Purchasing & Supply Management | Courses & research

During your Master’s in Business Administration, you will collect a total of 60 EC within one year. In addition to four compulsory courses, you will follow additional courses within the specialisation in Purchasing & Supply Management (PSM).

European Credit Transfer System

Student workload at Dutch universities is expressed in EC, also named ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System), which is widely used throughout the European Union. In the Netherlands, each credit represents 28 hours of work.

Structure

	Number of EC
Compulsory courses for the Master’s	15 EC	Entrepreneurial Leadership & Responsible Organisational Design Qualitative Research and Business Skills Quantitative Design Methods in Business Research Business Valuation & Corporate Governance
Specialisation courses You need to choose at least three out of five elective courses of the specialisation in PSM.	15 EC	Purchasing Strategy and Systems Purchasing Management Global Sourcing and Organisation Strategic Procurement in the Public and Healthcare Sectors Business-to-Business Marketing Seminar Purchasing
Elective courses You can choose one elective freely.	5 EC	Examples of electives you can choose from within the Master’s in BA can be found at the other specialisations. You can – of course – also choose another FM specialisation course.
Master’s thesis	25 EC	You will finish your Master’s in BA with your master’s thesis. The choice of your graduation subject is largely up to you.
Total EC	60 EC

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Master's thesis

You will complete your Master’s in Business Administration by writing your master’s thesis. The majority of our students complete their graduation project at an external organisation, either in the Netherlands or abroad. This is a great way for you to combine your academic skills with hands-on experience. The choice of your thesis topic is largely up to you.

During your master’s thesis, you could focus on subjects such as:

Investigating unfair practices by dominant suppliers.
Hospital purchasing strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Researching the effect of emotional intelligence on B2B negotiations.
How to achieve sustainable supply chain management and a circular economy with suppliers.

Most students use their graduation project as a means of preparing for the field of work they want to enter after graduation; in fact, many of our graduates launch their careers with the company in which they conducted their thesis research. Our staff, of course, will be on hand throughout this period to supervise you, and to help you achieve good results.

Career perspectives