Professor Ana Martins
Entrepreneurial teaching is designed to augment the potential for stimulating entrepreneurial attributes and insight, and to equip students to engage with matters in the workplace. In particular, this type of teaching is focused upon ensuring students perform various roles and their associated activities, developing skills and reinforcing attributes associated with being an enterprising person. This teaching model is based on the assumption that all students have some capacity for behaving as entrepreneurs and enhancing that capacity.
The MBA programme offered by the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Graduate School of Business and Leadership (GSB&L) recognises that some students will be naturally more enterprising than others, albeit that every student will demonstrate a different range and mix of potential. Some will be more creative, others will be more capable of taking initiatives independently; some may be better at networking.
Active engagement with theory
The GSB&L MBA programme implements adult learning principles. The self-directed learning approach applied recognises the unique learning needs of adult students, and assists students to apply theoretical frameworks learned during their studies in work environments.
The design of the MBA programme encompasses learning resources and assignments that encourage students to actively engage with the learning content through the extensive use of case studies, class discussions, practical exercises and business field trips. These help students to apply their theoretical knowledge and learning in real-life scenarios. This programme will also equip students with higher order skills such as problem-solving, which can then be used to develop creative solutions for addressing challenges. These skills can be further applied in SMMEs and other entrepreneurial environments.
Practical relevance
UKZN’s GSB&L is ideally placed to contribute to the development of local managers to unlock the potential for growth in the region, country and continent. This programme delivers its offering in accordance with its mission to produce and disseminate quality business knowledge that embodies academic excellence and practical relevance in addressing local, national and international priorities.
The MBA is an appropriate programme to attract and develop business leaders. The MBA degree is an internationally recognised brand that signifies management and leadership development. In addition to a powerful life experience, the MBA will equip managers with a mix of skills — “hard skills” such as theories and principles of people management, economics, finance, marketing, operations and supply chain, management and accounting — as well as the “soft skills” of interpersonal skills, leadership, teamwork, ethics, collaboration and communication that are so critical for effective management.
The MBA degree programme also provides access to a network of MBA students and alumni as well as faculty, business and community leaders.
Applications are open to study in 2020.
Visit: www.gsbl.ukzn.ac.za