STUDY

Overview

The Suffolk MBA here at the University of Suffolk offers business knowledge at a senior level of management and advances leadership skills. Undertaking this qualification demonstrates determination to succeed in your chosen career and achieve your potential. With its distinctive nature the course aims to develop analytical and strategic management skills using concepts derived from a wide range of academic disciplines. With its flexible and practical nature, the Suffolk MBA is designed to fit in with existing career commitments, offering flexibility for managers and senior leaders across several different industries and sectors who are wanting to boost their career prospects whilst continuing to work.

You’ll engage with real-world management challenges through a range of projects and assessments, developing your leadership and management skills through a combination of collaborative group work and independent study.

The Suffolk MBA combines traditional classroom teaching with online learning and real-world business experiences to create a flexible, applied learning experience. Exploring contemporary management challenges, you’ll learn from academic experts and industry practitioners who bring current professional insights into the classroom. This blend of academic knowledge and practical experience helps you apply management theory to real business situations, ensuring your learning remains relevant to the evolving needs of today’s business environment.

Through our accreditation scheme, and upon successful completion of modules on the Suffolk MBA programme, you will be eligible to apply for the ILM Level 7 Diploma in Leadership and Management and CMI L7 Strategic Management and Leadership Practice.  Further information about the University's relationship with the ILM and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) is available in the PSRB register.

Specialisms

Leadership
The leadership specialism within the Suffolk MBA enables you to develop advanced knowledge, critical understanding, and practical expertise in leading people, teams, and organisations in complex and dynamic environments. You can achieve this specialism by focusing your final management project on a leadership-related topic, addressing a real organisational challenge or opportunity within your own professional context.

Areas of focus may include strategic leadership, organisational culture, change management, talent development, employee engagement, ethical leadership, leading innovation, and developing high-performing teams. Through applied research, critical evaluation, and evidence-based decision-making, you will explore contemporary leadership issues and develop practical solutions that create organisational value and sustainable impact.

This specialism provides an opportunity to enhance your strategic thinking, reflective practice, and leadership effectiveness while demonstrating your ability to lead organisational improvement and transformation. By combining academic theory with professional application, you will strengthen your capacity to influence stakeholders, drive change, and lead with confidence in an increasingly complex global business environment.

Marketing
The marketing specialism within the Suffolk MBA enables you to develop advanced knowledge and practical expertise in strategic marketing, customer engagement, brand development, and value creation within an increasingly dynamic and digitally driven business environment.

You can achieve this specialism by focusing your final management project on a contemporary marketing-related challenge or opportunity, investigating a real organisational issue and developing evidence-based recommendations that deliver measurable business impact. This applied approach allows you to integrate academic theory with professional practice while addressing complex marketing problems faced by organisations across different sectors.

Areas of focus may include digital marketing, consumer behaviour, brand management, integrated marketing communications, customer experience, marketing analytics, market research, international marketing, sustainability marketing, and data-driven decision-making. You may also explore emerging themes such as artificial intelligence in marketing, social media strategy, personalisation, customer relationship management (CRM), and omnichannel marketing.

Through critical evaluation of contemporary marketing theories, tools, and practices, you will examine how organisations identify and create customer value, build strong and enduring customer relationships, enhance brand equity, respond to changing market conditions, and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. The specialism develops the strategic, analytical, and leadership capabilities required to make informed marketing decisions that support organisational growth, innovation, and long-term success in both domestic and global markets.

Please speak to the programme leader Dr Ross Kemble (R.Kemble@uos.ac.uk) to discuss options.

Critique
Many MBA degrees offered elsewhere are principally formulaic how-to courses.  With us, however, we actively encourage you to fundamentally question generally-accepted management and leadership wisdom by drawing upon the full range of social scientific knowledge. Not only does this develop a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the complex nature of organisations and their functioning, but it develops the transferable skills of evaluation and analysis required of senior management.

Practice-based learning
You will be involved in live management issues through various projects and assessments, developing leadership and management skills, and undertaking both group-based and individual work. You are also invited to attend guest lectures by practising managers, each of whom has extensive experience in their particular field.