What exactly is an Executive MBA (EMBA), and how does it differ from a normal MBA program? To find out we spoke to Tom Moliterno, Professor of Behavioral Strategy at VU Amsterdam. He explained the structure of his school’s Executive MBA program and what students gain from it.
While MBA programs are targeted at professionals who are early in their careers, Executive MBAs (EMBAs) are designed for more experienced professionals who already hold leadership roles within businesses. This means that Executive MBA programs tend to be studied part-time around current career commitments. It also means that the content taught in an EMBA is slightly different from that of an MBA.
“Students come into an Executive MBA to really develop a general management perspective,” explains Tom Moliterno, Professor of Behavioral Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) in the Netherlands. “By that, we mean a perspective which looks out across the organization. Rather than developing marketing expertise or real competence in operations, this is a course that teaches students how to think across the business spectrum.” (00:15)
More than being able to analyze an organization as a whole, an EMBA also challenges you to connect the dots between all the moving parts of a company. This idea is one of the main learning outcomes of any EMBA program.
“How do you relate your marketing with your operations, with your finance? It challenges you to think about the role of the general manager, and how they bring together the different components of the organization in order to achieve performance and competitive outcomes,” adds Tom. (00:36)
EMBA programs may broadly have similar learning outcomes, but the teaching methods will differ from school to school. At VU Amsterdam, the MBA programs are framed around three main components:
“In the simulation, this is an opportunity for students working in groups to run a global organization, where they’re going to have to make decisions around production, finance, and marketing,” explains Tom. “The framework that we’re going to give students is going to be one of the first frameworks they encounter in this program that really encourages them to think: How do we bring together an organization? How do we knit together the different aspects of an organization to achieve competitive advantage?” (01:12)
He continues, “For the work we’re going to do on strategic leadership, we’re going to ask the students: What does it mean to be a general manager? What does it mean to be a leader who thinks about building organization-wide value as opposed to a functional value?” (01:40)
It’s one thing to have a wider perspective of organizations as a whole. But, being able to bring together the various business functions – such as marketing, finance, and operations – to gain a competitive advantage over competitors means that you need one skill above all else: leadership. The VU EMBA teaches you just that.
“What I hope students take from this course is an appreciation that being a great business leader has both an element of science and art,” Tom says. “The technicians are the ones who are really good at science. The thoughtful managers [and] the effective managers are the ones who blend that with a very human ability to think, analyze, and reflect.” (01:48)
Ultimately, the main learning outcome of the program is the ability to drive organizational change through effective leadership. Tom concludes, “If students can come out of this course feeling they have both the ability to be a better technician and a better, more thoughtful leader, then we’ve really all done our job.” (02:10)
