This microcredential will enhance your managerial and leadership skills to make a positive impact within your organisation and broader society. Over ten weeks, you’ll explore how an organisation’s structure and culture shape the actions and behaviours of its employees and how you can become a manager equipped with critical skills to lead progressive change, empower your workforce, increase productivity, create efficiencies and adapt to change in the modern business landscape.
Key features
- Learn practical skills that you can apply to your work straight away
- Tackle real-world organisational problems across the public, private and civil sectors through hands-on activities
- Interact with co-learners and a course mentor to further support your learning
- Created by academic experts from The Open University’s triple-accredited Business School (AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS) with input from industry experts
- The course has a global focus and delivers transferable skills for diverse sectors and organisations
What you will study
This undergraduate microcredential uses cutting-edge academic insights to help you understand and experiment with different contemporary organisational models, tools, and frameworks to improve management and leadership practice within your organisation. During this 10-week course, you’ll cover the following topics.
- Organisational structures and emerging challenges faced by managers of contemporary organisations
- Developing and managing teams effectively and evaluating team performance
- The importance of keeping teams engaged and motivated
- How wider structures influence managerial decision-making, including the dynamics of power and politics
- How organisational culture is shaped, how it can manifest itself and how it can break down
- Drivers of organisational change and strategies for managing organisational change within its broader socio-political and economic environment
- Learning as a valuable practice, different individual learning styles, systemic approaches to learning, and digital learning
- Contrasting different leadership concepts and evaluating your own practice and preferences
- Ethical considerations within organisations and management
You will learn
By the end of this Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course, you’ll be able to:
- experiment with different concepts, tools and frameworks to enhance your organisational practice
- understand the effect of the broader environment on your organisation to increase your ability to adapt to change
- draw upon a range of managerial and study skills that will enhance your practice
- use theories that will support you to become a more efficient and supportive manager to your team
- ensure that the principles you deploy are ethical and promote equality and diversity in your organisation.
Skills you will gain
- Time management
- Effective communication
- Problem-solving
- Critical evaluation
- Networking
- Formulating an effective argument
- Collaboration
- Digital literacy
- Presenting
- Promoting equality, diversity and ethics
Vocational relevance
Materials include real-world examples and industry insight, ensuring your learning is relevant to the workplace. The course will particularly benefit:
- professionals aspiring to progress to management roles
- those new to management without formal qualifications
- senior professionals looking to enhance their skills to meet evolving demands
- self-employed professionals aiming to develop skills and knowledge to achieve personal goals.
Created by academic experts from The Open University’s triple-accredited Business School
- Nela Smolović Jones is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies at the OU. Her research focuses on advancing gender equality in public, civil and private sector organisations. She’s interested in feminist solidarity building, democratic organising, workplace equality, and gendered corruption in organisations.
- Gemma Lord is a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the OU. Her research focuses on the experiences of those working within organisations delivering public policy in terms of social care contracts. She’s interested in non-profit organisations, including their function and management amid technological and institutional conditions.
Entry
This undergraduate-level microcredential is ideal for business professionals seeking to expand their understanding of management and organisational principles. You don’t need any prior experience or qualifications to enrol. All required skills and foundational knowledge are covered within this microcredential.
Please note
- The course material doesn’t assume learners are working. Past experiences will be just as relevant.
- All teaching is in English, and your English proficiency needs to be adequate for undergraduate study. As a guide, this corresponds to Level 5.5 of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). However, you won’t need to provide a formal English language score to enrol.
Course length
This 10-week course requires approximately 10 hours of self-paced learning per week, totalling around 100 hours for completion.
If you have a disability
The course is delivered online and makes use of a variety of online resources. If you use specialist hardware or software to assist you in using a computer or the internet, you can contact us about the support that can be given to meet your needs.
To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our disability support pages.
Study materials
What's included
All learning materials, exercises and activities are delivered entirely online.
While certain content can be downloaded, some content is exclusively accessible online, requiring a reliable internet connection for viewing. Please consider this if you are travelling.
Teaching and assessment
Study support
- Learn 100% online on the OU’s learning platform with a mix of video, audio and written materials.
- Engage in interactive learning through self-assessment questions, polls, tasks and reflection.
- Share ideas and experiences in discussion with other learners, building skills, confidence and knowledge.
- Receive support from mentors who guide discussions and answer questions.
- Study at a time that suits you with the flexibility to access the course from your desktop, tablet or mobile device.
Assessment
You’ll take part in weekly tasks and discussions with co-learners to support and consolidate your learning. Towards the end of the course, you’ll submit a project or assessment demonstrating the skills you’ve acquired. This will be marked and graded by subject matter experts and make up 100% of your final mark.
What you will gain
10 UK credits at undergraduate level from The Open University*. Academic credits are awarded on passing the final assessment. These will be at undergraduate level 6 of the Framework for Higher Education (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) / level 10 of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework.
*Academic credit may be used towards selected OU qualifications. For more details, including eligible qualifications, visit Counting microcredentials towards OU qualifications. The credit awarded may also be used at another university, subject to the agreement of the receiving institution.