Business and Human Resource Management BA (Hons)

Change is a constant factor in today’s globalised business world. All organisations, whether private, public NFP or social enterprises need to adapt to a rapidly changing external environment and world developments in technology and economics, the call for more social responsibility, wicked problems such as climate change, increased international competition and global pandemics. In order to address these issues, organisations need to create strategy that can respond as required in an agile manner and develop leaders who can get the best out of their teams in times of uncertainty and change.

Strategic Leadership and Organisational Change will equip you with the key graduate tools necessary for you to critically engage with the nature of strategy and change. It will critically examine the processes involved in setting an organisation's direction, objectives and priorities in changing landscapes, in focusing internal energy and resources to achieve the objectives and in aligning internal and external stakeholders. The module deals with analysis, decision making and planning alongside the implementation of strategic plans and organisational change programmes to meet key internal and external objectives. The module will introduce you to effective strategic leadership and tools and instruments that can help you in developing and implementing effective strategies which are central to your future employability, enterprise or entrepreneurial activity. You will learn how critically engage with change models, to questioning their relevance in an unstable world and recognise the value of unpredictable crisis driven change. You will examine the inequalities and unintended consequences borne out though change programmes and critically appraise the nature of leadership by engaging with leadership theorising.

Successive global and national crises and organisational failures have demonstrated that conventional approaches to understanding and managing organisations and their people are less than effective.
Transforming Self and Organisations will support you in developing alternative approaches to analysing organisations, people and work practices. Building upon the multiple perspectives that you have been introduced to in the second year of your programme and upon your understanding from the module “People, Management and Organisations”, a research-rich curriculum will enable you to develop your appreciation and application of Critical Management tools and perspectives which challenge conventional approaches to understanding organisations. Drawing upon tools from, for example, identity, aesthetics, power and culture, you will develop your capabilities for questioning the neoliberal status-quo and the politics of managerialist and performance-driven agendas. You will examine the practices of large corporates through to SMEs, NFPs and social enterprises, interrogating, challenging, questioning what is typically taken-for-granted, seen as usual and appropriate, to recognise the inherent power and control that exists, to propose far-reaching change within organisations and society that prioritises fairness, justice, equality, diversity and sustainability. Your learning will place you in good stead to bring about future transformation within organisations. In adopting these alternative Critical perspectives on organisations so this may also challenge your own assumptions, values and beliefs transforming yourself. This learning will be invaluable to your future employment, enterprise/entrepreneurial activity.

You will develop a critical and practical approach towards the employment relationship. Building upon work in the Level 5 Reward and Performance module, you will develop an understanding of the centrality of rewards to the employment relationship and address the central concept of power in attempting to negotiate the introduction of a new reward system. Whilst you will have previously considered the role of rewards from a competitive perspective, here you will do so in the face of opposition, you will learn to bargain, compromise and play with power.
This will lead you to understand that organisations and their employees will often seek different objectives, sometimes resulting in conflict.
You will be introduced to a wide range of employment relations practices, both traditional and modern, understanding how each of these may have very different meanings for each side of the employment relationship.
You will develop an understanding of the employment relationship and its connection to wider trends in the economy, society and politics. You will see the employment relationship as an outgrowth of powerful forces, rather than as a simple facet of an organisation’s structure.
You will learn the principles and skills of negotiation and compromise: finding your way to agreement through a complex mix of cooperation, consensus, power play and shrewd bargaining. Bargaining and negotiation are high level, strategically necessary skills. The focus of this module in developing these skills highlights the value of this module for the development of your future career to the most senior levels.

This module brings together the latest research in contemporary issues in business and management, building upon the foundation developed in earlier modules to critical understand current issues and analysing how they affect strategy development and management. The module builds critical analysis and encourages a close look at diverse viewpoints on ongoing debates on contemporary business and management research at macro-meso-micro levels. You will consider various contemporary business and management challenges, critically examining how organisations plan to respond to strategic challenges, use technology, innovate, create, operate virtually, collaborate, engage employees, manage knowledge, and learn collectively.

The module aims to assist students in comprehending, analysing, and evaluating various contemporary issues in business and management. By the end of the module, you will have acquired the skills to critically assess current business and management issues, evaluating social, organizational, leadership and individual responses to these challenges. This involves establishing meaningful connections between theories and contemporary issues in business and management. The activities and assessments are designed to help you understand the implications of these contemporary issues in organizational settings and to develop effective managerial responses. This academic journey will support you in cultivating the confidence and insight necessary to navigate the intricacies of contemporary management. It provides opportunities for critical analysis, debate, critique, and reflection on personal career goals.

This module will provide students with a broad, interdisciplinary understanding of contemporary organisational practice and emergent forms of work. Drawing from organisational psychology and sociology, the module will explore changes through a macro and micro perspective, allowing for appreciation of responses to societal change at the individual and collective level. Building upon core levels 4 People, Management and Organisations and Business, Economy and Society, the relevancy of the module lies in its future-orientated focus. ‘Futures of Work’ will provide an overview of key changes to the labour market and organisational practices, such as those connected to the rise of the gig economy and automation, and examine how managers and organisations are responding to these changes.. The module will encourage students to critically assess issues connected to the future of work through longstanding concepts such as agency, time, dignity and power.
The module has broad relevancy to business and management students as it offers insights that will assist in understanding a complex and dynamic labour market. By focusing on emergent trends and alternative ways of working, students will be able to identify how organisations change, adapt and ‘future-proof’ themselves in response to external environmental and societal changes. The module will prepare students to enter a dynamic workplace by equipping them with the theoretical framework to understand emerging trends and the conceptual lens through which to recognise how individuals and organisations as a collective are affected.

Through this module you will develop your understanding of academic critique and gain confidence in your ability to construct academic arguments by critically reflecting upon a range of fictions. You will encounter theories and perspectives that will support your understanding of a range of contemporary organisational issues and improve your ability to separate rhetoric from reality. Key theories will include gender, identity, performativity, power and the nature of being, such as embodiment. You will learn the benefit of reading widely and how to see real life scenarios as human stories and shared narratives. This will support you to empathise and see people, and yourself, from different perspectives. Learning from a variety of quality fictions related to the world of work will help you in developing critical thinking skills and how to apply the persuasive narrative style of fiction to evoke affective responses from colleagues and audiences in business contexts. These skills are essential to performing well in academic work as well as operating at a strategic level in organisations, particularly when managing projects which necessitate challenging existing ways of doing things, from eliminating discriminatory practices to implementing large-scale change. The assessment on this module will support you in reflecting on the implications of what you have learned for your future professional career as well as wider business and social change. You will also consider your future career as a professional and your potential social impact in a way that goes beyond standard preconceptions of how business professionals think and what they do.
You will develop these skills by engaging with fictional narratives (i.e. reading, listening and watching). Fictions are typically more accessible to wider audiences compared to management texts as sources of information about management and organisational practice. While fiction is often defined as something which is imaginary or invented, it is often inspired by real life; it feels real because it draws us closer to different experiences and allows us to glimpse alternative possibilities. Therefore, through fiction, you will consider aspects of organisational life and management that are not typically covered in traditional business and management textbooks, such as emotions, prejudice, sexuality, and humour, and thus develop a more holistic picture of management practice.

After undertaking this module, you will be able to identify the normative presuppositions involved in ethical dialogue and use this in your analysis of ethical issues. This will enable you to better understand conflicts over such issues as executive pay, prompt payment, workplace rights, privacy, positive discrimination and many others. When developing organisation policy, representing the organisation in the media, negotiating agreements and otherwise undertaking work with an ethical dimension, this will enable you to anticipate and plan for objections, to identify weaknesses and contradictions in your interlocutors’ arguments and your own and thereby enable you to better manage ethical conflict at work. Through this process you will also improve your internal ethical dialogue. Clarifying your own normative presuppositions, values and virtues and better understanding their implications and exclusions will enable you to reflect upon the coherence of your own moral agency.

The Management Enquiry module is a student-led individual project that enables you to undertake a significant piece of assessed work commensurate with a capstone module. The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate an authentic engagement with managers and/or professionals in your discipline, and to integrate the knowledge you have developed during your programme to explore the theory in practice. The learning on this module is experiential and problem based, where the focus is upon you discovering, probing and questioning key practice-based issues. Through the module you will be offered the opportunity to develop and enhance key transferable employability skills including; time management, project management, communication (written, aural and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and influence, discovery, initiative, problem-solving and analysis.

The module has five thematic areas; explore, review, engage, reflect and connect. These form the key elements of the assessed submission.

Part A (35%, 3,500 Words)
• Explore: Interviewing a manager and/or professional in your discipline. In this interview you will either explore a key issue which you feel the discipline is facing or, alternatively, explore with the manager or professional the key issues that they feel they are facing in practice. It is expected that you will apply appropriate interview methods and provide evidence of the interview within the submitted enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).
• Review: Critically examining the appropriate literature to support the exploration, displaying an ability to critically assess and appraise the knowledge of your discipline related to a specific key issue arising from your exploration.

Part B (65%, 6,500 Words)
• Engage: Displaying an authentic engagement with the discipline problem/issue identified in Part A, by collecting/generating and analysing further live data (beyond the initial interview) regarding the discipline problem/issue. This live data may be primary data (e.g. further interviews with, or questionnaire to, managers and/or professionals in practice) or secondary data (e.g. industry data). Application of appropriate, ethically-considered, research methods and appropriate qualitative or quantitative data analysis.
• Reflect and Connect: Demonstrating an ability to critically evaluate and reflect on the issues arising from the Management Enquiry. Demonstrating how you have connected and fed-back to the participants of the Enquiry (usually the manager and/or participants) your key findings to provide clear prioritised, well-justified, practical and actionable recommendations for change/enhancement/improvement to existing practice to show how the recommendations would potentially affect workplace professional decision making.

The dissertation module aims to equip you with the necessary intellectual and practical skills for undertaking an individual student-led, ethical investigation into an applied business (or the named degree) problem or issue. In addition, the dissertation aims to equip you with key transferable, employability skills, including: time management, project management, communication (written and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and influence, discovery, initiative, creativity and innovation in problem-solving, analysis.

The module is student-led but you are supported by, initially, weekly lectures and seminar-workshops which provide an introduction to undertaking Business-Management research followed by one-to-one or small-group supervision meetings.
The lectures and seminar-workshops will cover the following topics:
1. Developing a research aim/question (focusing and scoping the research)
2. Developing a literature review
3. Writing a research proposal
4. Researching ethically
5. Quantitative research techniques
6. Qualitative research techniques
7. Quantitative analysis techniques
8. Qualitative analysis techniques

Upon completion of the module you will be able to:
1. Conduct independent and ethical academic research involving the application and critical evaluation of appropriate theories and models,
2. Engage critically with relevant literature to establish a framework in which to analyse and synthesise the results of your primary or secondary research
3. Generate / collect relevant primary or secondary data using an appropriate and justified method
4. Analyse your data using an appropriate and justified method of analysis
5. Recognise the ethical implications of your work
6. Critically evaluate the source of your data and the method you adopted

The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to integrate the knowledge acquired during the programme and apply this to a consultancy project for a real organisation. This consultancy project provides a vehicle for participants to develop and demonstrate key employability skills, to relate theory to practice, and to undertake a significant piece of assessed work commensurate with a capstone module.

You will work on behalf of an external organisation, which has identified a business problem or question, requiring a solution, working in small group of typically 4 individuals (you will select their own team members), participating in group and individual activities. The host organisation will provide a project briefing, and review; students will be supported by appropriate academic input and guidance from Newcastle Business School in the form of a mentor and via the Business Clinic.