Meet our students
Meet current and previous International GEMBA students.
Why this programme
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Class profile

Curriculum
Complete your Global Executive MBA (GEMBA) over 21 transformative months. To help you develop as a Strategic leader our GEMBA programme offers you a highly personalised educational experience.
It includes a self-assessment of your development needs, (team) leadership challenge, personalised strategic leadership development plan, data-driven monitoring of your progress, one-to-one coaching, a choice of 3 electives and more.
Personal Leadership Development is interwoven throughout your Global Executive MBA experience. The Strategic Leadership Development track focuses on the development of the competencies that managers will need to bring to the table to successfully serve as a strategic leader. These skills and attitudes comprise a both personal leadership (PL) and strategic leadership (SL) component.
Because of its flexible, modular format, you will be able to experiment with new approaches learnt on campus back at the workplace as you progress.
You can view the GEMBA calendar to find out it this programme is a fit, please click here.
Global Experiential Learning courses (GEL)

Strategic Leadership Development (SLD)

Module 1 (September - February)
- Strategic Leadership Development track (10 EC)
- Global Marketing Management (4 EC)
- This course integrates psychological and economic theories used in traditional marketing strategy with new insights and techniques based in data science to offer substantial efficiency in marketing endeavours. We will discuss the implications of big-data and the evolving internet economy on traditional durable goods as well as newly emerging product domains. Additionally, given the exceedingly interconnected world, we will discuss the social, environmental, and ethical implications of marketing in this new era.
- Managerial Decision Analysis (3 EC)
- Complexity in decision making comes from many factors. This course focuses on the difficulties arising from quantitative decision making in an environment with uncertainty and risk and presents different methodologies to deal with them in real-life problems. The course exposes you to common decision-making pitfalls and discusses how decision making is likely to change over the next decades due to the rise of Artificial Intelligence.
- Global Operations Management (4 EC)
- This course will introduce you to concepts and techniques that are essential for the design, planning, control and improvement of global service and manufacturing operations. You will explore topics such as capacity, inventory and supply chain management and learn basic tools for analysing operations problems, methods for managing an aspect of operations in a real situation, as well as providing a strategic view, typically using cases, of that aspect of operations.
- Topics in Global Business and Management (1 EC)
- The rapid changes in global business and society mean that new perspectives are needed to prepare strategic leaders for an uncertain future. This course will not only invite top-level executives, experts, and faculty to help you to envisage and understand which global mega-trends may be coming our way, but will also offer an introduction to some practical tools (such as scenario-analysis, for example) to help strategic leaders to navigate an uncertain future.
- Global Experiential Learning: Leading Digital Transformation & Study visit (3 EC)
Module 2 (March - July)
- Strategic Leadership Development track (continued)
- Strategy in a Global Arena (4 EC)
- Strategic management is concerned with what is perhaps the most pressing issue for strategic leaders: how can I make my firm outperform its competitors? To formulate value-creating strategies, managers must identify core competencies, analyse industry environments, and develop new ways of outcompeting their rivals. The overall aim of this course is to help you to think like a strategist and contribute to C-suite level strategic decision-making.
- Financial Accounting and Analysis (3 EC)
- This course provides a common language and a toolbox to make rational decisions that involve monetary value. Understanding this subject matter will make you a more professional manager. Moreover, understanding the limitations of financial analysis and accounting will enable you to challenge management plans more effectively. This course gives you the foundational knowledge that any C-suite member needs to use and evaluate financial information and contribute to discussions and decision-making with respect to finance and accounting.
- Leading and Managing Global Organizations (4 EC)
- Managing people and organisational development is a mission critical C-suite competency that no business can afford to do without. Managers of globally active businesses need to continuously readjust their organisations to volatile or uncertain environments; navigate international and culturally highly diverse contexts; develop and engage with a competitive workforce based on the business’ value proposition; and engage in informed decision-making using evolving techniques such as people analytics, big data, and artificial intelligence. In sum, leading and managing a globally active organisation at a C-suite level requires specific knowledge, skills and attitudes. This course seeks to hone and develop these skills, so you can develop and lead organisations with purpose.
- Topics in Global Business and Management (continued)
- Global Experiential Learning: Leading Entrepreneurship and Venturing & Study visit (3 EC)
Module 3 (August - March)
- Strategic Leadership Development track (continued)
- Elective 1 (3 EC)
- Elective 2 (3 EC)
- Elective 3 (3 EC)
- Topics in Global Business and Management (continued)
- Corporate Governance (3 EC)
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Corporate governance is about getting “the rules of the game” right within which firms can secure resources, develop their core activities and business models, secure their societal licence to operate, and create and capture value for their shareholders and stakeholders. Rather than presenting an optimal corporate governance set-up that suits all firms, we will discuss the ownership and governance choices ofthe firm as a matter of strategic design and decision-making.
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- Corporate Finance in a Global Environment (4 EC)
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Visionary business leaders of the future need a toolbox that helps them to tackle some tough strategic decisions. In this course, we discuss some of the toughest financial decisions senior managers may have to take, such as: What is the best capital structure for my company? Should I diversify my company or should I focus, and what is the impact on my corporate cost of capital? What are the financial pros and cons of having a stock market listing versus being privately held? Given your company has a stock market listing, what can you do to improve the stock’s liquidity? How do you redistribute the net profits of your corporation?
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- Global Experiential Learning: Leading Corporate Strategy and Development & Study visit (3 EC)
Module 4 (April - June)
- Strategic Leadership Development track (continued)
- Economics for Global Business Managers (3 EC)
- This course seeks to enable you to apply foundational concepts and insights from micro- and macro-economics to analyze some of the most relevant trends and issues in global businesses today. Specifically, this course will discuss concepts such as incentives and behavior, market power and market structures, asymmetric information, vertical integration, and outsourcing, for example, to analyze phenomena such as the international fragmentation in trade and FDI, economic crises and contagion, the role of multinationals in global business, regulation, trade agreements, as well as other current phenomena that are important for strategic leaders in global business.
- Global Experiential Learning: Leading with Impact in Emerging and Developing Economics & Study visit South Africa (3 EC)
Electives
Choose 3 electives from a selection of programme- and school offerings that will help you to customise the knowledge and skills development that you need or desire to develop further. Here are some examples of elective courses on offer.
- Change management/strategic business change leadership
- Managing corporate turnarounds
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Business negotiations
- Financial engineering
- Brand management
Faculty
World-class thought leadership on global business.
Our faculty are leading thinkers, researchers and practitioners of global business. Their research is published by top academic journals, and their expertise is regularly sought by the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and a host of leading newspapers and media outlets. RSM professors investigate the most pressing and relevant dimensions of global management, and their thought leadership informs the decisions of C-suites and boards of some of the world’s leading business organisations.
Global scholars
RSM faculty research the most critical issues facing businesses around the world. From innovation to entrepreneurship to supply management and beyond, they shed critical new light on the challenges our organisations face in uncertain times. The Erasmus Research Institute of Management is ranked among Europe’s top three think tanks. Joining the EMBA programme at RSM will give you the opportunity to interact with world-class scholars on the critical issues that face your business and your leadership.
Industry leaders
No one understands today’s business climate better than those who actually navigate it every day — the leaders of industry and government. At RSM, you’ll get their expert perspectives first-hand, learning from big-name professionals who share invaluable insights about the real world, directly with you and your peers.
At RSM, we are porud to claim:

Dr Mirko Benischke
Associate Professor of Global Strategy

Prof. Pursey Heugens
Professor of Organization Theory, Development, and Change, Scientific Director ERIM, Dean of Research RSM

Dr Ioannis Fragkos
Associate Professor

Prof. dr. Ting Li
Professor of Digital Business
For whom
Globally-oriented, inspirational professionals who are primed for their next professional challenge. Typically, candidates who exhibit outstanding professional achievements, exceptional leadership qualities, experience in people management and academic excellence, a Bachelors degree (or equivalent) as well as a good command of the English language. We require a minimum of 10 years of post-graduate work experience, including 3-5 years of managerial experience.
What needs does the programme fulfil for participants?
Empowerment to lead your organisation with unprecedented impact. The prospect to network on a truly global scale, integrating experience, attitudes and conditions of global business as well as augmenting leadership skills that will inspire growth and development towards senior management responsibilities.
What does a participant get out of the programme?
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An MBA degree from one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools.
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A programme that provides customised learning laser-focused on your personal development as a strategic leader.
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Development of professional leadership skills.
- A management programme rooted in sustainability and innovation.