MBA with Leadership Specialization

Throughout history, technology provided opportunities for innovation, resulting in changes in business and society at a global scale. These technologies often disrupted business policies and processes, impacting jobs and organizational structures. Students examine how technological innovation is experienced in society and viewed over time and into the future by business people, philosophers, and sociologists. Students explore the question, How do we imagine that business, society and our place within will be affected as technology continues to advance?

Decision-making in any organization cannot be separated from financial considerations, and those involved with strategic planning and operations need to understand the impact their work has on the organization's financial performance. Managers must understand the organization's financial models in order to make a meaningful contribution to the overall success of the organization. Students will focus on using financial information rather than creating it and will use case studies and simulations to experience low-risk financial decision-making.

Students apply design thinking, lean principles, and value stream mapping to innovate, make informed decisions, and drive continuous improvement, ensuring a firm's operations contribute to its competitive position. The course covers process analyses, cross-functional integrations, and ERP system implementations.

Students learn organization analysis from a holistic perspective. Financial reports and financial ratios are the basis for traditional organizational analysis and builds from that foundation into the analysis of customer, supplier and employee metrics. Focus is on the Balanced Scorecard and other holistic approaches.

Marketing has the power to shape and influence individuals, communities, and society in myriad ways. Technological innovation continues to change the way we market to consumers, and the ways in which consumers interact with products and services. In this course, students will explore and critically examine the impact of current issues and emergent technology on enhancing the customer experience while at the same time applying foundational marketing approaches to build strategies and tactics for an organization of their choosing.

Students use a framework to explore the dynamics of human interaction within and between organizations. Throughout the course, they will use a perspective that a key function of management is to negotiate for resources and use that perspective to develop collaborative relationships with employees, vendors, suppliers, and interested communities.

Students explore the development and execution of an innovative and imaginative business strategy for the future. They consider answers to questions such as, How do you identify an opportunity for a new business that meets an otherwise unmet need? What happens when an organization fails to change when faced with a challenge to their traditional model? How can you mitigate risk? What are the processes that organizations use to keep themselves focused on changing stakeholder requirements and needs?

This course is built around a project that is designed to apply, in a comprehensive manner, the core areas of knowledge around which the MBA has been built. The project may be performed for a current employer, a sponsoring workplace or as an internship as either a service-learning project for a qualifying nonprofit organization or another organization of the student's choosing.

Explore the formal and informal communication strategies that help leaders influence beyond their formal authority. Topics will include how to have generative conversations, communication tactics for engaging stakeholders, cross cultural communications, managing conflict, building impactful narratives that engage and inspire, and the impact of technology on communication in today's organizations.

Examine how to cultivate meaningful relationships across an organizational system, from co-workers, to team members, to broader stakeholders. Attention will be given to how to leverage both formal and informal relationships to create positive impact. Topics include perceptions, motivation, emotional intelligence, building teams, and conflict management.

Explore how to accelerate organizational change by focusing on and leveraging the core strengths of individuals and the collective system. Learn how to challenge the traditional deficit mindset that pervades organizations, and how to use evidence-based appreciative practices to cultivate shared leadership across a system.