Professional Diploma in Management (B716)

Description

The Professional Diploma in Management will be of particular interest to those aspiring to middle level managerial roles in large organisations and those who have a leadership role in smaller organisations.

The key to effective management and leadership lies in developing a critical understanding of your organisation and the practices of those who work in it, including your own. To respond quickly and flexibly to rapidly changing markets and environments managers need a broad integrated picture of how their organisations work; they need to consider compromises, tensions and interdependencies between operational, accounting, marketing, information, financial and ?people? issues. The professional diploma will help you meet this challenge, focusing on the management of teams, departments and projects; the skills of the reflective practitioner are an important theme throughout.

The study programme affords the opportunity to stand back from your current situation in order to concentrate on themes of understanding and improving performance, managing projects and change. The emphasis is on your own professional development. Everything you study is related to the management roles and responsibilities you exercise. The elements of the programme ? study texts, activities and assignments, online resources, and personal and group support ? ensure that you can apply newly learned skills and techniques in very practical ways immediately. You can build on your experience and make direct links to your management development needs wherever you are in the world, whatever the size of your organisation and whether it is in the commercial, non governmental or public sector.

The professional diploma is not only a recognised qualification in its own right but also it is Stage 1 of the following masters degree qualifications:

• MBA (F61)

Once you have gained the professional diploma you can go on to study Stage 2 of these masters degrees.

Planning your studies

To gain the professional diploma you must already hold one of the following qualifications:

• Professional Certificate in Management (C31)

You will already have some first-hand experiential knowledge of managing some part of an organisation.

You must normally complete the required credit for your qualification within four years.

You must include at least 20 credits from OU modules that have not been counted in any other OU qualification you have been awarded.

Career relevance and employability

The Professional Diploma in Management is a generalist qualification in the core aspects of management: marketing, accounting, operations, human resource management etc. It is appropriate for all sectors: private, public or voluntary/third sector; the models and ideas are sufficiently general to be useful for people in all sizes of organisation, from multi-national to individual entrepreneur. As a stand-alone qualification it is intended mainly for first-line or middle management; as the first one-third of a masters degree in business or management (such as our MBA) and is appropriate for all levels of manager.

Modules

For this 60-credit professional diploma you require:

Or, subject to the rules about excluded combinations, the discontinued modules BZR700.