MGT542 Leadership Theory and Practice
This course provides an introduction to graduate study in the Masters in Management curriculum. Students examine leadership and management processes through reading and discussion of both classic and contemporary leadership articles. The course provides a survey of historical leadership and management theories, as well as an understanding of the many challenges facing leaders in 21st Century organizational life.
3 semester hours

MGT543 Assessment of Leadership in Organizations
While learning about assessment instruments and the research processes behind them, students examine their own leadership and management skills and styles. Through completing and getting feedback from several nationally normed assessments, students focus on their key management and leadership interpersonal behaviors, their knowledge of preferred leader behaviors, their emotional intelligence, and their personality type strengths and challenges in the workplace.
3 semester hours

MGT548 Practicum in Leadership Development
Building on their individual assessments in MGT543 and their experiences in Effective Problem Solving, students engage in a series of structured leadership development activities over the five-month duration of this course. These include increasing skills in an area of emotional intelligence and in three self-chosen leadership dimensions through reading, action, and reflection. Learning is documented in a series of brief, reflective “Leadership Development Reports.” Students work independently and through feedback from their professor, meeting as a group only twice—at the beginning and at the end of the course. 3 semester hours

MGT544 Effective Problem Solving & Decision Making
This course focuses on skillful problem-solving and decision-making as keys to effective managerial leadership. Students focus on specific work situations, learning to apply both experience-based and formal problem solving methods. With the aims of minimizing their deficiencies and enhancing their strengths, students examine their thinking and decision making preferences and practices. They learn ways to engage in comprehensive, flexible thinking, thus enhancing their abilities to generate good alternatives, design something new, and successfully plan and implement. Finally, students learn how to identify and avoid reasoning fallacies so that they can present sound, persuasive arguments for their problem solutions and decisions. 3 semester hours

Return to top

MGT549 Organizational Communication
Students in this course develop a model of the leader-manager as communicator through studying various aspects of intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, and mediated communication in organizations, including conflict, negotiation, coaching, feedback, and message channel and medium selection. Students explore communication analysis tools such as message analysis, organizational network analysis, climate instruments, and cultural assessments. Students also learn about the communication processes used to establish and reinforce organizational values and culture. 3 semester hours

MGT551 Leadership and High Performance Teams
This course equips students with knowledge, skills and tools relevant to working with and within teams—both local and virtual. Topics studied include group dynamics and group decision-making, reasons teams fail, and ways to make collaboration work through effective human relations skills. Through working in small teams during the course, students will learn to apply skills and concepts which assure team success. The focus is on skills necessary for building and participating in high performance teams in the 21st Century. 3 semester hours

MGT552 Practicum in Proposal Development for Organizational Improvement
In this course, students gain critical thinking, research, project planning, and persuasive writing skills through the development and critique of a complete project or policy proposal. Each student plans and writes a proposal in support of a real or hypothetical organizational project. Possible project topics include merging two units or functions, adding a new service, seeking support for a major capital investment, making or modifying a major human resource or management policy. The course lasts approximately five months and is largely individualized study, plus three class meetings. It culminates in students making executive briefings to their classmates on their proposals. 3 semester hours

MGT545 Organizational Analysis
Students in this course use systems analysis to investigate how organizations work. Focusing on the complex issues surrounding organizational performance, students acquire tools they need to conduct a thorough performance analysis of their own work units, as well as their entire organization. In addition, students assess the effects of organizational cultures and structures in their workplaces. 3 semester hours

Return to top

MGT546 Organizational Design and Innovation
Building on the principles and techniques of organizational analysis, students explore the role of the leader as change agent and critically examine the concepts of change and innovation as ongoing processes for organizational renewal. Students investigate and apply methods of shaping the innovative organization of tomorrow by evaluating major elements of organizational design—structure, business processes, roles, responsibilities, work assignments, equipment/technology, information flow, and interaction. They also learn to apply concepts and techniques of organizational development to determine the need for change, to plan for change, to implement change, and to measure improvement as a result of change. 3 semester hours

MGT553 Strategic Leadership in Organizations
Strategy-making is the on-going, participatory process that maintains an organization’s strategic focus with maximum flexibility and adaptation to changing environmental demands. Strategic leaders manage the strategy-making choices within organizations. As both art and science, strategic leadership requires analytical, intuitive, and reflective thinking. In this course, students hone analytical skills by conducting an organizational strategy audit and strengthen imagination, intuition, and “information sense-making” by developing scenarios that envision various business and organizational futures. 3 semester hours

MGT547 Ethical Practices of Leaders
In this capstone course, students explore both toxic and exemplary leadership practices and the ethics and values associated with them. At the same time, students examine their own personal ethical philosophies, how they live their personal philosophies in their own organizations, and what they might change in their professional lives to allow them to better lead others. 3 semester hours

Return to top