continue building meaningful, long-term relationships beyond the classroom, as part of the Liverpool Leadership Network.
• It is expected that graduates from this programme will have an improved career trajectory and we are committed to giving you the next level of knowledge for a higher salaried position and to be able to move more quickly and with confidence up the career ladder.
The curriculum covers the broad range of business disciplines that prepares and enables you to work at board level, or in new enterprises. Importantly, many graduates have used the confidence and skills they have developed on the programme to achieve their aspirations and move across sectors and industry boundaries.
• You will see a marked improvement on:
• Your day-to-day performance, confidence and learning in the workplace.
• Utilise new skills combined with experience to show new management thinking.
• Confidence in decision making, contributions to idea generation and business improvement.