RECRUITMENT FOR THIS PROGRAMME IS TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED FOR 2011 ENTRY.
If you wish to apply for 2012 entry, please refer to this website later in the year for further information.
There are eight core units which develop themes around management learning and change, concentrating on such themes as managing interventions in organisations, creativity and innovation in organisations, organisation development and strategic management. There is a great deal of scope for students to develop their own interests and lines of inquiry throughout the programme.
The programme ends with the completion of the dissertation, which is designed to do two things. The first is to allow students to develop research skills so that they can better understand their own organisation or another and their own sensemaking processes. The second is to allow students to pursue a major piece of research into an area of personal interest. Students will be allowed a very wide choice in the dissertation topic as long as it clearly relates to some aspect of management studies. Students are allocated a supervisor who will work with them on their research.
top of pageTeaching on our part-time degrees is designed to be as interactive as possible. Although there are some lectures and input sessions, tutors work with students' lived experience as far as possible. The teaching staff are accessible and the atmosphere is relaxed and friendly.
Quotes from current students about what they thought was the best part of the units:
'The breadth of subject matter covered combined with the ability to explore in depth my own particular interests.'
'Learning came from tutors but also from group members.'
'The empowerment of the learning process.'
'I liked the approach and balance between theory and practice. Liked the structured approach taken and the mix of tutors. All tutors helpful and approachable.'
'Ann - great teaching style, very knowledgeable and delivers the message with commendable enthusiasm.'
'The written materials plus the teaching of Ann and Dan have taught me to be reflective - I consider this to be an enormous thing to have learning in just one module. Thank you!'
'The discussion around the models/theories and the 'real life' examples given throughout by the tutor.'
'An innovative way of leading at business, grounded in a theoretical basis. The module stretched the group's ability to consider their organisations more divergently, resulting in awakened or renewed creative abilities. I thoroughly enjoyed it.'
Students take four units in the first year and four in the second. There is one piece of assessment for each unit.
A unit involves three days of contact time (lecture, practical exercises, and group work with the module tutor) together with private study and assessment. The teaching days normally comprise a full weekend (Saturday and Sunday), followed by an additional Saturday held approximately four to six weeks after the first.
This is a new degree, but its precursor, the MSc in Management Development and Organisational Change, which ran for 5 years, attracted students from a wide range of backgrounds. These included the private sector, ranging from large organisations such as Lloyds TSB, Ford, BT, Bae Systems, IBM, and BP to small family run businesses. Public sector organisations have included local authorities and the NHS. Not for profit organisations have included a number of drug user support organisations, the National Trust and educational organisations. We have also had students from the Bible Society, a residential home for the elderly, an industrial chaplain, recruitment consultancies, law firms, and the Police Force. We have also welcomed students who are free-lance, self-employed consultants or trainers.
The average age of our students is 39 and all have considerable work experience. Most but not all have first degrees, but it is our experience that students who do not have degrees, while often needing a bit more coaching at the beginning of the programme, go on to complete it very successfully. We are always seeking to broaden the diversity of our student group as we believe that this enriches the student experience of the programme for everyone.
top of pageIn previous years students have stated that they have found interaction with other students to be one of the most developmental aspects of the programme. It is also the case that students have formed close-knit, highly supportive networks which have extended beyond the life of the programme. There is a thriving email community on each programme which provides help and support without the intervention of the tutors!
There is a two-day induction weekend at the beginning of the programme. This is designed to allow participants to get to know each other at the start of a two-year academic journey, and to discuss expectations from the staff about how the programme will run and how work is to be presented. Time is also built in to allow informal conversations between people.
top of pageAnn Rippin who is the core of the teaching team on this programme believes strongly in participative, reflective teaching and learning, and in the importance of giving students the critical skills to manage their own learning and careers. The emphasis is on sensemaking.
We do not believe that there is a toolkit, off-the-shelf approach to organisational change and development. We believe that every organisation is special and different, and that we need to help students to develop the intellectual and conceptual skills to solve particular problems in particular places at particular times. So our ideas about making interventions in organisations are based on the importance of understanding context and special circumstances.
We also believe that management is a subject that can be studied as a body of knowledge like history or chemistry, and we encourage students to be critical of what they have learned about management and about their own experience. We are in the business of creating thinking managers, not of producing better-run organisations (although we think the two are not mutually exclusive). Our thinking is broadly in line with that expressed in Henry Mintzberg's Managers Not MBAs, which students might like to consult before joining the course.
We also believe that there is scope for humour, poetry and storytelling in management and try to include this in our classes.
There are three forms of support on the programme:
Some examples of support include:
We have long and wide-ranging experience of working with mature students and bring an understanding to the pressures of studying and working and trying to have a personal life, and we are happy to share our expertise.
The people who join our programmes join for a number of reasons. Occasionally they just want the qualification, although this rare, and we have only had one person who was 'sent'. Generally speaking our students feel that they have reached a point in their career where they need a challenge or a kick-start to thinking more deeply about things. Many come wanting intellectual stimulation in the company of like-minded people. Some feel that they are at a cross-roads in their career and need some help thinking through what to do next. Many feel that they need to develop their academic or theoretical credibility dealing with others who have higher degrees in business. Some are thinking of moving on and making big changes and see this as a first step.
Almost all our graduates say that their thinking has been stretched and that they see the world a bit differently as a result of their time with us. They say that they will miss the stimulation and companionship when they leave (which is why we have a post-programme menu for our graduates). They say it was hard work, deeply challenging, surprising and rewarding. They are also surprised that it was so much fun at a University like Bristol with its highly academic mission and ethos.
top of pageGroup size is deliberately kept small and there will be a maximum of twenty students per cohort. Candidates are advised to apply as soon as possible as places are limited and, once full, the programme will close to new applications.
This is a masters programme from the University of Bristol and as such is theoretical and research-based programme which aims to bring theory and practice together. It is dependent upon research active staff who produce innovative and challenging work, but who all agree with Kurt Lewin's famous comment that there is nothing as practical as a good theory. The aim of the programme, however, is for students to have the capacity to understand the world around them, and not to add new items to their toolkit. You will be expected to read widely and to be able to support your ideas with high quality evidence.
As Action Learning Sets have become so widely used in organisations over recent years, the programme provides an opportunity for students to experience action learning for themselves and to evaluate it as a developmental tool. Students are expected to self-organise into small groups of four to six people and to meet as a group up to six times per academic year. Students are given input by the tutor about the theory behind action learning and groups are given a structure to work with in their initial stages which they are then encouraged to improvise with as they gain more experience. The formal written assessment of the taught component of the programme ends with a written evaluation of the action learning set experience. As the groups progress students often find them invaluable in thinking about what to do when the programme ends and what they might do in the future.
