Master's Programme in Management, Organization and Society

Stockholm University’s Master’s Programme in Management, Organization and Society is a two-year, 120-ECTS, fully English-taught master run by Stockholm Business School — the business school of Sweden’s large public university in the capital.¹ It leads to a Master of Science (120 credits) with Management as the main field of study.² Two features set it apart from the rest of the Swedish field on this site: selection is based on the GMAT or GRE, and the content is critical management rather than a functional toolkit.¹

First, a disambiguation that matters. This is not the Stockholm School of Economics — a private school, a different admissions process, and SEK 360,000 in tuition. Stockholm Business School sits inside Stockholm University’s Faculty of Social Sciences, admits through the national portal, and charges nothing to EU/EEA/Swiss citizens. Both are in Stockholm; they are not interchangeable.

Overview

The programme’s premise is stated plainly on the university’s own page: it is built to develop “your understanding of the complex nature of managerial and organizational practices, and of the social, political and cultural context that organizations operate in”, and it opens with the questions that context raises — what business owes society, how organisations change, “how is power exercised in organizations, and how are dominant relations of power and authority challenged and resisted”.¹

The intake it wants is broader than most management masters ask for. Stockholm University says “your curiosity for knowledge and learning is more important than the subject of your undergraduate degree”, and expects that humanities and social-science graduates will pick up the management field while business graduates “will enhance their understanding of this world by exploring it through novel perspectives beyond the field of business administration”.¹ That is a genuine invitation to the non-business graduate — see can you do a MiM without a business degree — though the written eligibility rule is narrower than the invitation, and we come back to that under Admissions.

We are explicit about one thing, as on every profile: this programme does not appear in the Financial Times or QS Masters in Management tables, so we quote no rank for it. Sweden’s two FT-ranked entries are the Stockholm School of Economics at #9 and Lund at #47; neither Gothenburg, Uppsala nor this programme is ranked. Judge this one on structure, price, selection method and fit rather than on a position we cannot stand behind — and see how to read MiM rankings for why an unranked programme is not the same as a weak one.

Curriculum & structure

Four semesters, and the shape is set out in the programme’s own education plan, the legal document adopted by the Social Sciences Faculty Board.²

**Year one — eight core courses of 7.5 credits each, all in the main field of management:**²

• Semester 1: Management Theory and Analysis · Business and Society · Entrepreneurship and the Entrepreneurial Self · Cross-Cultural Management and Leadership in a Globalized World
• Semester 2: Managing Human Resources · Power and Resistance in Organizations · Leadership and Management in Organizations · Advanced Research Methods in Business Administration

One small discrepancy, flagged rather than smoothed over: the catalogue page calls that last course “Advanced Research Methods in Management” while the education plan calls it “Advanced Research Methods in Business Administration”.¹ ² Same slot, same credits; we cite the legal document.

**Semester 3 — three options, and the internship is a real one.**² You can take 30 credits of electives at Stockholm Business School (announced by email during semester 2), spend the semester on exchange at a partner university through SBS’s or the university’s own agreements, or take Reflective Practice in Business Administration (30 credits) — an internship inside a company or other organisation, supervised by an SBS faculty member.¹ ² To progress into the fourth semester you need 75 credits completed, including 52.5 from year one and the research-methods course.¹

Semester 4 — the thesis. A single 30-credit Master’s Degree Thesis in Management, which the university expects to be “a scientific piece of work with a contribution that advances research”.¹ ² That framing is worth reading literally: this is a research dissertation, and the programme states outright that it “constitutes a firm basis for doctoral studies in the area of management and organization studies”.²

If you are weighing two-year research-shaped degrees against one-year taught ones, our one-year vs two-year MiM and MiM vs MSc in Management explainers set out the trade.

Admissions

The selection method is the headline, and it is unusual for Sweden. Stockholm University’s page states: *“The ranking and selection of master students is based on GMAT and/or GRE.”*¹ Not accepted, not prioritised — the basis of the ranking. Its syllabus record adds the mechanics, and they are a two-step process people get wrong: upload your score report to your University Admissions account (or post a copy to University Admissions in Östersund), and separately make sure your test centre sends the result to the correct GMAT/GRE code.³

Two gaps in what is published, and both matter:

• No minimum score, and no admitted-student average. We quote neither, because the university publishes neither.
• No alternative ladder. Uppsala ranks by GMAT first and then by higher-education credits; Gothenburg ranks in three groups, GMAT then motivation statement then credits. Both therefore have a published route for an applicant with no test. Stockholm University publishes no second step — so on the wording as it stands, an application with no score has no stated basis on which to be ranked. We record the test as required for this programme and would ask Stockholm Business School directly before applying without one.

That makes this the counterexample among Sweden’s public universities — SSE requires a test too, but it is private, charges SEK 360,000 and nobody mistakes it for the test-free route. See MiM in Europe without the GMAT, where Sweden is otherwise well represented. If you are deciding which test to sit, GMAT vs GRE for a European MiM covers the choice — and here, unusually, either is explicitly fine.

The academic gate is *“Bachelor’s degree comprising of 180 ECTS within Social Sciences or Humanities. English 6 or equivalent.”*¹ ² Note the tension with the programme’s own welcome to business graduates: business administration sits inside the Faculty of Social Sciences in the Swedish system, which is how both statements can be true at once — but if your degree is in engineering, natural science or another field outside that grouping, ask before you spend the SEK 900. English 6 is the Swedish upper-secondary level that University Admissions equates to roughly IELTS Academic 6.5 with no section below 5.5.

You apply nationally, not to the university. Every application goes through universityadmissions.se, one SEK 900 fee covers all four of your ranked choices for that semester, and the first (international) round for the autumn 2027 intake opens 16 October 2026 and closes 15 January 2027, with fee and documents due 1 February and results on 1 April 2027.⁷ Stockholm University’s own dates page still showed the 2026 cycle when we read it on 2 September 2026, giving only the standing rule that the round runs “between middle of October and middle of January” — so the national calendar is the authority here.⁶ ⁷ A second round runs 15 March – 15 April 2027, but SU warns that “many of our international master’s programmes are only open during the first admissions round regardless of an applicant’s background”, and does not say whether this one is.⁶ Plan for January.

How you rank matters, and not for the reason most applicants think. Ranking does not affect Swedish Institute eligibility — but Stockholm University gives priority for its own tuition scholarship to applicants who put SU first.⁵ The ranking decision is therefore an admissions choice and a funding choice, which is exactly the trap our Sweden scholarships guide is built around.

Fees & cost

EU, EEA and Swiss citizens pay no tuition. That is the national rule for public Swedish universities, and it makes this a genuinely free two-year degree for those applicants — see the tuition-free and low-cost round-up.

For everyone else:

• SEK 900 application fee, once per semester, covering every choice you submit.⁴
• Tuition — and here we say exactly what is and is not published. The programme’s own catalogue page carries a “Tuition fee” field whose entire content is a link to the central fees page: no figure at all.¹ The central page, meanwhile, states that “the price for each course or programme is available on the course or programme page on the online course catalogue”.⁴ Those two statements cannot both be operative, and the gap is the reader’s problem, not ours to paper over. What Stockholm University does publish is a band: “The price per academic year for studies within the Humanities/Social Sciences/Law is SEK 90,000 and within the Sciences SEK 140,000”, with some programmes priced in between.⁴ This is a Social Sciences Faculty programme, so the band puts the degree at SEK 90,000 a year, SEK 180,000 over two years — and you should treat that as the band rather than as a quoted programme price until your admission letter confirms it.
• The fee covers 30 credits per semester and is paid in instalments before each semester begins.⁴

Against the Swedish field on this site, that band is the cheapest two-year option for a fee-payer: SEK 180,000 here, against Gothenburg at SEK 192,000, Uppsala at SEK 228,000 and SSE at SEK 360,000; Lund charges SEK 160,000 but for a one-year degree. Living costs are the real number in Stockholm: the university tells students to budget at least SEK 11,214 a month, which over 24 months is more than the tuition band itself.⁴ Put the whole thing together in how much a MiM in Europe costs and on the cost calculator.

Funding

Two routes, and they are gated differently.

The Stockholm University Scholarship Scheme “covers the whole tuition fee for a Master’s programme at Stockholm University”.⁵ To be eligible you must be a fee-liable citizen from outside the EU/EEA/Switzerland and be admitted in the first (international) admission round — which is another reason the January deadline is the real one. Eligible applicants are emailed an application form when selection results are published, and results come by the end of April.⁵ Note the wording on ranking carefully: SU says “priority will be given to students with Stockholm University as their first choice” — a priority, where Lund, Gothenburg and Uppsala each make first choice a hard requirement for theirs. Softer, but it still points the same way: if this award is part of your plan, SU goes in slot one.

The Swedish Institute Scholarship for Global Professionals, and here is a fact worth having: this programme is on SI’s eligible list for 2026/2027, as “Management, organisation & society”, course code SU-31065.⁸ That is not a formality. SI awards against a published programme list, not by subject — and on the same 2026/2027 edition, SSE’s MSc in International Business and Gothenburg’s MSc in Management are absent, while Uppsala is eligible in only two of its four specialisations. Being on the list makes this one of the more SI-accessible management masters in Sweden. The award covers full tuition, SEK 12,000 a month and a SEK 15,000 travel grant, but only for citizens of 34 listed countries with demonstrated work and leadership experience — and the list is republished each November, so check the edition for your own cycle rather than this one.⁹ The full mechanics, including the disqualifiers, are in scholarships for a MiM in Sweden.

Careers & outcomes

Stockholm University publishes no employment rate, no salary figure and no class size for this programme, so we quote none. That gap is real and you should weigh it: it is the same gap we record on Uppsala and on several other public-university profiles, and it is one of the things a private school like SSE does differently.

What the university does state is where the degree is meant to lead: “a career in general management, HRM and management consulting, a civil service career in government institutions and agencies, or a managerial or consultancy career in the NGO sector”, plus academia.¹ Read that list against the curriculum and it is coherent — a programme built on organisation theory, HRM and critical analysis pointing at people-and-organisation roles, the public sector and consulting, rather than at investment banking.

On staying in Sweden after graduation, the rules changed on 11 June 2026 — term-time work is now capped at 15 hours a week, study-progress requirements tightened, and switching to a work permit from inside Sweden generally requires a completed programme of at least two semesters. Our guides to working in Sweden after a European MiM and post-study work visas in Europe cover the route, and Nordics MiM career outcomes sets the regional pay picture — but confirm the current rules with the Swedish Migration Agency before planning around them.

Where this programme fits

Take it if you are a humanities or social-science graduate who wants management taught as a social science; if a two-year, research-shaped degree with a real thesis and a possible doctoral route appeals more than a nine-month conversion course; if you are an EU/EEA/Swiss citizen and free tuition in a capital city changes the arithmetic; or if you are a fee-payer from one of SI’s 34 countries and want a management master’s that is actually on the eligible list.

Leave it if you want a functional, recruiting-led MiM with a careers office measured on placement rates — the programme is candid that it will not give you “simplistic tool-box systems”, and publishes no outcome data to argue with. Leave it too if you have no GMAT or GRE and do not intend to sit one: unlike Sweden’s other public universities, there is no published route around the test here. In that case start from the no-GMAT list instead.

Compare it against the rest of the region on the best MiM in the Nordics, against the full field on the composite rankings and the programme catalogue, and check the date on the deadline tracker.

Every hard fact above is sourced to Stockholm University, University Admissions Sweden or the Swedish Institute’s own pages and documents (see Sources), retrieved 2 September 2026. Tuition bands, deadlines, selection rules and scholarship lists are reset each cycle — confirm the current details on the university’s own catalogue page before you apply.