The CIM Charter Diploma
The Charter Diploma follows on from the Postgraduate Diploma – it's Stage 2 of the Chartered Postgraduate Diploma.
The Charter Diploma is a single unit with the overall title of Leading Marketing. It's framed as a substantial work-based dissertation project.
Open our information pack or read on for detailed course information.
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Study programme
The aim is for you to develop a key area of interest to you at the same time as developing the skills and knowledge required to design, develop, implement and evaluate a business project. You will also develop areas of professional competence in the process:
- take one of the key Emerging Themes identified in Stage 1 and apply it to a major business project within your organisation or business sector. There is an expectation that you understand the latest issues and thinking in marketing.
- identify the skills and knowledge required to implement the business project successfully and assess your personal competence in these areas.
- evaluate the success of the business project in the light of current knowledge on the topic.
- evaluate your role within the project in terms of skills and behaviours, and identify your future CPD needs.
You are encouraged to develop personal effectiveness through critical self-awareness and self-reflection, hopefully moving into a new mode of learning, with a heavy reliance on self-managed learning, where we as your college mentor you rather than teach.
Leading Marketing Part 1: Defining the Project (Course 391)
This Part prepares you to lead the design, implementation and evaluation of a strategic business project within your own organisation or business sector. Your project will make a significant contribution to your employer or business sector.
You will explore an emerging marketing theme and evaluate its impact on current marketing practice. You are expected to provide a project proposal in which you have critically evaluated current published work on the emerging marketing theme and identified the key issues and opportunities facing the organisation or business sector.
In undertaking your literature review, you should also be able to critically evaluate the skills, behaviours and knowledge required to lead a successful project and to critically assess your personal competence in those areas.
By the end of Part 1, you should be able to:
- demonstrate a critical awareness of current and emerging issues in marketing that is informed by leading edge research and practice in the field,
- propose a strategic response to an emerging marketing theme that considers the impact on marketing and its interaction with other parts of the organisation,
- critically evaluate the skills, behaviours and attitudes required to lead strategic marketing projects.
Leading Marketing Part 2: Project Implementation and Assessment (Course 392)
This Part prepares you to design, implement and assess your strategic business project.
You will apply appropriate research methods to identify and explain the procedures and processes that will be used to design and implement the strategic business project and to assess the success of the project.
It is anticipated that you will identify the need for primary research, however, secondary research may be acceptable if the project is suitable for this approach. You will be expected to define success in order to explore methods of measuring success.
Following implementation, you will use the procedures identified within your research methods to assess project success against key performance indicators. You will also be expected to make recommendations to improve the implementation of future business projects.
By the end of Part 2, you should be able to:
- critically assess published research to determine methods of designing, implementing, measuring and monitoring the success of a project and marketing performance,
- design and conduct research into marketing and business issues using a range of business data, research sources and appropriate research methods,
- demonstrate the relationship between theory and professional practice through the application of a range of appropriate assessment tools and techniques to measure project success,
- critically evaluate project success and recommend appropriate actions to improve the implementation of future business projects or to revise approaches to practice.
Leading Marketing Part 3: Self Review and CPD (Course 393)
This Part prepares you to critically assess your role in leading and implementing the business project using the procedures and processes identified within your research methods.
You are expected to assess the skills, knowledge and competences you used throughout project implementation. You will be expected to identify areas where you have developed during the project, areas where you consider you have some expertise and areas for future development. You will then produce a plan for your Continuing Personal Development.
By the end of Part 3, you should be able to:
- critically assess personal performance and provide a range of evidence that demonstrates that you can take responsibility for your own personal and professional development,
- develop your ability to operate effectively in a strategic marketing role through continuing professional development.
You need to have
This is Stage 2 of the Chartered Postgraduate Diploma therefore you must possess Stage 1 - the Postgraduate Diploma (or its equivalent).
In addition, you must:
- have a range of experience working at senior marketing management level that has provided you with the ability to evidence competence in managing marketing resources and contributing to business decisions from a marketing perspective,
and
- be in a position (preferably working) to plan, agree and implement a work-based project that is relevant to your business context.
What to expect
The Charter Diploma is difficult to predict as it is entirely based on your self-directed research, but in terms of quality of work, we would expect at least 200 hours of study over at least 10 months for a well-composed research report.
Assessment
There is one single assessment covering the entire unit. You will produce a 16,000 word report in three stages, each stage corresponding to one of the Parts outlined earlier:
- Part 1 - project proposal, literature review, some self-evaluation of your skills to carry out such a project.
- Part 2 - design, implement, assess a strategic business project.
- Part 3 - performance review of your involvement with the project - not just academic achievement but also behavioural improvement throughout the project management process, leading to a professional development plan.
Although each Part is marked, only one grade is awarded, on completion of the entire project.
There’s more on assessment on our CIM assessment page.
CIM fees
Our fees cover our course; you will have additional CIM fees. CIM charge a membership fee that you pay each year. This varies with where you are in the world. CIM also charges assessment fees. These can vary according to the type of assessment you are doing. CIM will inform you of their fees if you contact them; note that fees tend to change each summer.
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Extra study
In a sense the Charter Diploma is entirely about your research, writing and the assessment, though we do provide resources to guide you through the process.
