Economics of Management and Organisation
Introduction
Many economics students will take up positions in management. The master specialisation Economics of Management and Organisation is an ambitious programme aimed at students who want to make a difference during their career. The combination of economic theory, empirical techniques, and practical applications provides valuable insight on how firms should be run. The skills and tools that students acquire in the programme allow them to create solutions not just to the problems that managers face nowadays, but also to problems they will face themselves in 20 years from now.
While striving for the highest academic standards, we make sure that the content of the programme is practical and relevant to real organisations. Teaching often draws on the staff’s recent research and their interaction with practitioners. The combination of academic rigor and practical applicability make the programme suited for students interested in organisational economics as well as for students who wish to learn what drives standard practice in management accounting and control.
Facts
Below you see an overview of the key facts of the Master's specialisation in Economics of Management and Organisation:
Start | September 2012 |
Duration | Full-Time (1 year) |
ECTS | 60 |
Language | English |
Programme Coordinator | Dr. J. Delfgaauw |
Title | MSc |
Study Association |
Curriculum
Below you see an overview of the curriculum of the Master's specialisation in Economics of Management and Organisation:
Courses | Student Workload |
Economics of Organisations | 4 ECTS credits |
Game Theory | 4 ECTS credits |
Applied Econometrics | 4 ECTS credits |
Two courses to be chosen from: | 8 ECTS credits |
One seminar to be chosen from: | 12 ECTS credits |
One seminar to be chosen from: | 12 ECTS credits |
Master Thesis | 16 ECTS credits |
Programme | 60 ECTS credits |
The courses
The curriculum of the master consists of tool courses, core courses, and seminars. The tool courses, Applied Econometrics and Game Theory, provide a foundation for the empirical and theoretical analysis of all kinds of problems firms face. Game Theory trains students to quickly reduce a situation to its essence, and provides the tools needed to analyse situations of strategic interaction. Applied Econometrics provides students with the tools to generate reliable information from available data, as well as teaches them how to assess the credibility of research results.
Of crucial importance for any organisation is the ability and willingness of its employees to pursue the goals of the organisation. The core course Economics of Organisations covers many relevant topics related to employees, including recruitment and retention, motivation using monetary incentives as well as non-monetary incentives, performance evaluation, human capital formation, and job assignment.
In the elective Strategy and Organisational Design the focus is on the interaction between the firm and its environment. A strategy of a firm refers to its long-run policies. This includes questions like: which markets should the firm enter? Which prices should it charge and how does this depend on market structure? With which other firms should the firm cooperate? This course couples these questions to the set-up of the firm, for instance regarding hierarchical structure, (de-)centralisation of decision rights (e.g. in case of a multinational, who is allowed to set prices in various countries: headquarters or local management), and communication between different people in the organisation. Other key questions are: Which goods should the firm produce itself and which goods are better bought from other organisations (‘make-or-buy’)? Who should do what within the organisation? How should tasks be allocated across people?
The elective Empirical Personnel Economics combines the skills obtained in Applied Econometrics with the insights from Economics of Organisations by studying empirical work on personnel economics in-depth. This benefits students in two ways. First, students get up-to-date knowledge of the current scientific evidence on issues of e.g. incentive pay, team formation, peer effects, human capital formation, and recruitment. Second, students learn to critically assess results obtained from various sources of data, and to judge whether it is possible to draw conclusions given the available data. In many organisations, the ability to infer which conclusions can be drawn based on the available information, and which cannot, is scarce. Even more scarce is the insight needed to see how information needed to make good decision can be acquired.
The elective Advanced Behavioral Economics discusses recent evidence on bounded rationality and its effects on individual decision-making. This includes loss aversion, mental accounting, and subjective probability assessment. This course is not specifically aimed at management and organisations, but provides students with understanding as to why people do not always act as rational economic agents and how economic policies and strategies can be improved to take such deviations from rational behaviour into account.
The seminars
The seminars build on the tool and core courses. In the seminars, students are expected to write research notes, present their findings, and actively participate in classroom discussions. We distinguish between a more theoretical track and a more practical track. The theoretical track deepens and expands students’ knowledge of the academic economics literature on organisations and management. The first seminar, Organisational Design, further advances their insight into decision-making structures, evaluation, and delegation. The second seminar, Recent Advances in Economics of Management and Organisation, gives an overview of recent literature in the field of EMO. Students are expected to critically discuss the literature, and to implement ideas that improve upon the existing literature.
The practical track combines academic work with hands-on experience in management control through case-studies. In the first seminar, Advanced Management Accounting and Control, students learn how to set up an information system and how to use it for managerial decision-making. In the second seminar, Governance and Control, students learn about the effects of governance structures on managerial decision-making. Topics include the interaction between the board of directors and executives, recruitment, remuneration, and evaluation of executives, and the control of information flows regarding the adherence to ethical standards of the firm.
Application and Admission
The application and admission procedure differs for Dutch university students, HBO students and international students. Please click on this link and then choose to which group you belong and you will be directed to the correct application and admission procedure.
Career prospects
Students acquire essential skills for a wide variety of jobs in the private and public sector. Students may work at HRM departments, play a key role in designing information, performance evaluation, and reward systems, and may engage in strategic decision making. We expect many of our students to actively shape and improve the structure and functioning of their organisation, or to provide sound advice to other organisations as consultants. Furthermore, our students can embark on careers as controller.
