MBA in Shipping

Sea transportation has been an important catalyst of world trade and economic growth. Globalization of the world economy, increased competition and rapid technological change has resulted in lowered transport costs. High volatility in prices, uncertainty, capital concentration and global competition of the shipping markets, have made effective economic skills a requirement for shipping organizations. The aim of this course is to provide the maritime economic principles and theory required for the effective management of a shipping company, which operates in the global competitive shipping environment, under the appropriate policy perspectives. The students will be able to understand the economic organization of the shipping market, to analyse the shipping market cycle and the shipping markets, as well as the supply and demand conditions and the trade patterns in seaborne transportation.

Management consists of a set of universal skills that are well understood and trainable. Leadership consists of how each one of us makes a unique difference to the challenges we face with people and projects. It is not about wasting our energy trying to make ourselves more effective by changing our characters. Instead, it is more effective to find new and better ways of ‘being ourselves’ through enhanced insight and skill.  The purpose of this course is to assess and improve your readiness to function well as a leader by making your time at ALBA a self-directed journey of learning and development. The specific objectives are to develop an awareness of the knowledge and skills that underlie leadership effectiveness; to obtain individual-level feedback utilizing some of the best existing assessment instruments; to share feedback on your own and others’ skills and to craft a personal leadership development action plan.

The course provides an overview of the core areas of management theory and organizational behaviour with a special emphasis on issues of organizational structures, culture and values, employee motivation and job design, leadership and power, group processes as well as organizational learning and knowledge management. It will help participants understand the complex relation between individuals, groups and organizations and will introduce the concepts and the tools for effective management of the human capital. It will also help them understand how they can become change catalysts by performing their leadership role as managers; how they can manage knowledge; how they can inspire people to put extra effort for achieving the organizational vision and for outstanding performance and results. Through case studies, videos and discussion, students will have the opportunity to exercise their critical thinking and build people management skills by applying organizational theory to a broad range of organizational types, settings, and challenges.

The purpose of the workshop is to address the question ‘what is the skill of writing?’.  According to the American writer Edwin Schlossberg, “the skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think”.  The workshop explores this statement.  This exploration and subsequent understanding is of paramount importance for any business activity, since much of the communication in the business world takes place in writing, usually within tight deadlines, ranging from short, simple e-mails to long, rich documents.  The salient gain of the participants from the workshop is the understanding of different modes and purposes of writing, as well as of different types and purposes of documents.  The main topics covered during the workshop include: the requirements of different types of documents, such as reports, case studies, research papers and proposals, proper referencing, and the research process.

‘What is a successful presentation and how is it achieved?’  ‘What does our audience see and hear during a presentation?’  This workshop aims to provide participants with knowledge on the techniques and tools needed for a successful presentation.  Presentations are means of communication in the business world.  This communication may have several aims: to describe, to explain, to clarify, to persuade.  During the workshop, participants learn how to capture the audience’s attention and how to communicate efficiently and confidently without ‘stage fear’.  Some of the topics covered during the workshop are: structuring an effective presentation, using verbal and non-verbal communication during the presentation, using audio-visual aids, dealing with questions.  A special feature of the workshop is that participants have the opportunity to see themselves presenting both at the beginning of the workshop and at the end, as the first and last presentations they make are video-taped.

The aim of the workshop is to provide participants with a fulfilling and lively event, in order to introduce them to the importance of teamwork.  By taking part in planned outdoor activities and exercises and through mutual support, the team enables itself to overcome difficulties and built strong bonds.  Furthermore, this process will result into the formation of the groups that participants are going to work with during their studies.

The course explores the ‘art’ of financial accounting / financial reporting.  In particular, the goal of the course is to provide the knowledge and skills required for the understanding and use of financial accounting information for decision making.  Some of the topics covered during the course include: the role and importance of financial reporting, the role of the main players in the accounting communication process, including the management, auditors and stakeholders, the effects of the use of different accounting methods and estimates on the financial statements and the subsequent impact on decision making, ways of analysing, interpreting and evaluating financial statements.  During the course, extensive reference is made to the annual reports of various companies, as well as to accounting scandals (e.g. ENRON), for the facilitation of knowledge and understanding.

This course aims to enhance business problem modelling and solving skills by integrating concepts and frameworks from Statistics and Decision Science with modern Information Technology. Emphasis is placed on evaluating risks and using the theory of normative decision making to compare decision alternatives under uncertainty. Participants will learn how to structure complex management problems and combine quantitative analysis with judgment and critical thinking.  Topics covered include forecasting, decision analysis, Monte-Carlo simulation and business optimization. It is a practical course that uses case studies and spreadsheets to illustrate how to apply the methodologies introduced.

This course presents the main methods of financial analysis for decision making. Following the course of financial accounting, this course concentrates on the analysis of the firm’s financial statements in order to derive important information about the investing, operating, and financing activities of the firm. The course introduces the major issues in the theory and policy of finance with emphasis in the following areas: Objectives of the Financial Manager; Analysis of balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows; Ratio analysis, Planning and Forecasting of financial statements; Working capital Management; Description of financial markets and discussion of the time value of money theory. After the completion of this course students will be able to assess the financial health of a company, identify the financial strengths and weaknesses of a company, predict the financial position of a firm in the near future and incorporate the time value of money in the decision making process.

The maritime labor industry is a highly competitive and regulated sector, while the management of multinational crew and the transferability of seafarers from ship to office positions require for advanced human resource management practices. The aim of this course is to provide the principles of managing maritime human resources, both the seagoing and shore-based personnel, considering the today’s market conditions. The course will provide an overview of key concepts related to Crew and Human Resource Management, including Human resource planning in shipping; Recruitment and selection of ship’s and shore- based personnel; Performance evaluation of maritime human resources; Compensation and rewards of seagoing labor and Management of multicultural crews. Further, the course will discuss the profile of the world maritime labor market, selection criteria of the seafarer’s profession that affect retention, outsourcing of manning and the new Maritime Labor Convention (MLC2006).

The course enables students to understand the basic concepts of the law relating to shipping, so as to bolster their prospects of professional, commercial or business employment. Notions such as the ship, admiralty jurisdiction, arrest, ship mortgage, maritime lien, marine insurance shall be examined and analysed. Furthermore, it is opted to enhance students’ interpretational skills when examining legal instruments. Finally, students are expected to develop other skills, such as problem solving, legal research, independent study and critical evaluation. Successful students shall demonstrate a satisfactory knowledge of various concepts of shipping law. They should be in a position to apply the relevant law to hypothetical problems, to evaluate critically legal situations and reach reasoned conclusions.

Production and Operations management can be defined broadly as the process steps that fulfil the production and delivery of “goods”, where “goods” include both material products and intangible services that offer some utility to the end consumer and the overall process subsumes all stages required to transform a product from a rough idea in a brainstorming meeting to the end customer offering. This course focuses on managerial decisions in production and operations and their interrelationships with the other functional areas of the firm. Major areas of study include the design of productive systems, strategic planning, and operations planning and control. Specific topics cover the areas of process and job design, facility planning, capacity planning, distribution planning, inventory management and production planning and control.

Due to the fact that the shipping industry is a capital intensive and volatile industry, the course focuses on the critical evaluation of the various financial methods under risky and uncertain situations. The course focuses on the general principles of financial management by ship owning and ship operating companies and the impact economic variables on the financial operations of shipping business organizations. The aim of this course is to give students an appreciation of the problems, issues and alternative methods involved in shipping finance. The end goal is to provide students with the tools necessary to conduct accurate financial analysis for investment purposes in the shipping industry. At the end of the course, the students will be able to develop, appraise, negotiate and choose among alternative investment proposals in shipping.

The highly volatile (risky) business environment, in which companies in the shipping industry operate, makes it imperative for them to identify the sources of risk that they face, but also to know how to deal with them effectively. Implementing risk management strategies in the increasingly sophisticated and competitive environment that companies operate nowadays, can often make the difference between being able to stay in business or not. It can give these companies a comparative advantage over the intense competition that they face in the sector. The aim of this course is to provide the needed knowledge in the areas of derivatives and risk management in shipping. Both traditional methods of risk management and more recent derivatives instruments are extended to the shipping industry through this course.

The first part of the course is to introduce students to the issues involved in insuring the various interests that may arise in vessels and their cargoes. The course examines the types of policy available, the legal issues that arise in the placement and claims processes and the risks covered by the standard form of marine insurance wordings available. The second part of the course is to provide the principles of law governing the carriage of goods by sea and admiralty jurisdiction. It further focuses on liability in terms of the cargo transported and claim implications. The aim of the course is to enable students to understand, analyse and critically evaluate the processes which affect a shipping company in relation to marine insurance issues and to the law of carriage of goods by sea.

This is a course on cost and management accounting. The course focuses on some of the technical aspects of management accounting as well as on management control issues (the use of accounting information for planning and control). Techniques and issues related to activity based costing, target costing, transfer pricing and strategic management accounting, in their organizational context, will be addressed. Students will be required to read published academic research as well as practice based material. Some of the topics covered during the course include: the meaning and role of management accounting, branches of management accounting, costing terms and purposes, cost-volume-profit analysis, cost allocation, job and product costing, budgeting, standard costing and variance analysis.

In the wide sense of the term, negotiating with others (both partners and rivals) is a necessary feature of all managerial jobs. In this course students are introduced into the fundamentals of effective negotiations: how to think strategically, what tactics to engage in, and what goals to aim at. The objective of this course is to improve participants’ ability to avoid traps in negotiations and help them see their range of rational options (and their ramifications) in particular situations. The course is designed to provide participants a conceptual framework for preparing and conducting negotiation, and to give them some experience in using this framework.

Understanding the ethical basis of human behaviour is of fundamental importance for building commitment to organizational goals and for imparting integrity and a sense of the common good in organizational members. The course examines a broad array of matters relating to ethics, including: individual and organizational obstacles to ethics; ethics information processing methods and judging theories; an action-learning framework for ethics leadership; adversarial win-lose ethics methods; integrative win-win ethics methods; dialogic transcendent ethics method; reflection and developing personal and contingency ethics leadership approaches; developing on ethics leadership action-learning plan. The course focuses also on sustainability, corporate social responsibility and corporate accountability with further emphasis placed on business strategies that aim to create long term value and a positive environmental, social and economic impact. Actionable knowledge is achieved by applying theory in real life situations through critical analysis and debating on prominent cases and in class discussions on current trends and developments on sustainable business activities.

Approximately 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide is moved by containers stacked on transport ships.  Containerization has brought a big change in the way trade is done. It has greatly reduced the expense of international trade and has increased its speed, especially of consumer goods and commodities. Liner shipping is the service of transporting goods by means of high-capacity, ocean-going ships that transit regular routes on fixed schedules. Meanwhile, seaports play a tremendous role in the transportation chain. This course intends to give an insight of the liner shipping industry and the way that seaports operate.

The aim of this course is to provide in-depth and holistic understanding of charter markets, chartering practice and charter party analysis in dry cargo and tanker shipping. Content includes the procedures and practices in chartering merchant ships in the dry cargo and tanker markets, their commercial employment under various forms of chartering and the detailed calculation of financial (freight) performance, voyage planning and lay time estimations. The module provides an in-depth analysis of charter party forms and adopts a legal and commercial perspective to analyze significant clauses and to explain various specialized terms in dry cargo and chartering contracts. The market structure of dry cargo and tanker industries are also analyzed and an overview of the practitioners involved (brokers, owners, charterers) is provided as are the sources of data and information required to initiate, negotiate, agree, execute and assess a successful charter party contract in the dry bulk and tanker markets.

The effective and daily strategic management of companies operating in the shipping service sector is of the most paramount importance. Managers, thus, are in need of strategic making skills as ever. Strategy is the set of objectives and policies that set to define how a shipping service provider positions itself to gain competitive advantage and increase returns for its owner and stakeholders. Two questions are of importance, then: “What business should we participate in” and “How should we compete?” In answering these questions, the external environment and the internal company resources and capabilities take a central role. Through case studies and assignments, participants learn to use tools for analyzing, creating and, communicating strategies in the shipping industry.