MSc — 2025 entry International Business Management

The world-wide political and economic liberalization and continuous technology improvement in the last three decades have brought unprecedented flows of goods, services, labour and capital across national boundaries. International business today comprises a larger and ever-growing portion of the world’s business and global events and competition affects almost all companies. A company operating internationally will engage in modes of business that are different from those it is accustomed to domestically. International business management is the process of applying management concepts, theories, and techniques in a multinational environment so that firms can become and remain international in scope. Moreover, a comparative view of management and organization in internationally operating firms is provided to understand these processes in detail.

Management of Human Resources is an introductory module and available to students undertaking a range of MSc programmes at the Surrey Business School. It is intended to provide a firm understanding of the theory and practice of Human Resource management and its strategic role in contemporary organisations. This module covers core functions of HRM and their integration within business strategy as well as contemporary topics concerning management of people. By the end of this module, the students will have gained a foundation knowledge base of HR as a function in organisations and its strategic role in achieving business objectives through people management.  

This module is designed to provide MSc students with a rigorous theoretical framework for analysing and understanding Marketing in national and interantional contexts.  Integrating theoretical concepts and models with practical application, students explore the contribution that Marketing can make to successful businesses and multi-national enterprises (MNEs)  Theory and case studies from the UK and across the globe are used to analyse environmental conditions, marketing competition, consumer behaviour, marketing strategy, marketing planning, tactics and operations, and the growing influence of technology.

It is an unfortunate fact that majority of global strategies fail in the stage of implementation. Many inner organisational and outer organisational factors affect the implementation of the global strategy. Thus, it is vital for management students to learn how to implement global strategies effectively. The module focuses on a range of topics such as process of strategy implementation, and influential factors on implementing the global strategy. Strategy-related subjects shape at least half of the contents in this programme.

This module provides students with both a theoretical and practical understanding of International Trade, considered from an international political economy (IPE) as well as management perspectives. This is done through the assessment of International Trade from different angles, predominantly from the international trade management view, the international trade operations dimension, the state’s perspective, from the international trade regime perspective (the GATT and WTO) but also from the perspective of the international society, regional cooperation and the perspective of business and industry.

This is a compulsory module for the MSc International Business Management programme. Being the final element of the programme, it provides an opportunity to conduct study on a real international business situation and reflect on it. Students will identify a topic area of interest that they wish to develop further through their project. This must be relevant to their programme of study. The module is largely based on self-directed study and research, which takes place during the summer. The learning strategy is designed to develop the students’ ability to conduce and report independent research. It builds on the Business Reporting Techniques module, allowing students to gain experience of applying some of the principles and methods learned. Students should build on the outcomes and feedback received in the Business Reporting Techniques module and develop a project – using secondary research – that demonstrates the successful understanding of the module’s aims and outcomes. The students will have opportunity to understand the techniques essential in writing business reports in the taught module “Business Reporting Techniques”. The project is unsupervised, which means you will not be assigned a supervisor. Instead, two support sessions will be conducted by the module leader to assist students to gain a comprehensive understanding of the requirements of the report.  

The Business Reporting Techniques module enables students to understand a research problem and source, process and conduct appropriate research while preparing a report on the problem. It facilitates independent learning process and provides them with the knowledge, skills and understanding required to articulate findings in a structured reporting format. By covering the fundamentals of reporting techniques and their applications, this module will enable students to work independently for the project module. This module expects students rely on almost everything they learn in the International Business Management Programme.

In an increasingly globalised business and business environment, it is necessary for management students to learn how to strategies internationally viable global strategies. This module covers a variety of topics such as global strategic analysis, global strategy formulation, and global strategy execution. Strategy-related subjects shape at least half of the contents in this programme.

This module introduces students to the main principles of accounting and finance and demonstrates the importance of these to management decision making

Business operates in both a market and a nonmarket environment, the latter being the space where the formal and informal rules governing market competition are set and enforced. A successful corporate strategy aligns the firm's capabilities with the demands of both its market and nonmarket environment. This module systematically examines the political, regulatory, societal, cultural, and natural factors that shape a business' nonmarket environment. Students learn how to analyse and proactively manage the nonmarket environment through integrated market and nonmarket strategies.