Courses
Best leadership skills for today's business world
Course Overview
Executive MBA Course Structure 2023
Semester 1
In the first semester, EMBA students get the overall picture with perspectives from the micro, meso, and macro levels of business understanding. Throughout the programme, students focus on personal growth through the Personal and Professional Development course.
Effective Negotiations
What you learn
This course focuses on the development of negotiation skills. Students learn and practice effective preparations and techniques, building trust, managing conflicts, systematic preparations for negotiations, active listening, cultural aspects in negotiations preparations, and more.
Taught by: Aðalsteinn Leifsson
Negotiations are at the core of management and are essentially about effective decision-making, communication, problem-solving and teamwork. Enhancing your skills in this important area has a major impact on your success at work and in your personal life. This is why I am truly passionate about developing knowledge and skills in negotiations.
In more detail
The dynamics that occur before, during and after a negotiation are examined and the theory behind various approaches to negotiations through readings, in-class discussions, simulations, case studies, reflections, assignment projects and role-playing games. The emphasis throughout the course is on the active participation of students, as dynamic participation – coupled with honest feedback – is an effective way to learn new skills and change behaviour.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Organizational Behaviour
What you learn
Students learn to enhance current and future decision-making. Students learn methods of communicating well, both orally and in writing, and to use synthetic approaches to addressing organisational issues and to develop integrated modes of thinking. The range from micro to mezzo to macro levels of analysis is discussed, and the complexities of organisational effectiveness.
Taught by:
Auður Arna Arnardóttir
In more detail
In this course, the theoretical and empirical bases of the discipline of organisational behaviour are addressed. Topics covered are, amongst others, individual differences, emotional intelligence, motivation, communication, stress, team processes, decision-making, design, culture, and innovation.
Individual, group, organisational, and inter-organizational dynamics are reviewed. The course uses multiple perspectives (i.e., frames) that students can use to assess the effectiveness of their organisation's processes and structures. The frames integrate much of the current theory and research in the discipline. The frames are structural, human resource orientated, political and symbolic.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Managerial Economics
What you learn
The course prepares students as managers that make decisions where economy-wide factors play a role. What are the implications of a change in monetary or fiscal policy for your company? Is the country under consideration for investing in likely to do well? Is it wise to locate production or market your product there?
Taught by: Patricia Gabaldon
In more detail
The goal of this course is for students to acquire a good understanding of the macroeconomic forces that affect the performance and management of firms in the global economy. Questions such as: Why are some countries rich and others poor? What drives business cycles? What are the causes of inflation? What is the role of monetary and fiscal policy? What are the causes and consequences of global imbalances? What determines exchange rates? are addressed. The course develops a conceptual framework that helps understand the interplay between important macroeconomic variables such as real output, economic growth, unemployment, inflation, interest rates, exchange rates and the current account balance.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Managerial Accounting
What you learn
Numbers are just an input to management, and leaders need to know how to get them, but more importantly, what do they mean for the management of the organization. Managing organizations is about people; while having the right information and knowing how to interpret it is important, the course emphasizes the behavioral implications of using this information.
Taught by: Edi Soler
In more detail
A comprehensive introduction to designing, interpreting, and using financial and non-financial information to manage organizations and drive value creation. The tools covered are relevant to most areas from marketing to operations, to human resources. The class balances quantitative and qualitative aspects, reflecting the reality of organizations, where managers have to combine these two perspectives. The quantitative part only requires a good understanding of basic algebra (add, subtract, multiply and divide) as well as common sense. The core of the class is devoted to evaluating the management implications of the analysis.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Personal and Professional Development
What you learn
In this course that stretches over four semesters, students are supported through the challenges and changes that come with the Executive MBA programme. They are given an opportunity to reflect on their personal growth, life and career paths while gaining professional knowledge, skills and abilities. This helps integrate personal and professional journeys, and thereby strengthening the student's foundation for leadership roles.
Taught by: Sigríður Indriðadóttir
In more detail
Students are given the tools to understand the importance of self-awareness in developing leadership capabilities. They get to know their own motivation, strengths and weaknesses in a leadership role, they come to understand the importance of feedback, coaching, goal setting and communication in management, and know how to continue developing those skills.
Credits:
0,5 ECTS
Semester 2
The second semester equips students with the necessary tools for business analysis.
Corporate Finance
What you learn
Students become familiar with the purpose and use of financial statements, get acquainted with time value of money techniques and the valuation of financial securities, and learn about capital investment analysis. They become able to apply quantitative tools to real-world business problems, conduct financial analysis of a company, apply time value of money concepts and valuation techniques in appropriate ways, and convey the results of complex financial analyses to a variety of technical and non-technical constituencies.
Taught by: Steve Byers
In more detail
This course provides students with an understanding of the concepts underlying corporate financial management and equips them with critical quantitative analysis tools. Focus is on the creation and measurement of value. Key topics include time value of money, financial performance measurement, risk and return, bond and stock valuation, capital investment analysis, capital structure, modern portfolio theory and the cost of capital.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Data Analytics for Management
What you learn
Students are given the necessary knowledge and tools to identify the areas where data analytics can add the most value, select appropriate types of analyses and apply them in a small-scale, quick-turnaround but high-impact fashion. They develop an understanding of various sources of data, can organise the inputs of experts and colleagues, and use state-of-the-art business software to provide analytical support to their reasoning.
Taught by: Vasiliki Kostami
In more detail
Business decisions are often too complex to be made by intuition alone. The structure of our reasoning needs to be communicated, our choices defended, and presentations delivered that show the completion of a thorough analysis. The overall objective of this course is to equip students with analytical thinking and powerful tools that help them be more effective in these tasks. The emphasis is not on building black boxes that deliver the right answer for each problem. Instead, the goal is to teach how to use data to ask questions, build simple but powerful models that test intuitive reasoning, improve managerial thinking and facilitate the communication of recommendations.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Marketing Management
What you learn
Students advance their understanding of key concepts and methods, mostly focusing on marketing strategy with emphasis on choosing the right marketing metrics and measurements for different companies and industries.
Taught by: Ramón Diaz-Bernardo
In more detail
The course on marketing management has been designed with the objective of helping students to develop a conceptual framework that covers the variables that we bear in mind when we make decisions related to the generation or maintenance of business opportunities, in other words, to structure your thinking when approaching a marketing problem. The aim is to provide an advanced understanding of consumer analysis with an emphasis on strategy, implementation and practice of modern marketing.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Operations Management
What you learn
Students become familiar with the basic elements of process analysis and the concept of capacity and utilisation of a system, the basic elements of inventory management, the challenges of service operation, the challenges of building a strong Supply Chain and the methodologies for operational excellence and improvement.
Taught by: Eduard Calvo
In more detail
The best companies today are those which have a team work culture with groups of people from different areas (e.g., operations, finance, marketing, etc.) working together to overcome business challenges. This applies to all companies, regardless if they are in the service sector, trade or manufacturing.
By using numerous compelling cases, the basic concepts of process, operations and supply chain management are introduced. Students gain the ability to perform process analysis, identifying key resources and the capacity of a system, identify the sources of variability, design and improve robust and excellent services using the service value map framework.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Personal and Professional Development
What you learn
In this course that stretches over four semesters, students are supported through the challenges and changes that come with the Executive MBA programme. They are given an opportunity to reflect on their personal growth, life and career paths while gaining professional knowledge, skills and abilities. This helps integrate personal and professional journeys, and thereby strengthening the student's foundation for leadership roles.
Taught by: Sigríður Indriðadóttir
In more detail
Students are given the tools to understand the importance of self-awareness in developing leadership capabilities. They get to know their own motivation, strengths and weaknesses in a leadership role, they come to understand the importance of feedback, coaching, goal setting and communication in management, and know how to continue developing those skills.
Credits:
0,5 ECTS
Semester 3
In the third semester, students focus on strategy and change management.
People and Change Management
What you learn
Taught by: Miha Škerlavaj
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Responsible Leadership
What you learn
Students improve skills to analyse and make responsible decisions on ethical issues and sustainability in the complex business environment of today. The focus is both on using ethics for individuals to solve ethical challenges as well as learning the methods of corporate social responsibility to improve the strategy of companies and their day-to-day impact on society and the environment.
Taught by: Ketill Berg Magnússon & Øyvind Kvalnes
I think we are seeing it clearer and clearer that business leaders must be able to make ethical decisions and contribute towards a common sustainable future. That is why I like the programme's great emphasis on preparing leaders for a practical and responsible contribution to society. I enjoy particularly the depth and level of students' discussions about difficult issues in business.
Ketill Berg Magnússon.
In more detail
In business, companies produce goods and services which they hope will benefit their customers as well as generating profits. Doing so, companies use social and/or natural resources and interact with numerous stakeholders which are affected by their decisions. Company actions can have both positive and negative effects on people in their society and on the natural environment in which they operate. This course introduces methods in Business Ethics (BE), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability in order for people to reflect on and improve their ability to demonstrate responsible leadership in business.
Credits:
4 ECTS
Competitive Strategy
What you learn
Students understand how to organise a business to create value for customers and how to capture some of that value to sustain the economic objectives of the organisation. Making deliberate choices about value creation and value capture involves market and organisational tradeoffs, and an appreciation of these is an important outcome of the course.
Taught by: Ian P. McCarthy
In more detail
Competitive strategy is about the integrated set of choices that an organisation makes to optimise the chance of success in a particular operating environment. For most organisations in the 21st century, this environment is increasingly dynamic and uncertain, so the strategies must also be dynamic. The ultimate strategic objective of "sustained competitive advantage" has been replaced by "a series of transient competitive advantages". In this course, strategy is looked at through a business model lens.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Strategic Decision Making
What you learn
Students know more about what management is, about the conceptual frameworks in a myriad of functional areas, the tools at their use in each of these areas, the latest management techniques, fashions and fads. Skills and capabilities are developed, including not only the hard skills, but also the so-called “soft” skills, so necessary in today's business environment. Attitudes and values are challenged so that each student can find his or her place in today's business environment and take a position vis-a-vis the fundamental issues that his or her profession faces.
Taught by: Eric Weber
There comes a point in the life of a professor where one carefully chooses what to do and where. I keep returning to teach at the RU Executive MBA programme because of the quality of the programme, the hard working students, the programme administration and the overall learning experience for me is well worth it!
In more detail
Management is about action, about making things happen, about positively transforming the reality in which managers “perform”. To do this, and do it well, requires sound decision-making skills. Good strategic thinking and decision-making is, however, not constrained to the strategy formulation process alone; good implementation must accompany...and to do so, requires solid action plans and implementation strategies, together with the adequate management tools to ensure that the ultimate goals and objectives are met. This course is intended to further develop student's acquired ability to think and solve complex real-world business problems; problems that are not functional in nature, but rather problems that include all aspects of management.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Personal and Professional Development
Taught by: Sigríður Indriðadóttir & Gísli Marteinn Baldursson
In more detail
For the third semester, the focus is on career management.
Credits:
2 ECTS
Final project: Introduction
Taught by: Salóme Guðmundsdóttir, Svafa Grönfeldt, Þóranna Jónsdóttir.
Semester 4
In the fourth and final semester students work on and defend their applied final project with innovation focus, in addition to studying Competition in the Digital Age, the Legal framework, and Responsible Leadership.
Competing in a Digital Age
What you learn
Is this course, students gain the skills to see beyond the immediate digital trends and understanding the nature of the principle digital drivers – social networks, mobile, the cloud, and Big Data. They explore how these drivers affect everyday life of consumers and redesign society and businesses and identify the principle goals and objectives that organizations seek to address when launching and executing a digital transformation initiative. They learn how to develop products enabled by digital density in an iterative, agile and incremental way to compete in the age of digital innovation.
Taught by: Josep Valor
In more detail
The extensive and important topic of digital innovation and transformation is explored from the standpoint of a general manager. The course introduces and applies a set of concepts, frameworks, and tools that are used by leading companies innovating through digital technology. Sessions consist of mini-lectures, case discussions, and interactive workshop, also cases and simulations that deal with topics such as automation, reliability, personalisation, and integration.
Credits:
4 ECTS
Personal and Professional Development
What you learn
In this course that stretches over four semesters, students are supported through the challenges and changes that come with the Executive MBA programme. They are given an opportunity to reflect on their personal growth, life and career paths while gaining professional knowledge, skills and abilities. This helps integrate personal and professional journeys, and thereby strengthening student's foundation for leadership roles.
Taught by: Sigríður Indriðadóttir & Gísli Marteinn Baldursson
Every leader and any successful member of the public realm needs to be able to communicate her or his vision and opinions properly. The emphasis that the Executive MBA programme at RU puts on this often overlooked aspect of the role of the successful entrepreneur, business leader or a strong public servant is first class.
- Gísli Marteinn Baldursson.
In more detail
Students become more able to take responsibility in managing their career path and are able to use a coaching approach in managing self and others. They become skilled at making an interesting presentation and present it with confidence. Finally, they know the importance of understanding and building on individual differences to maximize team and organizational effectiveness.
Credits:
1 ECTS
EXSIM - Executive Management Simulation
What you learn
Students learn to develop and apply a general management approach to decision-making under uncertainty that combines business sense and technical rigor. Students experience being part of the ExCo of an industrial company under market pressures and the permanent challenges of the stakeholders.
Taught by:
Aldís G. Sigurðardóttir, Salome Guðmundsdóttir, Albert Girbal Puig & Alejandro Lago
In more detail
EXSIM welcomes you to a company's newly appointed Executive Committee (ExCo). Students will take over one of the company's key positions: CEO, CMO, COO, CFO, Supply Chain Manager, Human Resources Manager, and Controller. Students will be responsible for the decisions of your area, and as a member of the ExCo, you will work with the CEO to set and execute the company's strategy. In your relentless battle for sustainable profitability, students will compete in a highly dynamic market against other companies run by classmates in a “real-time” distributed simulation context. As in real life, students will also have to manage some key company stakeholders: the Board of Directors, the Bank, and the Union's President. While part of the simulation is web-based, a significant fraction of students' time will also be invested in teamwork, face-to-face meetings, and negotiations with stakeholders.
This full-time week-long business simulation covers all relevant areas of a company: strategic decision-making, marketing and sales, operations and supply chain management, human resources, and finance. As a result, the course is a comprehensive complement to help EMBA students put into practice all the applied knowledge acquired so far. At the same time, the simulation's dynamics will challenge students' ability to translate strategy into results, to work in teams effectively and share workload under a high-pressure environment, and, finally, to live their values in the leadership path to success.
Credits:
5,5 ECTS
Final Project: Innovation - with MITdesignX
What you learn
Students deepen their understanding of how opportunities are discovered, created and handled. They are in a better position personally to seek, find and understand opportunities and operate them. That knowledge can also be used in the consultancy and coaching of entrepreneurs.
Taught by: Salóme Guðmundsdóttir, Svafa Grönfeldt, Þóranna Jónsdóttir.
In more detail
The final project marks the completion of the EMBA study by assessing students' ability to excel in utilising theories, models and tools encountered in the programme while working with real-life new ventures. The course focuses on the intersection of venture design and business. Students are introduced to tools and methods designed to analyse, evaluate and develop, launch and create start-up scaling plans.
Students are introduced to key elements and theories in entrepreneurship literature, like the relationship between the entrepreneurial opportunity and the entrepreneur as an individual, the role of knowledge, and human and social capital.
Teams present their findings in front of two panels of academic and industry experts at MIT in Boston and RU in Reykjavik., where students demonstrate their ability to independently apply their knowledge and skills, models, theories, tools and frameworks from the course material provided in their study.
MIT designX Innovation Center
Student teams work with a selection of alumni startups from the Icelandic Startups accelerator programs and apply an interdisciplinary venture design framework developed by the MIT DesignX innovation center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The methods of the four workshops draw on the power of human-centred design where close collaboration with stakeholders and a detailed understanding of their needs can uncover insights and opportunities for truly creative solutions, product fit and successful launch and scaling of new ventures or corporate innovation projects.
The teams work closely with startup teams, first analysing their current operation and then developing plans designed to support the startup's local and global growth strategies, including product development, customer acquisition, organizational development, and financial planning needed to scale the new ventures and create a sustainable and viable business.
Four workshops
The programme consists of four workshops, regular teacher meetings, and a study trip to MIT in Boston. Designated deliverables are required following each workshop. Building on those deliverables, students write a formal final report outlining their process, findings and recommendations. The programme starts in September and ends in May, where students present their findings in front of two panels of academic and industry experts at MIT and RU in Reykjavik.
Credits:
12 ECTS
Orientation
The Executive MBA programme starts with an Intensive two-day seminar for first-year students that emphasises team building while providing students with practical insight into the programme ahead.
“The knowledge I got from the programme is very practical and it will help me to further develop my career. I like the fact that most of the teachers come from abroad which brings the students a very varied professional insight. They would also share their personal and cultural experience with us that helped us see things from a different angle.”
Yuet Tan Lau
Digital Marketing Project Manager
EMBA 2023
