Before our first campus week you are provided with readings and exercises to enhance your learning and reflection abilities. During the first Campus week, you will meet your fellow participants and discuss how different perspectives on learning can support you to work and learn as a team. The Learning Foundation module also introduce different approaches to knowledge creation, critical analysis and other tools that help you develop your interpretive skills.

You will get a solid understanding of financial reporting and how to use financial reports to analyze a company's profitability, financial position, and liquidity. You will learn how to employ managerial accounting methods and techniques to make better management decisions. You will study global asset markets and learn how stocks and bonds are priced, the relation between risk and return and the role of financial intermediaries. Building on that, you will examine how corporations are financed, and investigate the advantages of the main types of funding. The Financial Foundation module includes the courses "Understanding and Managing the Business – Financial reporting, Analysis and Control" and "Business Finance".

Course "Understanding and Managing the Business – Financial reporting, Analysis and Control"

This course is based on the use and understanding of financial reports in order to run and evaluate businesses. You will study the language of accounting to understand the financial consequences of business activities. The focus is on reading and using accounting information to make effective decisions in a business context. The course is dedicated to the content and relationship between the financial reports, income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements to convey the strength of the setup as a basis for critical analyses. The next step is constructing key ratios as a condensed but effective way of structuring the data and valuating companies. The last part of the course takes the perspective of management control to evaluate investment opportunities and methods of costing.

Course "Business Finance"

The aim of this course is to provide participants with a strong understanding of the principles of business finance and an opportunity to apply these principles to practical and managerial decisions. You will learn to master fundamental concepts in the pricing of financial assets, such as idiosyncratic and systematic risk, diversification, and expected returns. The course Business Finance builds an understanding of the pros and cons of debt financing and how capital structure choices may affect the value of a firm. Course participants are introduced to various methods for valuing companies. Finally, the course introduces important financial transactions (such as mergers, initial public offerings, raising capital, and restructuring) and provides some institutional insights into the workings of debt and equity markets.

Organizations are not isolated islands. They operate in global society shaped by norms and assumptions. They are embedded in a context of laws, rules, regulations, standards, cultures, traditions, and ideologies. To develop an organization, managers need to understand, interpret, and handle relationships with customers, suppliers, employees, and competitors as well as a multitude of other local and international stakeholders.

This module includes the courses "Business Law for the International Manager", "Economics", and "Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Business".

Course "Business Law for the International Manager"

In a dynamic economy, being able to navigate the legal environment and knowing how to enter and exit large-scale business transaction becomes essential. The course Business Law for the International Manager is intended to give the non-lawyer participants an orientation into the components of business law and to provide a legal lens and foundation to enable the identification and analysis of legal issues that will arise in the day-today operations of any business operation.

Course "Economics"

This course focuses on globalization, economic growth, and political risk. The rationale is that managers need to be aware of, and act upon, the challenges posed by the wider economic environment within which companies operate. The course investigates phenomena which in the short to medium term are given and cannot be influenced by individual economic agents, the nature and sources of economic growth, and the way economic policy has been designed to achieve growth. The consequences of operating in an open economy will also be brought up, as will the various types of risks to the profitability of business ventures that such an open setting implies.

Course "Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Business"

The transition towards sustainable development is considered our time’s greatest challenge. Climate change, biodiversity loss, population growth, urbanization, geopolitics and inequality are increasingly impacting or being impacted by our systems, policies and businesses. With a point of departure in sustainable development as defined in the UN Brundtland Commission (1987), this course supports critical thinking and aims to contextualize corporate social responsibility and sustainable business strategies in line with the transformation being called for.

Corporate responsibility can be defined as an organization’s obligation to consider the interests of their stakeholders such as customers, employees, shareholders, communities, and the environment – and to internalize these social and environmental externalities into company operations. By integrating sustainability into core business strategies and taking a stakeholder perspective, organizations can potentially create both social and corporate value on a sustainable basis – they can at minimum create what has been dubbed “shared value” to business and society. Corporate responsibility and sustainable business is a major strategic concern to all businesses and effective managerial action but requires an understanding of global and local sustainability challenges, global norms and codes, boundaries of firm responsibility and a myriad of sustainable business practices.

This subject runs throughout the program and aims at connecting CSR and sustainability issues into all of the program’s discipline-based courses. The course itself has stand-alone parts, course interlinked joint sessions, digital synchronous online learning along with preparatory asynchronous content. Our purpose is to integrate sustainability knowledge throughout the program and into all courses as relevant. Thus, we explore the purpose of companies and organizations in society and trace the expanding boundaries of corporate responsibility from a global norm perspective. Taking a corporate strategic view, using extant knowledge from the social sciences, as well as existing best practice managerial tools from a wide range of disciplines, the course further introduces students to managing sustainable businesses based on best practice cases.

The ultimate reason for engaging in organized activities is to produce stakeholder value. In this module we take a multi-disciplinary approach where we focus on five pillars to a firm's value creation: management, strategy, operations, marketing, and innovation.

The management pillar emphasizes the overall management and organization of your business; the strategy pillar addresses the overall choice of what a business should be concerned with; the operations pillar focuses on how resources are transformed in an effective way; the marketing pillar addresses the relationship to the market, customers and users; while the innovation pillar puts the light on the continued need to develop the business offering. The focus of the value creation module is to equip the participants with the tools and methods for driving their businesses forward. The overarching question addressed in the module is how organizations are to align their internal resources with the demands from the external environment.

Course "Managing the Organization"

Managing and organizing are two of the most central activities in all organizations. Without good coordination and leadership, the organization will not function or reach its targets, regardless of how well each part inside the company, such as production, marketing, and finance, etc. works. As the world becomes increasingly complex, organizations also face new challenges that require them to rethink their internal work processes and leadership styles. In this course, you will develop your analytical skills and apply theoretically grounded models on real-life cases. You will learn how to optimize organizational structures and technologies, how to find and keep the "right" people, and how to navigate the political landscape and culture in your organization. You will also get insights into new types of organizations and the leadership styles they use. But perhaps most importantly, you will train your reframing skills – the ability to analyze complex situations from different perspectives and use the insights to define a suitable course of action.

Course "Strategic Management"

Strategy is the long-term direction of an organization and includes both the deliberate, logical strategy and the more incremental, emergent patterns of strategy. Strategy needs to be managed and the aim of this course is to provide an understanding of fundamental concepts in Strategic Management. You will learn how to master industry and sector, as well as firm and organizational level strategy analysis. You will obtain an understanding of the foundations of competitive strategy, competitive advantage, and diverse business models. Based on these various strategy tools and frameworks the ambition is to develop the participants’ skills in analyzing as well as formulating, developing, and implementing strategies in their current and future business.

Course "Operations Strategy"

The course "Operations Strategy" focuses on how firms and organizations can shape and develop their resources and processes to compete on global markets. No matter what sector, operation strategies have huge impact – not only in the short term, but also on an enduring basis. Operations strategy is relevant for all organizations as well as all functions of an organization. The course is designed to equip participants with frameworks and models for analyzing and developing operations strategies and covers such topics as operation process laws, The nature of operations strategy, operations excellence and competitive benefit, operations strategy analysis, and the impact of digitization on operations strategy.

Course "Marketing Strategy"

Most companies need customers or users to value their offering enough for purchase or use of service. This course will teach you how to best convey your offering to target customers and users. The foundation of all marketing strategy is market analysis, and you will learn different approaches to market analysis covering both the role of marketing and marketers, and the various markets in which marketing activities are executed. We begin by diagnosing markets and whether they are established and stable, in state of rapid transformation, or under construction. Based on this analysis you will learn how to plan, implement, and evaluate your marketing activities depending on the type of market and customer. The "Marketing Strategy" course also extends its focus to cover marketing analysis and activities on international markets, such as making informed decisions on firm readiness for international markets, which markets to target and options in international marketing strategy including branding and digital marketing strategies.

Course "Business Innovation"

In today’s business environment, innovation constitutes a key driver of organizational growth and competitive advantage. However, developing new products, services and business models is a highly complex activity. Most radical innovation projects fail to meet cost, time, and quality objectives. Poor performance often stems from recurring syndromes such as scope creep, design loopbacks, firefighting, and overdesign. In this course we highlight that innovation processes need to be managed differently from "business-as-usual” due to uncertain and turbulent contexts, requiring managers to absorb and practice a different skillset. You will learn to master design thinking, agile and lean start-up principles, and methods, and consequently how to efficiently and effectively create innovation for real, by identifying and transforming opportunities, into ideas, concepts, prototypes and finally, new recipes for innovative products, services and business models.

GNAM electives

During the first electives period, participants will have the possibility to participate in one of the courses offered in the Global Network Week for EMBA students.

GNAM includes 31 leading business schools from diverse regions, countries, cultures, and economies in different phases of development all over the world. SSE is the only school in the Nordics to be part of the network. The GNAM EMBA week gives you the opportunity to pursue intensive study at another member school, in a focused course that leverages the perspectives, programs, and faculty expertise of that school.

Elective courses are changed each year. Previously, participants took courses in Social Innovation, Private Equity, Behavioral Science, Innovative China, Digital Transformation, Gender Equity and Leadership and Understanding Emergent Markets. You can also do the Global Network Week in Stockholm at SSE and take our Nordic Entrepreneurship course which can also be joined by other Executive MBA participants from the other GNAM member schools. Read more about the courses which were offered in June 2024.

SSE electives

The second electives period is an SSE in-house session. In collaboration with our Executive MBA program in Latvia, we are providing various SSE electives, including specialized courses in Accounting and Finance, Service Design, Negotiations, etc. These courses will be conducted on our campuses in Stockholm or Riga and will be taught by SSE faculty.

Managers experience various challenges throughout their careers, such as driving change and implementing strategies in the organization, communicating with target audiences, and keeping on top of new methods for business data collection and analysis.

The Leadership Challenges module consist of shorter courses on subjects including:

• Change Management
• Data Driven Analytics (delivered in-person at Stanford University by the Stanford Center for Professional Development)
• and a Live Scenario Case course

International trip to SSE Riga | Riga, Latvia

The focus of the week will be International Economics, Sustainability, and Business Law.

International trip to the National University of Singapore (NUS) | Singapore

One campus week will be held at the National University of Singapore in Singapore. On-campus learning will be combined with company visits and guest speakers. The focus of the week is on the course "Doing Business in Asia", business strategies and developing skills for leading international companies and creating an international career. This field trip is a part of the module "Value Creation and Leading Global Business". Upon completion, participants will be awarded a certificate for the course "Doing Business in Asia" from NUS.

International trip to Standford University | Silicon Valley, United States

Our third international field trip will be to Stanford University, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, California in the United States. Students will participate in a 3-day educational program called "Data Driven Analytics: Understanding and Applying in a Business Context". The program, delivered by the Stanford Engineering Center for Global & Online Education (CGOE), will be taught by Stanford faculty and industry guest speakers. In addition to the CGOE program, you will learn about the Silicon Valley ecosystem, how to create highly innovative teams and meet a variety of entrepreneurs. Upon completion, participants will be awarded a certificate from CGOE.

This program is designed to be a comprehensive cornerstone of your development, which has multiple touch points and runs throughout the entire 18 months of the SSE MBA Executive Format. The goal is to support your development as a global leader capable of reflecting on and creating impactful change at the organizational, team, and individual levels.

LeadershipLive takes into account different aspects of leadership development including: Academic learning, individual coaching, self-leadership, peer-to-peer coaching, reflecting teams and team effectiveness, leadership stories, and your leadership brand.

During the LeadershipLive program, SSE's faculty in management studies will provide the theoretical background and the latest research to anchor the program, whereas our experienced leadership coaches will work with you individually, in cohort sessions and through a peer-to-peer coaching program.