Postgraduate Certificate in Business Administration

This postgraduate certificate in business administration will enable you make a real difference within your management practice through active use of frameworks, theories and tools. It will help you to develop a good grounding in the theory and practice of managing and leading, covering the core functions and disciplines of management and helping you make the connections between them. It provides a framework for a year-long process of professional development which challenges you to engage actively with a wide variety of ideas and to develop a repertoire of techniques and approaches best suited to your own situation and management context.

This postgraduate certificate course will enable you to gain a better understanding of your own management practice in the context of learning about different management functions within organisations. You will gain confidence in understanding how they operate and in having successful conversations across these areas, including:

• managing people and organisations
• accounting
• marketing
• operations
• project and change management.

Over the course of a year’s study you will learn, develop and consolidate your understanding of the principal management functions. The certificate course aims to:

• develop your understanding of the core and current frameworks, theories and tools and to assess their relevance to the issues of twenty-first century leading and managing
• increase your awareness of different perspectives on, and approaches to, managing and leading in different organisational and cultural contexts
• develop your ability to engage critically with management frameworks, theories and tools helping you to select and adapt techniques and approaches appropriate to own management context, in order to have a real impact on your management practice
• develop your awareness of the wider global context in which business and management takes place, and increase your ability to work confidently across sectoral and national boundaries
• develop interpersonal and conceptual skills that will help you to use ideas and frameworks to make sense of, and to work with, organisational complexity
• challenge your own thinking and practice by reflecting upon it critically in the light of the ideas you encounter, and through debates with others
• enhance your ability to plan and implement change which will have real impact within your own organisational context.

To gain this qualification you need to successfully complete the 60-credit module MBA stage 1: management: perspectives and practice (B716). If you already hold the Professional Certificate in Management (S01) (previously coded C31), successful completion of B716 would entitle you to claim theProfessional Diploma in Management (D64). It is not permitted, however, to claim both this Postgraduate Certificate in Business Administration and the Professional Diploma in Management (D64).

MBA stage 1: management: perspectives and practice (B716) is the first 60 credits, of 180 credits, required for the MBA (F61). You can count B716 towards both your MBA and the Postgraduate Certificate in Business Administration (and similarly B716 can be counted towards both the Professional Diploma in Management (D64) and the MBA).

You should note that the University’s unique study rule applies to this qualification. This means that you must include at least 20 credits from OU modules that have not been counted in any other OU qualification that has previously been awarded to you.

Your spoken and written English must be of an adequate standard for postgraduate study. If English is not your first language, we recommend that you will need a minimum score of 6.5 under the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Please see their website for details.

Career relevance and employability

This certificate is designed for professionals from a wide range of contexts and backgrounds who need actively to engage with the challenges of twenty-first century management. It will enable you to develop your management skills and knowledge of management frameworks, theories and tools and to use these appropriately in order to make a real difference in your own practice.

The entry requirements for this qualification are normally a UK honours degree or equivalent professional qualification, and have a minimum of three years’ experience in a managerial, professional or technical role. Usually this means that you are at least 25 years old as it is unusual (but not impossible) to be able to satisfy the ‘experience’ requirement under this age.