Master's of Business Administration (MBA 30 Credits) Online Master's Degree Program

The world is increasingly characterized by diversity and an integrated economy. Balancing the business opportunities and risks associated with dynamic and uncertain global changes is critical to effective leadership in this global economy. Leaders must learn how to integrate their understanding of culture, ethics, economic and policial issues into their decision making and strategy development.

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?

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.

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.

Explore concepts and frameworks for how to lead effectively in today's ever-changing world. Using an integrative reflective practice approach, students examine their own approach to leadership and create an initial plan for their own leadership development, as well as the leadership development opportunities for their organization.

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?

Communities look to business to have a positive impact on the world through their actions, so organizations are changing the way they do business. Mission-driven for-profit organizations are examining their HR policies, supply chains, organizational structures, marketing and even finance as they adapt to purpose-driven business models. Students explore what it means to be a purpose-driven organization by examining new business models, and the fundamental changes and challenges an organization experiences when they view business through a multidimensional lens.

Organizations use the word risk in many contexts. Using an integrative perspective, students investigate operational, geopolitical and reputational risks, as well as those from the vagaries of nature and how the willingness to take risks can vary across both organizations and geography. Students consider how to minimize internal risks and how to prepare for external ones. Through the lens of organizational culture, students also explore the impact on organizations when employees are encouraged to be innovative and creative by taking risks.

Students will complete in-depth research of current issues by exploring political, organizational, global perspectives, or other dimensions of a topic. After examining diverse points of view and critically evaluating them, students will present their own perspective on the issue.

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.