The Bottom Line is the business conversation programme where the people at the top share their insight into what really matters. Presenter, Evan Davies, explains the format of the popular BBC Radio 4/Open University co-produced programme.

This course introduces you to the theory and practice of business models as they have developed in strategy literature. In particular, you will explore the emergence of the business model idea, types of business models and how business models can be designed. 

Learn about the main types of financial resources available to organisations, how these funds can be used to start up a new business or sustain day-to-day operations, as well as develop long-term expansion plans. 

All organisations must find new ways that benefit both their stakeholders and society. This means constantly improving their processes, goods and services. In the 21st century, new ideals of collaboration, inclusion, and equality are challenging more narrow market-based notions. This free course, Understanding organisational value, will explore how organisations can draw on established theories of value creation for fostering and promoting new types of value.

Recent decades have seen an array of news stories where risk management failings have undermined an organisation and dented the credibility of its management. These failings have led to the demise of some companies – for example Lehman Brothers, World-Com and Enron. Worse than this, in many instances the failings have resulted in deaths and injuries – as with the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster in the North Sea in 1988 or the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in 2010.Successful organisations embed a culture of risk management in all areas of their activities. To achieve this requires effective and practical risk management education. The course particularly benefits all those engaged as risk managers, those seeking to develop their risk management capabilities and those, like board members, who have ultimate responsibility for risks within their organisations. Additionally all those with, or seeking, a career in management in any organisation will benefit from the understanding of risks and how to manage them.

Discovering development management is a free course that sets out to build up the basic capacities for managing the multiple challenges of development – any development. It rests on the assumption that management is a political and ethical process, a matter of the use of power to bring about desired goals in contexts characterised by conflicts of interests, values and agendas. It is of relevance to managers in every sector, nationally and internationally.

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Please note: This is course is due to be archived on Wednesday 21st December. You can study the course up until this date. For learners who have completed the course, the Statement of Participation will remain in your learner records in your OpenLearn profile.
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This free course, Financial accounting and reporting, discusses how accountants act as processors and purveyors of information for decision making and the needs of those who use accounting information. It also looks at the role performed by accountants and notes the need to be aware of relevant regulatory and conceptual frameworks.

Develop a critical understanding of technological innovation and management. This free course, Technology, innovation and management, will provide you with an overview and introduction to a range of related concepts, ideas and debates. It adopts a broad definition of innovation and subscribes to the view that a fundamental feature of any innovation process is that it results in gaining value.

This free course, Understanding and managing risk, provides an introduction to financial risk management. The processes of risk identification, risk measurement and risk management are explored. The course then goes on to examine reputational risk and operational risk. It concludes with an examination of the subject of behavioural finance and what this can contribute to our understanding of risk taking and risk management.