Our Program
The Geneva EMBA is a part-time program spread over 2 years (90 ECTS). Participants complete 12 core courses in the 1st year and 12 advanced-level courses in the 2nd year, together with the EMBA Capstone Project. The MBA degree is granted upon successful completion of all courses and the Capstone Project.
First year (36 ECTS) / Self-Leadership
In the first year, students acquire the foundational knowledge and skills in business administration, such as marketing, strategy, organizational design, and human resource management. Simultaneously, they participate in small-group coaching throughout the year, which enables them to develop their self-leadership and to refine their vision for their career.
Strategic Management
Participants acquire knowledge and skills that will help them manage effectively in a business environment.
Learning Outcomes
- Become familiar with basic issues related to strategic management in organizations
- Be able to critically assess an organization’s positioning and business model
- Plan and manage the growth and development of organizations
Human Resource management
Participants learn how human resources human resources and human resource strategy are the key to organizational success and build competitive advantage.
Learning Outcomes
- Explain the relationship of human resource strategy with overall organizational strategy
- Identify how the attractiveness of the firm on the labour market contributes to the firm’s competitiveness
- Analyze how the attractiveness of the firm’s employee value proposition contributes to the firm’s competitiveness
Positioning companies and brands
Participants gain an overview of marketing principles and processes and apply the key concepts to practical business situations.
Learning Outcomes
- Develop a structured approach to the analysis of marketing problems
- Foster an appreciation for the value of marketing concepts in understanding management problems, and developing comprehensive marketing programs
- Expand decision-making skills by making and defending marketing decisions in the context of realistic problem situations with incomplete information
Corporate Finance
Participants examine the role of finance within a business and acquire an advanced understanding of strategic financial decisions (Investment, Financing, Dividend) and their impact on the business’s financial situation and its performance.
Learning Outcomes
- Assess investment decisions by comparing return to required yield
- Understand the role of the financial structure, the financing choice/mix (debt and equity) and how it is linked to the investment decision (matching principle),
- Review basics aspect of the payout policy and examine the different forms of dividends and cash return to shareholders.
Organization Design
Participants explore classic and modern organization design principles, focusing on an application of frameworks and tools to develop an optimal organization design.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand the various established organization design concepts
- Critically assess the advantages and disadvantages of organizational structures for specific contexts and situations
- Apply frameworks and tools to effectively design organizations
Training Group Resilience
Participants gain from neuroscientific insights and real-world interventions testimonies by extreme-situations specialists. They are invited to transfer those to train team resilience, understood as the ability to adapt to external perturbations safely, preserving the team’s cohesion.
Learning Outcomes
- Transform your team of experts into an expert team by identifying behavioural styles and communication patterns
- Build your workforce using people analytics and team profiling
- Develop teammates’ situation awareness, turning emotional and cognitive bias at their advantage
Supply Chain Management
Participants understand how to implement efficient logistical flows based on two methodological approaches: demand analysis and lean organisation of flows.
Learning Outcomes
- Analyse customer demand and segment it into homogenous families for easy management and prediction
- Organise efficiently logistical (material and information) flows using different approaches
Financial Accounting
Participants gain an appreciation of the various financial reporting and disclosure issues/ methods used by international companies and organizations in preparing the major financial statements
Learning Outcomes
- Be able to prepare financial statements and related documents
- Use information from financial reports for business decisions.
Business Economics
Participants critically assess how corporate profitability can be affected by developments in individual markets or at the national and international level.
Learning Outcomes
- Evaluate the implications for firms of a change in competitive market force
- Analyze the relative importance of different linkages across markets
- Assess the relative importance of different drives of short term national macroeconomic performance and long-term economic growth
Self-Leadership
Participants gain a deep understanding of their own motivations to evaluate their career and how to make the most of their MBA.
Learning Outcomes
- Able to build an action plan directed at impacting one’s environment and mapping out one’s career objectives
- Execute projects of beneficial improvements to the organization and oneself
Strategic Thinking, Decision Making, and Communication
Participants are introduced to cognitive and communicative challenges in advancing strategy development and execution and acquire knowledge about the benefits and risks of different visual methods of strategizing
Learning Outcomes
- Develop a sensibility for strategizing biases
- Understand strategy from a process and practice perspective
- Experience interactive and creative strategizing first hand
Managing with Emotional Intelligence
Participants develop an original way of thinking about emotions and acquire a set of practical tools to effectively read and respond to the emotions of others in the workplace.
Learning Outcomes
- Create a more empathetic work environment
- Manage interpersonal conflicts more effectively through emotional intelligence
- Apply the right strategy to handle others emotions
Team Engagement
Participants gain an in-depth understanding of the thinking and practice of leadership for team engagement and acquire practical leadership tools to sustain engagement, energy, and performance of their units.
Learning Outcomes
- Apply to their contexts those leadership strategies, tools, and practices that maintain healthy engagement, energy, and performance in teams
- Understand and apply energy diagnostics and energy profiles to analyze team engagement and shared energy challenges
- Discover and respond to future leadership challenges for high engagement work
Second year (36 ECTS): Responsible leadership
In the second year, students take advanced level courses with a focus on three core themes: building a global advantage, leading responsibly, and managing transformation. Throughout these courses, they are guided to develop responsible leadership, which is not based merely on tools, but on their analytical and decision-making abilities.
Global Strategy
Participants develop strategic thinking in a global context.
Learning Outcomes
- Conduct a strategic analysis and market entry decisions in a global setting.
- Take a holistic approach to the application of analytical frameworks and tools.
- Obtain and analyze information that will aid decision-making.
Cross cultural management
Participants get acquainted with the basic tools and concepts needed to analyze, implement, and evaluate processes for successful management of the negotiation process in an international and multicultural business environment.
Learning outcomes
- Use a systematic approach to be more effective in cross-cultural negotiations
- Be able to maximize the opportunities for mutual agreement and manage the dynamics between multi-cultural participants
- Discover how to apply negotiation tools, strategies and techniques to enhance bargaining power
Creating Shared Value in in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Participants learn about the evolving nature of value in 21st century economies and explore with leading innovators and trailblazers how to drive institutional and systems change.
Learning Outcomes
- Evaluate the evolving definition of value in modern economies and societies
- Analyze complex systems and explore levers for change in such environments
- Develop applicable insights from analyzing and simulating cross-sector partnerships
Organizational Responsibility and Ethics
Participants examine the role of ethics and values in management and the unconscious biases that make responsible decision making challenging.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify key organizational stakeholders and their expectations
- Analyze ethical challenges that arise in corporations
- Develop thoughtful proposals/solutions in the context of business and society challenges
Responsible Leadership
Participants reflect about the various responsibilities at work and receive valuable input for a well-rounded way of managing and leading to meet demands of various stakeholder groups, including team members, peers, and clients.
Learning Outcomes
- Know the key challenges and approaches for leading a team and single subordinates responsibly
- Be aware of the value-based implications of everyday behaviours and decisions for an organization’s culture as well as its key stakeholders
- Reflect about competing demands in organizations, and the resulting challenge for being responsible towards oneself, colleagues, the employer, and the society in general
Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Participants are introduced to the field of social innovation and social entrepreneurship. While social entrepreneurship is generally focused on the creation and growth of new ventures, social innovation is a broader concept that applies these same principles wherever our career paths take us in the public, private, academic, or civil society sectors.
Learning Outcomes
- Able to examine the evolution of the practice of social entrepreneurship and how it relates to systems change
- Evaluate the revenue models, production and distribution models, operating practices, and impact models of social enterprises in different sectors
- Apply the concepts of social “intrapreneurship” to advance economic, social and
environmental transformation from within established institutions.
Managing Stakeholders
Participants receive an overview of the specific organizational forms, tools and behavioural skills required to lead projects with a stakeholder orientation.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify different types of stakeholders and know how to manage those that are important in a given situation
- Develop an effective communication plan adapted to stakeholder needs
Mastering Business Challenges
Participants interact with the ecosystem in identifying and describing a concrete business challenge for a company or industry and in developing a suitable strategic option in order to manage this challenge.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify, analyze, and understand problems of industries / organizations using relevant analytical techniques and models
- Develop coherent and evidence-based analysis based on a diverse set of arguments.
- Outline a suitable strategic option for the business challenge and to defend this option.
Digitalization and Smart Data
Students learn to identify, evaluate, and capture business opportunities based on the strategic analysis of data and how to spot and develop new business models involving the smart intersection of technology and data.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify risks and opportunities to develop novel, data-driven business models
- Evaluate the feasibility and business value of corporate analytics projects
- Develop a plan of action to transform organizations from digital and analytics perspective
Disruptive Technologies and Innovation
Participants examine why and how emerging technologies shape industry strategy, business models, and public policy.
Learning outcomes
- Improve contextual intelligence through systems and design thinking
- Identify and address adaptive challenges emerging from disruptive innovation
- Understand the role of strategic narratives in systems leadership and stakeholder capitalism
Business Analytics
Positioned at the intersection between data science, statistics, and management, business analytics consists of using data to inform strategic decision making under uncertainty and to optimise business processes.
Learning outcomes
- Critical and responsible thinking skills to frame large, complex, unstructured, and data-rich problems by considering ethical and societal issues.
- Data and analytics skills to engineer sustainable solutions to large, complex, unstructured, and data-rich problems.
- Leadership skills towards positions in organisations’ digital transformation aimed at creating sustainable value for businesses and society.
Capstone Project (18 ECTS):
During the second year, participants work in groups on the EMBA Capstone Project, which brings together their acquired knowledge and skills to apply it to advance recommendations to local business in Geneva.
Course schedule & format
The Geneva EMBA caters to executives without interrupting their careers.
- 2 modules are held online.
- Other courses are held onsite, mainly Friday & Saturday, every other week:
- Fridays: 2:15 pm – 9 pm
- Saturdays: 8:15 am – 1 pm
- Some modules are scheduled on 3 consecutive full days (Thursday, Friday & Saturday) from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm.
- 100% attendance is required in order to validate a course.
Course location
Courses are held at Uni Mail, University of Geneva, 40 Boulevard du Pont d’Arve, 1205 Geneva.
This integrated program is tailored to the needs of Geneva’s dynamic and international market, taught by academic experts and professionals from the Geneva ecosystem.
The faculty of the EMBA consists of academics engaged in rigorous research to provide cutting-edge management knowledge and business professionals who offer practical tools on how to effectively manage organizations. Our teaching methods include a mix of lectures, case studies, discussions, and interactive class assignments, as well as guest speakers from the Geneva ecosystem. During the EMBA program, our students are in touch with leading executives and managers who provide practical insights on how they have introduced and managed transformative changes, led their businesses responsibly, and built a global advantage.
Cost 2024-2025
Total cost of the Executive MBA: CHF 42’500
The above includes the non-refundable enrolment/matriculation fee, mandatory course materials & exams, and participation to most activities organized within the EMBA Program.
- Enrollment/Matriculation – payable upon acceptance CHF 5’000
- 1st year foundational courses: CHF 18’750
- 2nd year advanced courses: CHF 18’750
- Program study extension must be pre-approved by the EMBA Office – subject to CHF 2’000 extension fee from the 3rd year on.
Payments
CHF 5’000 enrollment / matriculation: this non-refundable fee is due immediately upon acceptance in the EMBA.
Tuition: this fee (or first installment) must be settled before the first day of class. Candidates who wish to request installments must do so immediately upon acceptance into the EMBA.
Payment methods: Payment accepted via bank transfer.
Checks are not accepted.
Refund Policy
In case of withdrawal from the program, tuition fees are still due to the EMBA. However, refunds may apply as follows:
- 90% of the tuition fee for cancellations made at least 30 days prior to the first day of class
- 50% of the tuition fee for cancellations made after the 30 day deadline but before to the first day of class
- After the 1st day of class, the tuition fee will not be reimbursed
There is no refund of any kind for course failure or expulsion from the EMBA Program
The enrollment / matriculation fee is non-refundable in any circumstances, and it is not transferable from one year to the next.
Scholarships
The University does not offer scholarships. However, eligible applicants may apply for an annual “Training Check”. For more information, please see: https://www.ge.ch/caf/.
Is the Geneva EMBA right for me?
Embark on a transformative educational experience with the Geneva EMBA by the University of Geneva.
Seize this opportunity to shape your future — Enroll and unlock the path to leadership excellence.
