The Euro MBA Distance Learning

European Master of Business Administration

We have been hearing a lot about the European Master of Business Administration or more popularly known as the Euro MBA or Euro*MBA. This is a review on Euro MBA - the distance learning and online MBA program offered through the joint efforts of top European business schools and universities.

The Euro MBA is a two-year program. It consists of four days of introduction seminar to introduce MBA students to its program, the communication and IT skills required for the online learning environment. There is also a six-week of residence throughout Europe which cover a wide spectrum of topics on European business and management issues. During this residency, MBA students visit companies and are provided with leadership training.

There are 10 core business modules to be completed online to help MBA students develop in-depth knowledge on general management. These online learning also provide students with the opportunities to network among themselves. The online learning for Euro MBA allow students to study wherever and whenever they wanted.

Euro MBA students also are required to complete a Master Thesis to utilize the skills they have learned throughout the program and to apply them to real-life management issues.

Accreditation

The Euro MBA is a well-reputated certified MBA program that is accredited by various accreditation agencies. These include accreditation by AMBA, AACSB and EQUIS.
Upon completion of the Euro MBA, graduates obtain a certified MBA degree of the full consortium members:
1. Audencia Nantes Ecole de Management (France)
2. EADA (Spain)
3. IAE Aix-en-Provence (France)
4. Leon Kozminsky Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management (Poland)
5. Universiteit Maastricht Business School (the Netherlands)
6. HHL - Leipzig Graduate School of Management

The followings are detailed description of the format and program of the Euro MBA.

Introduction Seminar

All registered students of the Euro MBA attend a four-day introduction seminar. This takes place during the first weekend of the Residential Week that precedes the first course.
The purposes of the seminar are to:
1. Get to know the Euro*MBA staff and the Euro*MBA programme and procedures
2. Get to know your colleague students you are going to work with during your courses
3. Make a good start with your course and your group consultancy project
4. Acquire skills needed to perform well in the Euro*MBA programme.

During the Introduction Seminar, there will be sessions on Writing Skills, Presentation Skills, Teamwork and Multicultural Communication, Lotus Notes, Teambuilding Activities and Kick off Sessions Courses.

Residential Weeks

Euro MBA students have to attend six residential weeks spread over the two-year program. Each of these residential weeks cover different themes in management and leadership skills. Euro MBA students will receive lectures and materials from experts and professionals on current issues n business, work on group projects and receive management skills training.

The themes of the Euro MBA Residential Weeks are:

Corporate Social Responsibility by Audencia (Nantes/France)
Organisational Learning and Transformational Change by UMBS (Netherlands)
Managing Emerging Markets by LKAEM (Poland)
Entrepreneurship by IAE-Aix (Aix-en-Provence/France)
Managing Strategic Innovation by HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management (Germany)
Business Life Cycle by EADA (Spain)

In addition to the theme, there are also soft skills development in the area of communication processes, international negotiation, influencing/interaction skills, problem solving in teams, decision making and coaching.

The Euro*MBA programme consists of ten distance learning courses:
• Strategic Management
• Change Management
• International Management
• Management Accounting
• International Financial Management
• Human Resource Management
• Technology and Innovation Management
• International Marketing
• Business Simulation
• European Business Law

Strategic Management

The Strategic Management of the Euro MBA provides a rigorous analytical view that firms face in today’s competitive environment that can be used in the process of strategic decision-making. This course aims to provide Euro MBA students with an understanding of what corporate strategy is, why strategic decisions are important, approaches to formulate and implement strategy, levels of managers in the strategic management process and the effects of European Union on the firm’s environment and strategy.

Among some of the main topics covered in the Euro MBA Strategic Management course include: evaluation of the firm’s environment; evaluation of firm’s strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats (SWOT); competitive strategies; cooperative strategies; integration and diversification; merger and acquisition; global strategies; and the effect of the European Union.

Change Management

The goals of the Euro MBA Change Management course are to teach the basics of change management, apply this knowledge in practice, further students teamwork and to prepare students for the Masters thesis. The Change Management course of the Euro MBA discusses in detail the steps change agents take such as diagnosis, sense making and strategizing in the change process.

Students are divided into teams that consists of 4 to 6 students per team for this course.

International Management

The goals of the International Management course of the Euro MBA is to enable students to acquire the knowledge and insight into the conditions about international business development and growth, nature of international business, characteristics of international, multinational and global enterprises, and the basic policy available for the management of international business.

Among some of the main topics covered in the Euro MBA International Management course include: the nature of international business; international trade; involvement of government and companies in international trade; foreign direct investment; management of marketing and production; strategic issues for global enterprise; specific strategic issues for the global enterprise; internationalization of the global enterprise; organizational issues; and the cultural environment of the global enterprise.

Management Accounting

The goals of the Management Accounting course in the Euro MBA are to enable students to understand and appreciate the strengths and limitations of a firm’s accounting system, to use opportunity cost in decision making process, to use organization theory to understand how accounting is employed as part of the control mechanism and to connect concepts of real-world cases.

Some of the main topics covered in the Euro MBA Management Accounting course include: nature of costs; organization architecture; budgets and budgeting; cost allocation; absorption cost systems; and management accounting in a changing environment.

International Financial Management

The goals of the Euro MBA International Financial Management course are to enable students to learn to manage international investments, analyse the profit and risk of international investment, international financing, to assess the risks associated with debt, currency risk, political risk and various risk management.

Some of the main topics covered in the International Financial Management course of the Euro MBA include: time value in risk management; role of foreign exchange market; foreign direct investment decision; diversification and portfolio approach; international financial markets such as bond market and SWAP market; cost of capital of foreign project; foreign exposure and risk; and political risk management.

Human Resource Management

The goals of the Human Resource Management course in the Euro MBA are to help students to understand the role of human resource management in an international context, how human resource management relates to corporate strategy, cultural differences and difficulties that arise in multicultural organization and to develop human resource strategies that lead to sustained competitive advantage.

Some of the main topics covered in the Human Resource Management course of the Euro MBA include managing workflows, staffing – recruiting/selecting/downsizing, development of appraisal tools, compensation and reward, governance and international human resource management.

Technology and Innovation Management

The goals of the Technology and Innovation Management course in the Euro MBA are to provide an understanding of how technological and innovation processes work, ideas for developing and exploiting firm’s innovative and technological capabilities and to provide concepts and tools for the integration of technology and innovation into the firm’s competitive strategies.

Some of the main topics covered in the Technology and Innovation Management course in the Euro MBA include: Innovation in historical context; integration of technology and strategy; design and evolution of technology strategy; enactment of technology strategy; organization architecture and managing innovation; managing functional competencies; and executive leadership in managing innovation and change.

International Marketing

The goals of the International Marketing course in the Euro MBA are to enable students to understand and analyse foreign environments, understand the impact of foreign environment market behaviour, analyse intermediate and final demand in a foreign investment, understand the international marketing strategy options and formulate international marketing strategies.

Main topics covered under the International Marketing course in the Euro MBA include: the international marketing environment; the economic behaviour; the cultural, political, legal and technological environment; human and natural resources, demand in international markets; international marketing research; international business marketing, market entry strategies, export and licensing; and international marketing strategies.

Business Simulation

The educational goals of the Business Simulation course of the Euro MBA are to improve decision making process, study how benchmarking improves performance, coherence of functional decisions, group working, understand financial market’s impact on firm’s strategies, value drivers, international positioning, and global business versus core competences.

In this Business Simulation course of the Euro MBA, students have to develop new policies in line with the most recent developments in strategy, finance and competitive alliance. They also have to practice negotiation in a full internet context. Students make use of a distance-learning tools to learn how to negotiate alliances with other firms and under the scrutiny of the financial markets.

European Business Law

The goals of the European Business Law of the Euro MBA are to help students to acquire knowledge and insight into: business organisations, notably public companies, under the national laws of six Member States of the EC (Belgium, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Spain, the UK); business organisations under EC-law; the harmonisation programme within the EC; employee participation under national laws and in relation to the trans-national enterprise; cross border cooperation and acquisitions; groups as regulated by national laws and the EC; and investor protection as regulated by national laws and the EC.

Some main topics covered under the European Business Law course in the Euro MBA includes: business organisations within the EC; formation and financing of companies under national law; business organisations under the EC law; and cross border cooperation and acquisitions.

How Does Online Learning Works in Euro MBA?

Students use internet technology to work together with managers from various cultural, national and sectorial background. No lecturers are required as students can study anytime they want.

Students are grouped in teams of 4 to 6 students, with at least 3 nationalities. Team members will be able to encourage and motivate each other to complete the course.

During the residential weeks, students of the Euro MBA are provided with MBA materials such as books, readers and CD-ROM. They can assess their online MBA via the Web.

Assessment of the Euro MBA

The assessment for each course shall be based on individual assignment, a group assignment and a final exam.

Master Thesis

The final Master Thesis is the final task in the distance learning Euro MBA program. The followings are examples of Master Thesis completed by other Euro MBA students:
• Pioneering Emerging Markets in Developing Countries with Supply Chain Collaboration (Annette Lindinger, German)
• Predatory Pricing in the CRM Market (Dave Puckett, American)
• Performance-Based Maitenance Service Outsourcing by Alaleh Motamedi (Belgian/Iranian living in the US)
• Real options valuation of a drug discovery project: Aspects of Value Maximisation by Harald Mottl, with distinction (German living in Italy)
• Headquarters-Subsidiary Relationships in the Changing Multinational Company Environment: Empowering Subsidiaries by Shekhar Pula, with distinction (Indian living in the Netherlands)
• Entrepreneurship in Matured Organizations: A Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Study of MNCs in the Automotive Supplier Industry by Reiner Nesper (German)
• Learning to invent the future: Public Service in a Market Economy Strategic Planning and Organization Transformation in Government Organizations by Louis Titre (Dutch)
• What advantages Small and Medium Enterprises have over larger firms in Information Technology Services: The case of Spain by Jordi Torras (Spanish)
• Basic challenge of global organisations between technology innovation and knowledge management: a relation approach by Ferruccio Frigerio (Italian)
• Board Structures Under Corporate Governance by Clodagh Coakley (Irish)
• Comparison of Shareholder Value and Stakeholder Value Consequences for the strategic management by Christoph Stoppok (German)
• Competency Management at the Heart of Organisational Change by Gerard Nieuwe Weme (Dutch)
• Competitive Strategies for the European Logistics Industry by Ralph Burns (British living in Germany)
• Concentration, Disintegration and Co-operation in the Pharmaceutical Industry by Joop Wijdeven (Dutch)
• Concepts, a Threat to Existing Brands by Peter de Mol (Dutch) Developing, Implementing and Evaluating International Human Resource Strategies in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises by Arno Sunnotel (Dutch)
• Country Risk Management by Guus Rozendaal (Dutch)
• Fraud Prevention, Detection, and Reporting in Multinational Corporations and Who Should be Held Responsible? by Darlene Brown
• From a State-Controlled Bureaucracy to a Customer Oriented Company by Genio van der Schaft (Dutch)
• Future Proofing Innovative Telecommunication Services by Kamalesh Mehta (British living in Switzerland)
• How can the concept of core competencies help European Hospitals to adapt to their new environment? by Ronan Dubois (French)

Accreditation and Ranking of the Euro MBA

The Euro*MBA programme is accredited by:
• AMBA accredited (programme accreditation),
• AACSB accredited via Universiteit Maastricht, HHL - Leipzig Graduate School of Management and AUDENCIA Nantes Ecole de Management (school accreditation)
• EQUIS accredited via IAE Aix-en-Provence, AUDENCIA Nantes Ecole de Management, EADA Barcelona and LKAEM Warsaw (school accreditation).

The Euro MBA was ranked 5th in the world in its category in The Economist’s Which MBA? Guide 2007. Although The Economists ranked Euro MBA as the 5th overall, it had ranked them 2nd for quality of students, 3rd for its distance learning standards and 7th for the program content.

The Euro MBA was ranked in the top 32 e-learning program in the Financial Times ranking 2007.

The Euro MBA is certainly one of the most interesting and reputated Distance Learning MBA program in not only Europe, but in the whole world.