Bachelor's Degree in Management: six specialisations
Six ways into the job market, in the DRC and beyond.
Each specialisation answers a real need of Congolese employers and is practised from the outset, part of the programme taking place in practical work and inside companies. The LMD framework, aligned with international standards, also opens the way to mobility and to further study abroad. The choice is made in the second year, after a common core.
This stream trains managers able to start a company and keep it standing: giving a legal form to an activity, raising its funding, finding its first customers and steering its growth.
Detailed description
The specialisation prepares for two distinct trades in the creation of value by business: carrying a venture of one’s own, and carrying innovation inside an existing organisation.
The first profile is that of the company head: the founder who starts a business, or the successor who takes over a family firm or an existing small business. They learn to design and validate a business model, to set a company up legally and financially, to run a small organisation and to steer its growth.
The second profile is that of the innovation manager: the intrapreneur, the innovation project officer, the product portfolio manager, who leads change and brings out new products, services or business models within an organisation already in place: a company, a public institution, a non-profit organisation. They draw on the recognised methods of innovation management, which give structure to environmental scanning, to the management of the idea portfolio, to the protection of intellectual property and to the measurement of results.
The two profiles share a common block of courses: designing and validating a business model, project management, and capitalising on intellectual property.
Objectives of the specialisation
| No. | What you learn to do |
|---|---|
| 01 | Tell an idea apart from a real business opportunity, and carry out a feasibility study before committing resources. |
| 02 | Design, test and develop a business model, alone or in a team. |
| 03 | Set a company up legally and financially: choice of structure, capital arrangements, search for funding. |
| 04 | Run a small organisation: day-to-day management, first hires, dealings with financial partners. |
| 05 | Steer a portfolio of innovation projects within an existing organisation, from the idea to implementation. |
| 06 | Protect and capitalise on the intellectual property of a product, a service or a process. |
Skills and abilities developed
Potential careers
This stream trains managers able to recruit, to grow the skills of a team and to support an organisation through its transformations, from the employment contract to the management of change.
Detailed description
The specialisation prepares for the human resources function as a whole: from acquiring and developing talent to aligning personnel policy with the organisation’s strategy. The international frameworks of the discipline organise the profession around five blocks of skills: recruitment and selection, pay and performance management, training and development, employee relations and labour law, and the management of organisational change.
The HR manager works where two demands often pull against each other: those of the organisation, which needs staff who are competent, motivated and sufficient in number, and those of the people who work there, whose fair and lawful treatment the manager has to guarantee. This double demand sets the profession apart from the other management functions: it combines technical skills (law, payroll, appraisal) with relational skills (negotiation, mediation, listening). The specialisation also covers the intercultural dimension of management, essential in organisations that employ teams of different origins and cultures.
Objectives of the specialisation
| No. | What you learn to do |
|---|---|
| 01 | Run a structured recruitment process, from defining the post to the induction of the new employee. |
| 02 | Apply labour law and administer personnel in compliance with legal obligations. |
| 03 | Design a pay policy and a performance appraisal system. |
| 04 | Build and run a training and skills development plan. |
| 05 | Prevent and handle conflict and employee relations. |
| 06 | Design and lead an organisational change project, identifying resistance and mobilising teams. |
Skills and abilities developed
Potential careers
This stream trains managers able to make an organisation’s data speak: to define the indicators that really count, to run technology projects and to put artificial intelligence at the service of decisions.
Detailed description
The specialisation trains managers able to turn an organisation’s data into decisions, without taking the place of the technical specialists who produce them. The leading business analytics curricula organise the discipline around three distinct blocks of skills: the technical tools of analysis and visualisation, functional knowledge of the sector or the organisation in which the data are interpreted, and the ability to ask the right questions and to convey the answers to decision-makers who are not analysts themselves.
It is this third block that the specialisation covers, the first two being learnt, respectively, in an information systems curriculum and through practising the trade concerned. It covers the definition of management indicators, the building and the reading of dashboards, data governance, the considered use of artificial intelligence applied to management, the running of digital projects and the reporting of findings to decision-makers.
It trains neither database administrators, nor developers, nor network technicians: the skill it aims at is not producing a figure, but knowing which question to put to the data, which indicator to build in order to answer it, and what the answer means for the decision.
Objectives of the specialisation
| No. | What you learn to do |
|---|---|
| 01 | Turn a management need into relevant performance indicators. |
| 02 | Build, read and develop a dashboard suited to a given decision. |
| 03 | Assess the quality and the governance of an organisation’s data. |
| 04 | Use artificial intelligence tools applied to management with a critical eye on the results produced. |
| 05 | Scope and run a digital project, from the stated need to implementation. |
| 06 | Report analytical findings to non-specialist decision-makers. |
Skills and abilities developed
Potential careers
Still undecided?
The choice of specialisation comes in the second year, after a common core, seminars led by practitioners and a first look inside a company. You will choose knowing what you are choosing, not from a brochure.
This stream trains managers able to steer an organisation’s flows: to buy, produce, store, transport and deliver, on time and at the right cost.
Detailed description
The specialisation trains managers able to steer all of an organisation’s flows: to buy, produce, store, transport and deliver, on time and at the cost planned. The leading operations and supply chain management curricula build the discipline around three families of skills: supply chain management proper (purchasing, stock, transport, distribution), the business management fundamentals that tie it to the organisation’s strategy and finances, and a sector knowledge that varies with the industry served.
It covers the management and improvement of processes, purchasing and procurement, stock and warehouse management, transport and freight forwarding, quality management, the international supply chain, risk management and industrial safety, as well as operations management in service businesses. It draws on internationally recognised methods: lean management, Six Sigma, Incoterms, quality management systems, which shape the profession whatever the sector or the country of practice.
Objectives of the specialisation
| No. | What you learn to do |
|---|---|
| 01 | Map and improve an operational process. |
| 02 | Design a purchasing and procurement policy. |
| 03 | Manage stock and a warehouse: sizing, turnover, holding costs. |
| 04 | Organise transport and freight forwarding, including across borders. |
| 05 | Put a quality management approach into practice. |
| 06 | Identify and manage the risks of a supply chain. |
Skills and abilities developed
Potential careers
This stream trains managers able to understand a market, to position an offering in it and to sell that offering, in the DRC as much as for export to regional and international markets.
Detailed description
The specialisation trains managers able to understand a market, to position an offering in it and to sell it. The leading marketing and international trade curricula organise the discipline around three complementary strands: marketing proper (market research, positioning, communication), international trade (the law and practice of cross-border exchange, intercultural management) and business communication.
It covers market research and consumer behaviour, brand strategy and positioning, digital marketing and the running of social media, corporate communication, selling techniques and customer relations, as well as the foundations of international trade and international commercial negotiation. Bringing international trade in gives the specialisation two sides: marketing an offering on a home market, and taking it across a border: research on the destination market, documentation, regulatory compliance, negotiation.
Objectives of the specialisation
| No. | What you learn to do |
|---|---|
| 01 | Conduct market research and analyse consumer behaviour. |
| 02 | Design a brand strategy and a positioning. |
| 03 | Build and run a digital marketing and communication strategy. |
| 04 | Conduct a commercial negotiation, including across borders. |
| 05 | Set up an export operation: research on the destination market, documentation, regulatory compliance. |
| 06 | Manage a customer relationship over time. |
Skills and abilities developed
Potential careers
This stream trains managers able to keep, read and interpret an organisation’s accounts, to judge its health and to inform its financing and investment decisions.
Detailed description
The specialisation trains managers able to keep, read and interpret an organisation’s accounts, to judge its financial health and to inform its financing and investment decisions. It deliberately brings together two disciplines that international curricula usually keep apart: accounting, which records and verifies what has happened, and finance, which uses that record to decide what is to come: an investment, a financing arrangement, a risk taken.
It covers advanced accounting, corporate finance, financial analysis, taxation, management control, audit, financial markets and portfolio management, bank accounting and credit risk, compliance, international financing and financial innovation. It draws on internationally recognised accounting and financial standards, among them the OHADA standards, shared by 17 African countries, and the IFRS standards, applied the world over, which make the skills transferable from one organisation and one country to another.
Objectives of the specialisation
| No. | What you learn to do |
|---|---|
| 01 | Keep a set of accounts and draw up financial statements. |
| 02 | Analyse an organisation’s financial health and assess its risks. |
| 03 | Draw up a budget and a management control system. |
| 04 | Put together a financing application and assess its feasibility. |
| 05 | Carry out an audit or compliance assignment. |
| 06 | Assess credit risk and manage a financial portfolio. |
Skills and abilities developed
Potential careers
One specialisation, one network of companies.
Each stream is backed by specific partner sectors, which host students for their field projects and their work placements.