University of Manchester

The course introduces students to the foundations of finance and associated innovations since the global financial crisis. To do this, students demonstrate (1) the growth and development of new financial actors, and new financial products/assets (2) the impact of finance on organizations and organizational actors, and (3) the relationship finance has with social responsibility. The course gets students to discuss the implications of these innovations and to examine the degree of fit between theories of economic innovation and actual case studies of corporations in an international context.

Leadership in Action (LIA) helps students understand what it means to be a leader in the 21st century. The course explores complex current problems and ask: How does change happen? Who makes it happen? What does that tell us about leadership and how we do it? This course equips students with the tools to critically evaluate models and approaches to leadership and to apply these to a range of complex 21st century problems such as poverty, inequality, and climate change. The course also helps students to develop a toolkit of transferable skills that boosts their employability. Students hear from leaders who are influencing change in the world, including some of the university's leading academics and leaders from the public, private, and voluntary sectors.

In this course, students focus on how children learn to communicate in the real world, with a particular emphasis on the communicative skills needed for survival and success in educational settings. In the first half of the course, students consider how children learn to use the kinds of complex language needed in the classroom; to what extent language learning is impacted in atypical populations (e.g. autism, DLD); how language interventions can support children’s learning; how cross-linguistic differences might impact children’s use of the language of the classroom. In the second half of this course, students consider the challenges and benefits of bilingual language development; how children engage in mind-reading for successful communication; and how children reason with one another, collaboratively think and solve problems with other individuals such as peers.

Humans and other group-living species, such as bees, songbirds, nonhuman primates and dolphins (to name a few) face a number of challenges. Sociality provides benefits to individuals, but also exposes them to conflicts and competition. Understanding how these challenges are resolved is one of the most dynamic areas of research in evolutionary biology and comparative and developmental psychology. This course looks at sociality from an evolutionary perspective and focuses on how animals - humans included - use communication to live and cooperate with others (as well as deceive and manipulate them). Content includes: How language has evolved in humans, how non-linguistic communication evolved in humans and other species, the role of gesturing in communication, the flexibility of vocal signalling in nonhuman animals, the role of language for cognition and communication, the evolution of sociality, and game theoretical approaches to social interactions.

This course provides students with a further grounding in the important statistical and probabilistic techniques and models relevant to the non-life insurance industry.

This course explores the multiple histories of humanitarianism and their resonances with current humanitarian discourses and practices. It will introduce students to the complex past of humanitarian aid in its European and non-European forms, from charities to international non-governmental organisations. Students will reflect on the usefulness of history for the humanitarian sector.

The course is concerned with the ways in which accounting information can assist 'internal' users (i.e. management) to make decisions and to plan and control organizational activities. Such 'management accounting' is relevant to all kinds of organizations. Although concentrated on accounting information, an important emphasis in the approach adopted in the course is the need to see the use of accounting in its organizational context and the effect it can have on human behavior. Various management accounting concepts are introduced and illustrated through practical examples of various numerical techniques. Alternative cost concepts are explored for both recording the costs of existing operations and for taking decisions about new opportunities. Special attention is given to cost-volume-profit analysis, product pricing, special decisions, and allocation decisions when resources are limited. In addition, the construction of budgets for planning and the use of standard costing and variance analysis for control are examined. The course also introduces the concept and design performance measurement systems in decentralized organizations.

The course provides a fundamental understanding of the environment in which international business operates and of the business practices required to compete successfully in global markets. This course gives an overview of challenges and opportunities of competing in the global marketplace. It helps students develop the decision-making skills associated with managing different aspects of international business. Furthermore, the course exposes students to the cultural, economic, political environment of international business and internationalist strategies, and the management of international business.

This course explores a series of interconnecting developments which placed cities at the center of power and innovation in the medieval world in the period c.1000 to c.1500. A process so transformative the cities can be conceptualized as revolutionary. Students explore how power was constructed within cities. In addition, students examine competing concepts of the city as an embodiment of sin or of holiness. Alongside this, students question how wealth was generated within cities and how some of the consequences of a profit economy and rising population were managed through welfare provision and charitable activity. Central to the course is the importance of landscape, and how monuments, topography, and rural hinterlands shaped urban socio-religious and political communities. Finally, students assess how learning (especially the rise of universities) and history-writing enabled cities to position themselves as centers of knowledge, memory, and identities.

This course focuses on the intersection of culture and national identity in Russian and Soviet history. Students examine Russia’s relationship with its ‘others’ – East and West – and their role in the construction of Russia’s discourses around culture and nationhood. Students also explore the role of empire in Russian and Soviet history, analyzing how Russian writers, artists, and intellectuals have questioned, endorsed or contested it. Through the analysis of literary and visual primary sources, the course provides students with a better understanding of Russia’s conflicted identity and its consequences for the present day.