Lang MBA Program Overview
Future You is a Responsible Business Leader.
The Lang MBA is an intensive graduate program designed for working professionals that combines on-campus leadership experiences with online learning, designed around your schedule and busy life.
Lang’s online learning platform allows you to maintain your career and personal commitments while completing your MBA. You can expect to commit 20-25 hours each week during the online portion of the program.
Specialize your MBA further with courses offered in the areas of sustainable commerce; sustainable food; or sustainable service.
- 60
- average class size
- 9
- core courses
- 3
- specialized courses
- 3
- on-campus experiences
Program Overview
The Lang MBA is typically completed by working professionals in six-semesters, including attendance at the Lang Grad Conference in the summer and online courses. Students take a common set of courses in semesters 1-5 and have the option of completing a Major Research Project (MRP) or 2 elective courses in semester 6.
Complete your MBA online
The majority of your Lang MBA is offered online, allowing you to complete your course work around your busy schedule. This online learning is complemented by multiple and intense on-campus experiences in Guelph, Ontario where you attend the annual Lang Grad Conference. These experiences allow you to collaborate, interact and network with your peers and faculty to gain the knowledge and skills needed to tackle leadership challenges facing your own organization.
Lang Leadership Conference
A career-defining experience where you learn from world-class faculty, alumni and experts in business and sustainability. The Lang Leadership Conference brings some of the brightest minds from around the world to share their experiences and insight for you to enhance your leadership abilities.
Network and collaborate with your cohort who work in a diverse mix of sectors and leadership positions. You not only learn new strategies and skills needed for your career progression, you make connections with your classmates, alumni and faculty that will last a lifetime.
Lang MBA Courses
Foundation of Leadership: This course will enhance students' interpersonal skills, expand their knowledge and understanding of the theory and research behind leadership, and explore the impact of effective team management and collaboration in the organization. Experiential approaches are used to enhance managerial skills.
Sustainable Value Creation: This course is designed to provide an introduction to the relevance of sustainability as a strategic framework for driving value creation and to enhance critical thinking skills that will enable students to more effectively identify and formulate strategic sustainability initiatives for organizations.
Financial and Managerial Accounting: This course emphasizes the gathering and use of financial information to facilitate effective financial and management decisions. Cases are used to approach the subject from the perspective of the user of accounting information rather than that of the supplier.
Foundations of Human Resource Management: This course examines the essential human resource management functions of planning, staffing, employee development, compensation, health and safety, labour relations, and legal compliance, in a variety of organizational settings.
Management Communications: Examination of the theory, function and practice of managerial communications with particular emphasis on developing communication strategies and skills.
Research Methods for Managers: Students learn to formulate a research problem, undertake a literature review, and to select and use appropriate quantitative and qualitative techniques for the collection and analysis of relevant data.
Financial Management: The course takes the viewpoint of the senior financial officer of a commercial enterprise. The focus is on the management of cash, accounts receivable, inventories and capital assets, as well as on the sourcing of funds through short-term liabilities, long-term and owners' equity.
Strategic Management: An integrative course which draws together the conceptual theories and models of the graduate program core. Utilizes conceptual, analytical, problem identification, and problem-solving skills.
Operations Management: This course applies operations research theory and practices to management problem solving and decision-making. The focus is on modeling service and product delivery systems and major emphasis is placed on managerial problems in food and agribusiness organizations.
Business Practices for Sustainability: This course focuses on exploring critical managerial and strategic issues related to sustainability and aims to introduce students to emerging concepts linking organizational strategies and sustainability principles. It explores how managers can integrate consideration of the environment and society into business strategies and practices for competitive advantage and create environmental, social and economic value.
Many businesses are striving to improve their social and environmental performance as well as their economic performance and are driven to apply sustainability strategies and principles into their strategic action, and are increasingly applying strategic management tools to incorporate considerations of sustainability into decision-making and operations. While some businesses incorporate sustainable practices due to an ethical conviction to do well for society and the environment, most are motivated to address pressures from stakeholders such as regulators, shareholders, customers, communities and competitors, and to exploit knowledge and experience for long term competitive advantage. Businesses and their leaders are addressing sustainability generally for reputational reasons, to cut their cost and for sustained competitive advantage. Industries are also recognizing the need to become sustainable to respond to the global environment and the changing needs of their constituents.
This course aims to introduce students to sustainability topics to increase their knowledge of strategies related to corporate sustainability and business practices to align the corporation with sustainable commerce.
Governance for Sustainability: This course introduces MBA students to the rise of environmentalism and state-led environmental management, and the more recent emergence of environmental governance as made evident by the growing authority of non-state actors (e.g., ENGOs, business associations, etc.) and the use of new mechanisms of management (e.g., voluntary standards, third party certification, etc.). These core topics are presented as both opportunities and challenges for private firms such as climate-related disasters and fisheries decline. Students will critically evaluate past and contemporary environmentalism, and approaches to environmental governance and creatively conceive of alternative governance approaches that are consistent with the interests of sustainable commerce. This course provides students with an opportunity to conceptualize environmental issues, various governance strategies and the competing agendas that seek to address them.
Marketing Strategy: An advanced course in marketing and consumption, students will explore topics including marketing theories, models, and specific subsets of marketing such as pricing, consumer and industrial-buyer behaviour, distribution, services, and service-delivery concepts. Students will be expected to identify and prioritize strategic marketing challenges and objectives and understand the importance of market intelligence and core competencies of the organization to develop a successful marketing strategy, recommend and justify competitive marketing strategies, design and critique marketing tactics that are consistent with an organization’s marketing strategy. As marketing principles are not unique to any industry, students enrolled in sustainable commerce, agribusiness & hospitality, food and tourism will participate in the same concept discussions and work on same case studies.
HTM Marketing Strategy: Analysis and application of marketing foundations through integration of marketing variables with real-world situations and in-depth analysis of strategic marketing issues.
Managing Service Quality: A holistic and interdisciplinary approach is used to explore the principles of service management. The course will enhance participants' understanding of what constitutes quality, the nature of service, and strategies for improving it.
Revenue Management: This course discusses revenue maximization strategies and tactics that improve the profitability of businesses that work in fixed capacity environments, face time-varied demand, their product is homogeneous and their cost structure reflects a high proportion of fixed and a low proportion of variable cost item
Food and Agribusiness Management Marketing Strategy: A study of marketing decision-making in food and agribusiness firms, with emphasis on the formulation of strategic marketing plans.
Food and Agribusiness Management Economics and Policy: An analysis of economic and policy issues relevant for food and agribusiness managers in affluent economies, with emphasis on the economic and policy environment that exits within North America.
Managing Price Risk: The course deals with the use of futures, options and other instruments for marketing, risk management and investment purposes. Emphasis is placed on the development and implementation of trading strategies and on the policy and corporate governance framework necessary to support effective management.