MBA Core Curriculum Map Template

MBA Core Curriculum Map: [Your programme and intake]

A one-document map of the MBA core: the 15 core areas taught at leading international programmes, the competencies each builds, how the courses connect (a prerequisite and integration diagram), a typical three-term sequence, and links to every course guide and concept card in this library, with the pre-MBA primers and study tools around them. It is for applicants comparing programmes, admitted students planning preparation, core-year students who want to see how the pieces fit, and Executive MBA participants mapping the core to their job. Source basis: the AACSB Global Standards for Business Education (ratified April 2026) for the competency and assurance-of-learning context, the constructive-alignment principle (Biggs 1996) and the published structure of core curricula at leading programmes, summarised in our own words. Course names, sequences and credit loads vary by school: check your programme's current curriculum. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example.

Document control

1. The 15 core areas at a glance

Leading MBA programmes differ in names, credits and order, but their required cores cover a recognisable set of areas: the language of business (accounting), the economics of decisions (microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance), the tools of analysis (data and decision analytics), the functions (marketing, operations), the integrating view (strategy, entrepreneurship), the people side (leadership and organisational behaviour, negotiation), and the frame around all of them (ethics, communication and, increasingly, AI). The table lists the 15 areas used in this library, with the course guide and concept cards for each.

In total the library has 14 course guides and 41 concept cards for the core, plus planners, journals and practice tools. The chart shows the number of concept cards per area; areas with few cards (negotiation, ethics) are taught mainly through planners, journals and cases rather than formulas.

2. Before the core: preparation and study tools

3. How the courses connect

The core is not a set of separate subjects. Accounting supplies the numbers that finance values; analytics supplies the methods that marketing and operations use; microeconomics underpins pricing, competition and strategy; strategy and entrepreneurship pull everything together into decisions about where and how a firm competes. Leadership, negotiation, ethics and communication run alongside every course, because every case ends with people deciding and acting. AI for managers draws on analytics and touches every function.

Integration points worth noticing:

4. Competencies and the accreditation context

Accreditation context (as of October 2026, check aacsb.edu). AACSB members ratified the Global Standards for Business Education on 20 April 2026, together with the 2026 Accounting Standards, replacing the 2020 standards. The nine standards are grouped under Strategic Management, Learner Success and Pathways to Impact. Under Learner Success, the curriculum standard expects content that reflects current and emerging theory, technology and practice, including the responsible and ethical use of technology (Standard 4.3) and curricula informed by current research and scholarship (Standard 4.5); the assurance-of-learning standard expects direct and indirect measures tied to each programme's own competency goals. AACSB describes 2026-27 as a pilot year for about 30 volunteer schools, with the new standards required for continuous-improvement visits from 2027-28 and for initial accreditation visits from January 2028. The standards do not prescribe one competency list: each school sets its own goals and must show that learners reach them. EQUIS (EFMD) accredits institutions and AMBA accredits programmes; each sets its own criteria, so check their current documents if your programme cites them.

The matrix uses a competency list common to leading MBA programmes. P marks a primary competency the area builds and assesses; S marks a secondary one.

Read the matrix by column to find where a competency is built. Ethical decision making, for example, is primary in ethics, negotiation and AI for managers, and secondary in almost every other area, because cases in accounting (earnings management), finance (conflicts of interest) and marketing (data use) raise ethical choices too.

Competency goals in your own programme:

5. Typical sequencing across terms

Most two-year programmes teach the core in the first year, in two to four terms, and leave the second year for electives. Courses that supply tools (accounting, microeconomics, analytics) usually come first; courses that apply them (finance, marketing, operations) follow; integrative courses (strategy, entrepreneurship) and courses that need maturity (negotiation, ethics) often come last. Many schools place strategy or leadership in the first term instead; the order in this table is one typical pattern, not a standard.

My programme's sequence:

After the core, plan electives and concentrations with mba/mba-two-year-plan, mba/mba-elective-concentration-plan and mba/mba-exchange-semester-plan, and the capstone with mba/mba-capstone-project-report (Executive MBA: mba/emba-strategic-project).

6. Working example: mapping a real schedule

Example A (fully worked). School B (fictional) lists six first-term courses: "Financial Reporting and Analysis", "Economics for Managers", "Data, Models and Decisions", "Leading Teams", "Management Communication" and "Marketing Management". Mapping: Financial Reporting and Analysis covers area 1 (and ratio analysis, mba/mba-ratio-analysis-card); Economics for Managers covers area 4; Data, Models and Decisions covers area 6 (mba/mba-decision-trees-card, mba/mba-regression-for-managers-card); Leading Teams covers area 11; Management Communication covers area 14; Marketing Management covers area 7, earlier than the typical pattern. Consequence: the student reviews mba/mba-demand-elasticity-card and mba/pre-mba-economics-primer before term starts, because marketing will use elasticity before microeconomics has taught it.

Example B (half worked). School C (fictional) teaches "Finance I" in term 1 alongside "Financial Accounting". Finance I maps to area [ ]. The courses that point into it in section 3 are [ ], [ ] and [ ]. Because accounting runs in parallel, the student should complete [mba/pre-mba-...] before term and review [mba/...-card] in week 3, when free cash flow appears.

Exercise C. Map your own programme's core in section 5, mark any course that comes before one of its prerequisites in section 3, and list the pre-reading you will do for each.

7. Progress tracker

8. Using the map with the rest of the library

• Before each course: open its guide, read the session roadmap, and review the cards of the areas that point into it (section 3).
• During the course: use mba/mba-case-prep-sheet for each case, add 5 to 10 cards a week to mba/mba-concept-flashcards, and log mistakes in mba/mba-error-log.
• Before exams: follow mba/mba-exam-prep; use mba/mba-formula-sheet as the base of your own sheet.
• For recruiting: the same concepts return in interviews; see mba/mba-case-interview-prep, mba/mba-banking-technical-prep and mba/mba-market-sizing-drills.
• For deeper statistics: academic/stats-learning-roadmap and the academic/stats-* cards behind area 6.
• For professional work products: finance/investment-appraisal, finance/valuation-report, business/swot, marketing/marketing-plan and business/business-plan apply the core to real documents.

Common mistakes

Self-test questions

1. Name the 15 core areas in this map.
2. Which three areas does corporate finance build on most directly, according to section 3?
3. Why do tool courses usually come before functional courses?
4. Under which of the three AACSB groupings do the curriculum and assurance-of-learning standards sit?
5. Does the AACSB Global Standards framework prescribe one list of competencies for every MBA? Explain.
6. Give two examples of ethical decisions that arise outside the ethics course.
7. Which card connects microeconomics to marketing most directly?
8. Your programme teaches marketing before microeconomics. What should you do before term starts?

My notes and next steps

Programme mapped on: YYYY-MM-DD. Courses that come before their prerequisites: [ ]. Pre-reading planned: [ ]. Weakest competency so far: [ ]. Next review of this map: YYYY-MM-DD.

Sources and further reading

• AACSB International (2026). Global Standards for Business Education. Ratified 20 April 2026. https://www.aacsb.edu/educators/global-standards (checked 2026-10-28).
• AACSB International (2026). AACSB Members Ratify Global Standards for Business Education (news release, 20 April 2026). https://www.aacsb.edu/media-center/news/2026/04/global-standards-ratification (checked 2026-10-28).
• Biggs, J. (1996). Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education, 32(3), 347–364.
• Anderson, L. W., and Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Longman.
• Gordon, R. A., and Howell, J. E. (1959). Higher Education for Business. Columbia University Press.
• Pierson, F. C. (1959). The Education of American Businessmen. McGraw-Hill.
• Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers Not MBAs. Berrett-Koehler.
• Datar, S. M., Garvin, D. A., and Cullen, P. G. (2010). Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads. Harvard Business Press.
• Further reading (by name only): each programme's published core curriculum and handbook; EFMD EQUIS and AMBA accreditation criteria; OpenStax Principles of Management, Principles of Accounting and Principles of Economics (current editions CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Answer key

Example B. Area 3 (corporate finance). Courses pointing into it: financial accounting, data and decision analytics, and macroeconomics. Pre-reading: mba/pre-mba-finance-primer (and mba/pre-mba-accounting-primer); in week 3 review mba/mba-cash-flow-statement-card.

Self-test.

1. Financial accounting, managerial accounting, corporate finance, microeconomics, macroeconomics and global economy, data and decision analytics, marketing, operations, strategy, entrepreneurship, leadership and organisational behaviour, negotiation, ethics, ESG and governance, business communication, AI for managers.
2. Financial accounting, data and decision analytics, and macroeconomics.
3. Functional courses apply the tools (accounting numbers, economic reasoning, statistics); learning the tools first lets functional courses spend their time on decisions.
4. Learner Success (Standard 4, Curriculum; Standard 5, Assurance of Learning).
5. No. Schools set their own competency goals; the standards expect them to be stated, measured with direct and indirect measures, and used to improve the curriculum.
6. Examples: earnings management choices in financial accounting; conflicts of interest in finance; use of customer data in marketing; safety and staffing trade-offs in hospital operations; bias in AI-supported decisions.
7. mba/mba-demand-elasticity-card (into mba/mba-pricing-card).
8. Work through mba/pre-mba-economics-primer and mba/mba-demand-elasticity-card so that elasticity and willingness to pay are familiar when marketing uses them.

Revision history

Standard and licence note

Structure aligned with the AACSB Global Standards for Business Education (2026) for the competency and assurance-of-learning context, summarised in our own words as of October 2026; check the current text on aacsb.edu. The area list, competency matrix, sequence and examples are original text written for this library and describe common practice, not the curriculum of any particular school; schools named or implied are fictional. This template is not affiliated with or endorsed by AACSB, EFMD, AMBA or any business school. Template licence: MIT.