Aspire in Business & Management

Accounting/Finance

Accounting involves providing financial expertise to business, including giving advice on making decisions for future development and corporate growth, planning and controlling activities, performance measurement and meeting external reporting requirements. Finance is the study of financial decision-making and the behaviour of financial markets.
The Summer School will review some of the key elements that make accounting information useful and explore how this information impacts investor decision-making. In particular, you will learn the difference between cash flow and earnings, and what makes earnings incrementally useful beyond cash flows. Using stock price information for a set of large UK companies, you will then study how information in general and accounting earnings in particular impact financial markets.

Economics

Economics pertains to the study of the behaviour of individuals, firms, governments and markets. The starting point of any study of economics is the recognition of the scarcity of resources, and the necessity to devise mechanism to distribute them in efficient and possibly fair ways.
You will be taught about how the interaction between independent individuals making economic choices results in the market allocating these resources more or less efficiently, and what the conditions for this efficient allocation of resources are. You will also touch on topics as the fluctuations in the value of exchange rates and of financial products, and how should an economist evaluate competitive investment projects, including a peculiar kind of investment: investing in your own human capital through studying at the University.

Entrepreneurship

Specifically, the Summer School will look at defining entrepreneurship and examining it in different contexts. As well as new business start-up entrepreneurship may be identified in inter-generational family businesses and inside large organisations. Such entrepreneurship may be found in major corporations. It is also increasingly a goal of public sector organisations. Further, the phrase social entrepreneurship has been coined to describe businesses set up to deliver goods and services where the established market has failed to provide for a need. Such market failures have traditionally been addressed by charities, and social entrepreneurship provides a lens through which to view the efforts of entrepreneurs whose primary motivation is not financial profit.

Regardless of their intended future career, it is probable that you will work with or for entrepreneurs in much of your working life. A better understanding of entrepreneurship will equip you to work for such people. It will also allow you to consider how you might wish to embody entrepreneurship in your own life as future employees. Employers increasingly value and seek to recruit people who can demonstrate an appropriate level of entrepreneurship as they conduct their designated tasks. To conclude therefore, entrepreneurship is a key component of business in the UK and worldwide. A business education should include exposure to entrepreneurship in various contexts. This Summer School will provide you with a good foundation from which to understand this phenomenon.

Management Science

Management Science is concerned with developing and applying models and concepts that help to illuminate management issues and solve managerial problems. It is pivotal in understanding and analysing complex real business and societal problems and aiding in decision making. The models used can often be represented mathematically, but sometimes computer-based, visual or verbal representations are used as well. This discipline has been known as “the science of better”, as its key objective is to support organisations to reach better decisions, more efficiently.
The range of problems and issues to which management science has contributed insights and solutions is vast. It includes forecasting future demand of products and services, analysing consumer needs and behaviour, scheduling airlines, both planes and crew, deciding the appropriate place to site new facilities such as a warehouse or factory, managing the flow of water from reservoirs, identifying possible future development paths for parts of the telecommunications industry, establishing the information needs and appropriate systems to supply them within the health service, and identifying and understanding the strategies adopted by companies for their information systems.

Analytics Summer School

The analytics Summer School that will be offered by the department of management science will focus on demonstrating how to use analytical thinking and skills in practice. We will understand fundamental techniques of problem structuring and data analysis. Following that we will apply this knowledge in solving real problems that modern organisations face.
This course will provide you with an understanding of the types of problems and applications that management science can be applied, from private companies to public sector. You will also get a glimpse of the skill-set that is useful for such problems, as well as how to address real complex cases.

Summer School Activities in Marketing

During the Summer School in Marketing we will introduce you to the study of marketing in higher education. We will encourage you to consider the key ideas that have framed marketing thinking. In particular you will be taught to develop an appreciation of marketing’s role within the organisation, define the nature and scope of marketing and relate marketing to the business and consumer environment.
You will be further introduced to marketing theories and topics and develop an appreciation for the 7Ps of Marketing (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Physical Evidence, Process and People). Once you have this knowledge, you will be given group tasks and activities to accomplish which will enable you to apply current thinking and research from the field. This enables you and your tutors to explore the very latest thinking within this subject and develop your marketing skills.

To apply for the Aspire in Business and Management Summer School, please complete the registration form.

Deadline for applications is Friday 2 May 2014.