Organizational Leadership

In order to establish a framework for necessary leadership perspective, behavior, and communication, this course is designed to provide learning experiences for students in three domains related to leadership: self as multi-faceted and talented person of influence, authentic leadership functions, actions and outcomes, and the challenges and complexity of the leadership process.

This course is intended to facilitate strategy and communication skills valuable in building effective teams within departments or across organizational boundaries. The basic components of group evolution and performance will be examined in depth, including fundamentals of group interaction, development of team norms, determinants of effective team decisions, and management/leadership functions necessary to assist a team in achieving beyond its expectations.

The purpose of this course is to increase graduate effectiveness as a leader through the analysis and application of essential leadership theories, practices and outcomes. This course examines the process of leadership, delineating the leader's behavior within that process. Focus is on "real world" and present day personal application and the implications to organizations and to leaders. This course also examines the differences between management and leadership and the value of both to the success of organizations. Finally, this course facilitates self-reflection, self-assessment, and personal application of selected aspects of leadership.

Through this course, students learn to analyze and engage conflict through the lens of leadership. By exploring the various dynamics of conflict, including power, culture, communication and interests, students gain an understanding of the complexity of conflict. They will reflect upon their own natural responses to conflict, and to develop the skills and the confidence to work with conflict constructively and ethically. Through role-play scenarios, students practice principled negotiation and mediation skills, and explore strategies for managing entrenched conflict that may not be easily resolved.

This course is designed to assist students in analyzing and practicing the management and leadership skills necessary to maximize hiring success, in taking comprehensive action to set employees up for success, and in creating an environment of continuous coaching for both high achieving and struggling employees. Students will explore their personal perceptions and emotional intelligence and communication skills which impact success in managing others.

This course will assist students reading and evaluating the literature frequently encountered in leadership and management research, as they pursue best practice information or studies related to their scholarly research and writing. Students will review descriptive statistics and explore inferential statistics, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, t-tests, ANOVA, correlation, and regression analyses. Students will practice critically evaluating research conducted by others. An overview of quantitative, qualitative and mixed method designs will be included, as will such topics as the scientific method, strengths and limitations of various research designs, reliability and validity, and conducting literature reviews.

This course evaluates the various issues related to organizational success and human behavior. Students will analyze the causes of organizational behavior dilemmas and will explore ways to ethically redirect and leverage behavior to contribute to organizational success. Current topics included are attitudes, diversity and bias, resiliency and grit, the relationship of perceptions to emotions and outcomes, human motivation, trust, responses to change, and organizational politics and power. Organizational culture will be introduced and its relationship to human behavior explored.

This course has been designed to allow students to engage in innovative thinking, conduct and evaluate strategic planning processes and explore the integration of both in their organizations. Strategic thinking, strategic planning and strategic implementation will be conducted and evaluated. Students will explore strategy related to a well-planned use of resources, knowledge of one's own industry, continuous assessment of external environments, working knowledge of organizational life cycle characteristics and needs, clear organizational agendas and systems of organizational accountability. Innovation will be explored related to creating competitive advantage and value for the customer in both non-profit and for-profit organizations.

The purpose of this course is to provide students a working knowledge of the concepts, problems, tools and applications of corporate and non-profit financial decision making. Students are introduced to the concepts of financial management, the time value of money, and budgeting and forecasting. The course includes a significant emphasis on the role of analytics in financial decision making. Students will be introduced to the fundamental of business analytics, the role of analytics in business performance and the tools that can be used to perform analytics in different business functions. Students will also gain experience in reviewing financial statements, determining how best to analyze data for useful decision making and identifying relevant questions. The course will lead to an understanding of the importance of and strategies for integrating financial management within all areas of business operations.

This course will focus on best practices in change management theory related to assessing the need for, planning, implementing and institutionalizing organizational changes. Students will evaluate methods of securing, analyzing, and utilizing a breadth of organizational performance data needed to drive organizational change and improvement goals. The use of institutional standards and performance goals and benchmarks will be explored. The value and processes of building a culture to support and sustain organizational growth and success will be explored. Emphasis will be placed on the leader's role and necessary actions in leading, supporting and sustaining desired organizational improvements through intentional and systematic behavioral and culture changes. Students will be expected to incorporate concepts and strategies from MSOL courses when completing course assignments.