Creating the leaders of tomorrow at Cork University Business School

Past participants of the college's MBA programme have gone on to senior management roles within global multinationals, financial services, healthcare and more

Mon, 12 Sep, 2022 - 07:30

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Commencing in January 2023, the UCC Executive MBA at Cork University Business School (CUBS) provides personal, organisational and career benefits. The two-year UCC CUBS Executive MBA is designed to prepare its participants to become organisational managers, innovators and leaders. CUBS has now been accredited by the AACSB and AMBA (Association of MBAs), making it a double accredited Business School, of which there are fewer than 200 worldwide.

“Our MBA is designed to develop people from being managers, into organisational innovators and leaders, and that journey adds value both to themselves as executives, and to their organisation’s ability to respond and adapt to change. Our students develop an appreciation of how all aspects of a complex organisation interconnect, and an appreciation of the role each function must play in delivering on organisational goals,” explain Dr Ronan Carbery and Dr Michelle Carr, UCC CUBS Executive MBA Co-Directors.

The UCC CUBS Executive MBA allows leaders to continue working while developing critical management skills.

UCC CUBS Executive MBA students study organisational decision-making and strategy and the associated key roles of operations management, organisational behaviour, and human resource management. They examine how financial analysis and performance frameworks are used, how business innovation and transformation happen, and how sustainability and resilience strategies need to be built into business models.

Participants learn to develop their own horizons

The Leadership Development Framework is an important element that runs through the two years of the Executive MBA. Each student explores their own innate preferences in key personal leadership areas.

“Through individual coaching sessions, workshops and reflective reporting our students will discover more about how they critically analyse challenging situations, about their decision-making process, and how they undertake relationship building within organisations.”

Executive MBA students are asked to explore their own development as managers and leaders. “We ask them to think about their horizontal development, which is acquiring and applying new skills and competencies, and their vertical development, which is about bigger perspective, systems thinking. We ask them to consider the issue of adaptive leadership that looks at their ability to diagnose and respond to new challenges, and crucially, how they lead people through a process of change.”

Dr Carr feels that this is particularly relevant to our increasingly uncertain world.

“Organisations are operating in more volatile and complex environments," she explains. "The task for organisational leaders is to support, challenge and facilitate their teams and employees to work collaboratively, foster innovative thinking and to expand their sense of what is possible. That is why we also focus on soft skill areas like communications, negotiations, and team building, each of which is a critical tool for the organisational leader.”

“Our MBA is designed to develop people from being managers, into organisational innovators and leaders," says Dr Michelle Carr.

This brings direct benefits to the organisation.

“By having one of their managers on the UCC CUBS Executive MBA, an organisation is making a two-year investment in key managerial and leadership talent,” echoes Dr Carbery.

Leadership Development

The MBA student’s involvement with the Leadership Development Framework gives their organisation a more dynamic approach to decision-making and judgement and introduces an increased capacity for critical thinking and mind-set change.

“An organisation then has an executive who can lead a move to a broader strategic emphasis, allied with a focus on leading innovation within the organisation. They can develop and lead more agile approaches to problem solving, with a strong emphasis on effective team-based approaches.”

"Organisations can invest in key managerial and leadership talent through the MBA,” says Dr Ronan Carbery.

For the MBA students, the career development benefits are obvious. “The UCC CUBS Executive MBA qualification will benefit your career by identifying you as an individual with a high level of leadership ability.”

Over the past decade and more, it has helped give successive participants the strategic frameworks they needed to take on lead roles in many of Ireland’s leading companies and organisations.

Past participants have gained the skills to take on senior management roles within global multinationals, Irish SMEs, financial services, healthcare, education, and the not-for-profit sector.

One such past participant is Irene Guédan, who is now a Senior Software Engineering Manager for Dell. She strongly endorses the UCC CUBS Executive MBA and the many career benefits it can offer.

"I pursued the MBA due to the global credibility and reputation it holds in almost every industry" she explains.

"It was one of the most intense two years of my life, and required plenty of resilience and discipline. Support from both my employers and home was critical.

"As a wife, a mother of three children and a full-time Engineering Manager, had I not this support in place I would not have been able to continue. Looking back, it was an absolute privilege to go to college on Friday and Saturday, yes even Saturday mornings!"

"When else does one get the time to close the door on the day to day and immerse yourself in a world where you can engage in learning about, and problem-solving a diverse range of subjects with an amazing cohort from classmates to lecturers and guest speakers?"

Dell's Irene Guédan says the UCC CUBS Executive MBA has greatly strengthened her career.

"My perception on entering the program was of that of a college setup, arriving to lectures, taking notes, going through an exam and out the door equipped with skills to apply in my professional life. This to an extent did happen but was a narrow view."

"The learning that occurred for us during the MBA was a dual learning, categorized as horizontal and vertical. Horizontal are those technical skills that we acquire knowledge about say a formula to apply to a process that will fix an issue or a problem we may face. Vertical learning is the fascinating and most awe inspiring one. This is where you learn more about you, how you think and how your insights evolve through different stages."

"As a leader in the workplace on the one hand, the MBA has equipped me with a holistic business acumen in areas of finance, marketing, entrepreneurship, economics, law and more with technical approaches and playbooks to problem solving."

"On the other hand, the MBA has instilled within me an aspiration to be better, be a contrarian questioning popular opinion, be able to welcome and hold multiple perspectives and think interdependently, listening to dissenting voices rather than dismiss, leading me to arrive to a better conclusion that is inclusive of others and sought with due diligence."

The UCC CUBS Executive MBA is structured to allow its students to work and study at the same time. It is delivered in four parts across two years, with lectures taking place on Fridays and Saturdays during semester time.

Modules on the programme are delivered by senior academics from the globally accredited Cork University Business School in UCC, while also availing of teaching partner and industry practitioner expertise.

Find Out More

The next cycle is starting in January 2023. Lectures are held in the UCC Centre for Executive Education, Lapp's Quay, Cork.