Postgraduate “Management” program design for small and medium business managers

Abstract

The paper suggests an approach to teaching and implementing research in the master’s degree studies, which are oriented at system training of heads/owners and managers of small and medium-sized businesses that do not have basic management education, but, as a rule, have a higher technical or technological education and sufficient practical experience. Hypothesis of the article is the assumption that the teaching specifics of this segment should be based on interdisciplinary coordination of content, organization of training, and communication. Verifying this hypothesis based on a review of the literature and identifying the specifics of the segment is the overall goal of the article. As a particular corollary we justify a special educational event (a cycle of research seminars) that integrates various components of training students in the master’s program, in the framework of project activities logic that corresponds to the logic of the modern production process. We show the difference between this segment and consumers who are focused on the MBA and MIM programs, and provide examples from Russian reality. Taking into account the consumer characteristics of the segment, we propose an organizational and pedagogical approach to the formation of key competencies in the field of management for students representing this segment. In particular, we argue for teaching students of this group in the frame of the master’s program, based on the project approach both in the content and in its organization. The article notes that the pedagogical features of the formation of project competencies in students of this segment dictate the use of the method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete as a basis for building a general learning strategy. Decomposition of the learning strategy and the master’s thesis research demonstrates the need for interdisciplinary coordination of content, training and organizing communication.