is a part-time program tailor-made for the needs of working professionals who cannot take a full year off to attend it. It embodies the tight integration of an Executive MBA with the comprehensive coverage of a Full-Time MBA. Classes meet evenings, 18:00 to 22:00. A typical participant who intends to complete the program in 24 months attends two classes each week except from breaks during Easter, summer and Christmas. Attending less than two classes per week will extend accordingly the time required for completing the Program.
To ensure comprehensive coverage, the preparatory period for the Program starts at the beginning of November. Participants take this opportunity to acquaint themselves with basic concepts in Business Mathematics and Accounting, or refresh their knowledge in these areas. Basic skills in Computing and the Internet are also taught during the same period. There is no fee required to attend these courses and they offer no academic credit.
The Core Program starts in January. Over the first weekend, students participate in a team-building workshop which includes outdoor experience and aims at fostering a sense of community among participants. This Team Building Workshop aims at initiating participants into the mentality and challenges of teamwork. The ability to work with other people and exchange ideas in a mutually beneficial manner, to get a mere group of people to develop into a well-functioning team, and to handle effectively the challenges of team work, is an important skill. This workshop will show to participants, in an experiential fashion, how to work in teams and how to get the most out of teams. It will also help them recognize what kind of personality they have and the combination in which their skills are most effectively deployed. At the end of the workshop participants will form their own teams which will be their formal working groups for the rest of the core courses period.
The manager is above all a decision maker and the fundamental quality of any decision maker is the ability to think and act strategically. ALBA has realized this need and for this reason has focused its professional MBA program on the development of relevant skills through courses on Strategy such as "Strategic Thinking" and "Strategic Management". These courses analyze models of decision making when interacting with other rational decision-makers with potentially conflicting interests, with a focus on the development of problem-solving skills in strategic situations. Moreover, they put strategic analysis techniques and methods to work in practical situations including Greek and European firms.
Another significant part of the learning experience at ALBA is the Corporate Venturing course. It takes students through the process of business planning for a new venture, either to grow an existing business, or to create a start-up. Bringing together all the functional areas taught in the PMBA and using real, student generated ideas, the Corporate Venturing course truly prepares tomorrow's Leaders of Change for a cutting-edge role in entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.
The first year of the Professional MBA program consists of core (required) courses, that are designed to provide both the analytical tools required for complex problem-solving in functional areas, such as Finance, Marketing, Human Resources Development etc. and also the necessary skills for successful management (leadership, communication, negotiations). These core courses succeed each other starting in January and last until February of the next calendar year. The core segment concludes with Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management.
The following period of 6 months is covered with a wide range of elective courses. Participants are required to select and attend a total of five full electives in order to complete the requirements of the Professional MBA Program. The course of studies culminates in the last period where the courses of Corporate Venturing, Leading & Managing Change and Value Innovation Strategy act as capstone courses and help students revise and make use of all the knowledge gained throughout the program.
