The purpose of the Master in Public Procurement management is to provide an interdisciplinary training on many aspects of procurement responding to the national and international need to train students and procurement professionals on modern challenges arising in the procurement profession. Such aspects include legal frameworks and economic principles for effective procurement, organization and strategy of procurement, strategic tools for procurement procedure, economic analysis of the market and cost analysis. In addition, the Master in Public Procurement Management provides training on procurement principles and best international practices of the main International Financial Institutions.
The study program lasts one academic year. It is a full time, advanced, postgraduate Master Programme with classroom lectures running from October to June at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, Serbia, followed by distance-learning activities and a mandatory professional traineeship in a company or institution, which can be in Serbia, in the student’s home country or elsewhere. Classes will be all taught in English.
In-class phase is divided into 13 Modules. Each Module is taught within one week, from Thursday until Sunday.
Following the lectures and classes at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, students are required to participate to the Distance Learning Module, which lasts two months. Students have access to an on-line platform, which includes individual as well as collective learning activities, and provides support in the form of expert tutors, resources available through the documentation centre, and networking.
Final dissertation should be a case study concerning procurement issues related to students’ own organisations, to a specific country or to a public procurement challenge.
In drafting their paper students should demonstrate an understanding of the topic and the use of appropriate methodologies.
Before candidates can be admitted to defend their dissertation, the Master’s Committee must approve the project work prepared during their traineeship period.
The final dissertation of the students participating to the programme will be presented at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law.
DISTANCE LEARNING (3 ECTS)
MODULAR TRAINING (51 ECTS)
The programme consists of 13 modules where the classroom lectures in Belgrade require fulltime attendance. There are six obligatory and seven optional modules/courses that students must attend. Failure to attend motivates outright suspension from the Programme. Students are required to sign a Code of Conduct before the beginning of classes and agree to the rules of the Master programme.
Each module lasts four days, from Thursday to Sunday, with 30 hours of lectures each. The modules are based on a traditional learning approach and are followed by graded exams.
COURSE LIST
Mandatory (delivered in the first semester, each valid 5 ECTS = 30 ECTS)
- Legal Background;
- Competition and Procurement;
- Planning and Management of Procurement Operations;
- Law and Economics of Public and Private Partnership;
- Integrity and Anticorruption in Public Procurement;
- Contract Complaints and Disputes.
Optional (delivered in the second semester, each valid 3 ECTS, seven modules are to be chosen = 21 ECTS)
- Negotiation and Team Building;
- Economics of Procurement;
- Green Procurement;
- Strategic Procurement and Quality Management;
- International Financial Institutions’ Procurement Procedures;
- Digital Procurement;
- Spend Management and Public Procurement;
- Sustainability and Innovation;
- Logistics;
- Emerging Issues in Public Procurement;
- Social vs. Innovative Procurement.
INTERNSHIP PERIOD (2 ECTS)
MASTER’S THESIS (3 ECTS)
In total: 60 ECTS
The MPPM book of syllabi is available here.
EXAMS
During the classroom lecture period, exams are organised every 4 (four) modules: the first exam session is administered at the beginning of the fifth module, the second exam session at the beginning of the ninth module and the last session at the end of the thirteenth module.