Master Electives

In the master electives, you will focus on special topics in a wide range of next-generation business applications, which will provide you with the knowledge needed to act as a next generation manager.

NEW MEDIA IN BUSINESS

This master elective challenges participants to learn about the role of new media and critically reflect on this. The course is built around cutting-edge themes like mobile collaboration, groupware, remote communication and coordination, e-learning, and e-communities. New media is changing the nature of communication in business, challenging the way individuals, teams, and organisations operate in 'real' and virtual spaces. Examples include mobile computing and connectivity devices, virtual work and learning spaces, avatars, and electronic communication media. 

SMART BUSINESS NETWORKS

With the rise of the networked economy, competition is no longer between individual organisations, but rather between networks of organisations, as businesses operate in flexible business networks to improve efficiency or to strengthen their strategic position by close and flexible cooperation with network partners. This requires a fundamental change in thinking about strategy and competition.

This course offers a comprehensive perspective on how such business networks are reshaping competition and how interorganisational systems enable the design, execution and management of these business networks. We offer state-of-the-art knowledge and insight on the capabilities networked businesses have to develop: becoming network ready, network partner selection, connecting with network partners, managing the network –in particular as network orchestrator- and network performance. Concepts of business networks are closely linked to information processing capacities and coordination capabilities of the network partners, where interorganisational systems (IOS) play a key role.

The concepts are illustrated and applied to value chains (or rather: value networks) in both production and service settings. This is offered to you through in-depth discussion of several case studies, in combination with guest speakers and lectures on the theoretical background. Furthermore, you will apply your experience with business network concepts firsthand by participating in the Business Networking Game (a management simulation game) and a small research project analysing the network capabilities, readiness and performance of firms in practice. 

NEXT GENERATION BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

The web is evolving faster every day, and the effects on business and information technology can be disruptive. This is an exciting course about the technology driven developments in the world of next generation business applications. You will learn about the foundations of the latest technologies for designing and developing systems like Intelligent Agents, Service Oriented Architecture, Mash-ups and Cloud Computing and how you could use building blocks from Google and many others. Theoretical and practical aspects of all phases of the software life cycle are discussed, especially about software requirements specifications techniques, analysis, design, and implementation and testing. This knowledge will be reinforced by individual assignments and a team project in start-up style. The team project is based on a leading edge real-life case. The case selection is made by the student team and is accepted as long as it complies with the objectives of the course. This is a great opportunity for a real-life laboratory for a start-up idea. The implementation is based on ‘assembling and extending existing components’ instead of ‘writing the entire software from scratch’, this makes the course open for a wide audience including participants with very little or no programming experience.