The Cyprus Institute of Marketing has been registered and licensed by the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture, to offer its own Diplomas, Advanced Diplomas, Bachelors and Master programmes, since 1991, when the Tertiary Education Law came into effect.
The aims of this course are to increase and refine the strategic management skills of the students, most of whom are already in management posts. Superior management is the result of certain attitudes, knowledge, and skills that are combined in unique persons to secure an organisation s survival, growth, financial returns, and continuous adaptation to changing circumstances. Identifying and helping produce such attitudes is what this course is about. We pursue this aim through the experience, intelligence, and wisdom of our carefully selected members of staff, all of whom are in high managerial positions in industry, banking and business. Lecturers and tutors are encouraged to be venturesome, authoritative and contentious so as to keep challenging all students involved. The aim of the course is to help turn managers into generalists, a requirement for any successful manager operating in global competition. More specifically, our Institute has designed the Advanced Diploma in Business Administration and the Bachelor in Business Administration with the following goals in mind: - to develop strategic thinking and planning so as to defend market share locally and seek competitive advantages in world markets; - to define clear approaches to strategic management with regard to specific overseas markets environmental conditions i.e. social, cultural, political, technological and economic trends; - to understand the importance of the “old world” role in the world markets; - and to enhance the effectiveness of managers from different organisations and nations (already a number of international students study at the CIM) through cross-fertilisation, achieved by the sharing of experience and viewpoints. Companies of today are facing constant economic, political and social upheaval. The collapse of the Eastern socialist economies and the growing, stiff, competition from China and India has made managers in the advanced countries of Europe reconsider their marketing strategies. TThe dramatic political changes in the Middle-East, Eastern Europe and African zones, combined with escalating inflation and rising unemployment in Europe and the U.S. paint a pessimistic picture for business managers. Yet, business potential always exists. To keep ahead of continuing shifts in environmental trends and maintain company policies and priorities appropriate to the Cypriot and world market places, managers must be able to formulate and implement successful competitive strategies. The course emphasises strategy formulation and implementation as it occurs in each of the functional areas and in the organisation as a whole. Strategy formulation is concerned with an analysis of the interaction of external (outside the firm) environmental factors, with internal (inter-firm) strengths and weaknesses, and with the goals and values of the organisation s key managers. It focuses on: (a) economic, social, political and technological trends; (b) the state of the industry; and (c) the determination of strategic areas that offer an opportunity for aggressive competition.