Management Consulting at VU University Amsterdam

Business Administration: specialization in Management Consulting

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Management Consulting at VU University Amsterdam

Providing added value
The specialization in Management Consulting at VU University Amsterdam offers a combination of academic research strategies and consultancy approaches to give students the tools necessary for a career as a consultant. It also emphasizes strong personal, research and interviewing skills, which helps students select the most appropriate tools for formulating their arguments, for avoiding pitfalls and for providing their clients with real added value.

Top-ranking teaching staff
Our teaching staff includes some of the best-known consultants from the top-ten consultancies in the Netherlands. All staff members combine their wide-ranging consultancy experience with their academic work at the faculty.

Research innovations
The focus of our academic research is on management consulting and on the industry as a whole, but we are also engaged in researching change processes and deliberative decision-making, which are both relatively new fields.

Honours programme in Management Consulting
Our most talented students will be offered the opportunity to apply for an honours programme in Management Consulting. In addition to the standard programme components, honours students may also choose courses from other specializations. They will conduct research for a consulting company and write a scholarly article based on this research in addition to their thesis.

Perform academic research
In the Management Consulting specialization you will learn:

• about the issues and questions related to management consulting
• about your clients’ organizations and their strategic choices related to uncertainties
• how to complete evaluation assignments and advice assignments
• how to build arguments that help to legitimize evaluations or recommendations
• how to present research findings with an action orientation
• how to contribute to planned change with change interventions
• how to assess the effectiveness of consultancy tools and methods
• how to conduct academic research about consultancies and the consulting process

This Master’s specialization will enable you to develop your research skills to the very highest level. You will have the opportunity to choose your research topic according to your own specific interests.

'The reason why I choose for the MC specialization is that this specialization is offering you the most practical experiences from a consulting perspective.' Marina Pol, MSc BA, specialization Management Consulting