The Graduate School of Business of University of Cape Town Masters in Business Administration (MBA) programme is transformative. It pushes students to their limits and empowers them to reach their best - personally and professionally.

Selection Criteria for MBA:

-Be 25 years or older

-Have a minimum of three years work experience.

-Be fluent in English. Applicants whose mother tongue is not English will be required to produce a TOEFL certificate to verify fluency in English.

-Have completed either a Bachelor Honours degree or Postgraduate Diploma or a cognate Bachelor's Degree equivalent at level 8 through relevant work experience.

-All applicants are required to write the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) and obtain an acceptable GMAT score. A GMAT score of 550 will ordinarily be required.

Fees Structure:

Application Fees: R 1175.00

Acceptance Fees: R15 000

Core Curriculum:

1. Complexity, Organisation and Values
-Contextual and global considerations for leaders, leadership and organisations
-Organisational structures, organisational culture, people in organisations
-Various leadership theories
-Values-based leadership
-Organisational values
-The dark side of leadership, toxic leadership

2. Evidence- Based Practice
-Availability, representativeness and affect heuristics
-Confirmation bias and the halo effect
-Anchoring, framing and mental accounting
-Decisions under risk
-Critical thinking
-Cognition and cognitive closure
-Analytical vs experiential reasoning; analytical vs holistic thinking; independent vs interdependent and dialectical self

3. Markets in Emerging Countries
-Market failures, information asymmetries and externalities in emerging countries
-Markets in “anthropology”
-The politics of markets: Influence of emerging political models
-Markets and power: Exploration of different models/systems of markets in developed and emerging economies
-Feminist economics and its interpretation of markets
-Markets in an international context
-Markets at the base of the pyramid

4. Business, Government and Society
-The complex nature of the many challenges societies face in relation to the role of the business community
-The role of business in society
-The role of institutions in explaining growth in emerging markets
-Political regimes and economic growth in emerging markets
-Identification and evaluation of successful developmental states
-Doing business in Africa
-Country risk assessments
-Integrating sustainability in organisational strategy
-The complexity of social-ecological problems
-Cross-sector collaboration

5. Leadership and Personal Development
-Personal narrative and storytelling
-Ego-states, awareness and mental models
-Psychological archetypes and creative leadership
-Mindfulness, becoming present and embodiment
-Neuroscience and the brain
-Construction of power and choice
-Personal character
-Self-Care and resilience
-Team composition and leading teams


6. Economics for Business
-Business cycles and economic indicators
-Macroeconomic foundations
-Markets and prices, supply and demand
-Monetary developments, interest rates and financial markets
-Balance of payments and exchange rates
-Inflation and real exchange rates
-Government and policy

7. Accounting
-The annual report, GAAP, IFRS, international developments
-Financial analysis
-The statement of comprehensive income
-The statement of cash flows
-Assets (property, plant & equipment, investment properties, impairment, intangibles, non-current assets held for sale, goodwill, inventories)
-Liability (provisions, contingencies and post-balance sheet events, employee benefits)
-Group accounting (subsidiaries, associates, joint ventures, goodwill)
-Management accounting: CVP analysis, budgeting and cost management, financial performance measures
-Strategic management accounting – the balanced scorecard

8. Organisational Behaviour and People Management
-The organisation in context
-The individual and the organisation
-High performance organisations
-High performance work practices
-Employee participation and workplace empowerment
-International people management, managing diversity in organisations
-Employment equity
-Managing organisational change
-The attraction factor: recruitment and selection
-Motivation and retention; coaching and mentoring
-The challenges of leading and managing people in (South) Africa

9. Operations Management
-Introduction to operations and value-stream mapping
-Operations strategy
-Process flow analysis
-Problem solving toolkits and product-process matrix
-Supply chain management
-Integrated material and production management, lean thinking
-Operation strategies in emerging markets
-Operations in online retail
-Operations in service industries
-Disruptive technologies and transformation system design
-Operations in the health care sector
-Operations for entrepreneurs

10. Finance
-Introduction to finance and South Africa’s financial economic history
-Corporate Governance Theory, Integrating EESG criteria into corporate valuation
-Role of the shareholders, board and executive management: Corporate Governance today
-Modern portfolio theory
-Efficient market hypothesis (EMH), Security market line (SML), Capital asset pricing model (CAPM), Behavioural finance
-Cost of equity, cost of debt, weighted average cost of capital
-Capital budgeting
-Capital restructuring mergers and acquisitions (M&A), leverage, Modigliani & Miller (M&M) theorems
-Interest, present and future values, perpetuities and annuities, bonds, shares
-Financial forecasting, valuation of unlisted companies
-The role of financial markets and institutions


11. Marketing
-Marketing and marketing planning
-Marketing analysis: Evaluating opportunities and focusing marketing strategy
-Consumer and organisational buyer behaviour
-E-marketing / digital marketing
-Product strategy
-Distribution strategy
-Integrated marketing communications strategies
-Personal selling and sales management
-Pricing strategy

12. Social Innovation Entrepreneuring
-Theories and practices of social Innovation
-Frameworks and tools for social entrepreneuring
-Perspectives on social innovation
-Organisational forms and purposes, hybridisation
-Social innovation in emerging countries

13. Strategy
-Statements of strategy - business models
-Strategy from the inside out
-Competitive forces that shape strategy
-Pragmatic strategy
-The link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility
-Business-level and corporate-level strategy
-Executing strategic change
-Strategy in emerging economies
-Strategy for turbulent times

14. Social Innovation Lab
-Exploring contemporary social innovation in South Africa
-Innovating business models towards social change
-Planning for social impact
-Innovations in social finance
-Action learning projects

15. Business Model Innovation Lab
-Integrative thinking – the opposable mind
-Modelling problem spaces using systems thinking
-Systems thinking
-Complexity and generative reasoning
-Cross sector innovation
-Organisational design
-Design thinking
-Systematic inventive thinking
-The innovation ecosystem


16. Research Methods and Research Report

Contact Details:
UCT Graduate School of Business  
9 Portswood Rd, V & A Waterfront, Cape Town, 8002, South Africa
Phone:+27 21 406 1911