The Organizational Leader specialty area provides preparation for leaders in education-related organizations and non-profits not classified as schools, colleges, or universities (e.g., local community agencies, human resource and development officers, or consultants and trainers). Candidates would qualify for a variety of roles within organizations, policy-makers in federal and private agencies, foundation administrators, and employees of state boards of education, Ministries of Education employees, nurse executives, or directors of professional development. The coursework and learning experiences in this track apply leadership with a strong emphasis on field experiences within these organizations.

Legal Issues for Organizational Leaders. Survey of Equal Employment Opportunity and other employment laws and their implications for organizational leaders. Course coverage includes organizational obligations, responsibilities, and consequences of compliance and non-compliance with laws and EEOC guidelines for employers. Topics include Title VII, Constitutional laws, Equal Pay Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Affirmative Action, harassment, testing (e.g., drug testing, physical abilities testing), labor laws, occupational safety and health, Worker’s Compensation, and the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Employee Training and Development Issues for Organizational Leaders. Review of training needs and assessments, issues in the design and development of training programs, evaluation of training programs, methods and delivery systems for training, managing the training function, and special issues in training. Topics include strategic organizational task and person analysis; developing training objectives; designing the learning environment including principles of adult learning, trainee issues, motivational theories applied to training, conditions of transfer; evaluation of training including criterion issues, evaluation procedures, utility considerations, and training validity; instructional approaches including traditional approaches and emerging technologies; managing the training function; and special issues such as training older workers, the hard core unemployed rates, disabled workers, employee socialization.

Human Resources Management and Personnel Decisions for Organizational Leaders. Survey of leadership roles in managing human resources in organizations to achieve both individual and organizational objectives and ensure effective work practices in dynamic work environments. Course coverage includes selection and placement of employees, evaluation of employee’s performance, compensation and benefits, and effective utilization of human capital. Topics include a brief introduction to strategic human resource planning, the role of job analysis and job descriptions; criterion issues; performance appraisal; utilizing selection instruments (e.g., test, interviews, application blanks) for selecting and placing employees; a brief overview of legal issues; managerial selection; evaluating the utility of human management practices; job evaluation, compensation, and reward systems; and ethical issues in human resources management.

Financial Decision Making (College of Business). Students will learn to consider accounting information for managerial decision making and will then take this information and transform it into financial guidelines for deciding among capital ventures, product and service offerings, funding options, and budgets. This course provides a relatively non-technical introduction to issues related to internal organization of firms and the role of accounting information in coordinating and motivating the decision of leaders.
 
Advanced Organizational Behavior Concepts (Management). This seminar course extends the material introduced in Leadership II. Students will examine the many principals of human behavior that effective leaders use when leading individuals and groups in organizations. Current research relating to individual differences in abilities and attitudes, attribution, motivation, group dynamics, power and politics, conflict resolution, organizational culture, and organizational structure and design will be examined.

Leading Change (Management). This course is geared towards developing a better understanding of the challenges, techniques, burdens, and successes associated with initiating and implementing major changes within organizations. Therefore, the objective of the course is to prepare leaders to meet the challenges of organizational change. The theoretical concept and practice of leading change in organizational, community, political and social action/social movement contexts are examined. This course explicitly links theoretical concepts, models and processes of leadership and change with the intended purpose of change and its resulting outcomes.

Strategic Leadership (Management). This course is designed to improve understanding of strategic planning, implementation, and performance measurements in public and nonprofit organizations. Although they have been adopted from a business sector model, strategic planning and management have become the standard practice of public and nonprofit organizations as a critical tool to reinvent, restructure, and transform the traditional ways of doing business. Students will explore the benefits and limitations of strategic planning and management in the context of public and non-profit organizations, the role of organizational leaders as a key player in strategic management, managing stakeholders, assessing the organizational capacities as well as the external environments, and identifying the adopting strategies.

Global Communication for Leaders. This seminar focuses on the impact of national or ethic culture on leadership communication behaviors. This course will address concepts of culture and how these concepts influence the individual or group understanding of appropriate and acceptable leadership behaviors in communication. Content will include the cultural impact on such topics as: general national and ethnic cultural constructs (i.e., context, values categories, world view, power differentials, acceptance of ambiguities, etc.); leadership communication behaviors; dealing with multi-national organizational segments; managing conflicts across cultural divisions; leadership visioning; leadership concepts of power and authority; leadership ethical behaviors; decision making; recognizing the role of politics and government.

  Leadership Trends. This seminar examines current economic, political, technological, and social trends in the literature as they relate to leadership. The topics included in each class will relate to recent literature and will focus on trends which appear to impact contemporary ideas of leadership. Sample topics might include: technology; politics; economics; immigration/migration; health issues; trade agreements; and not-for-profit agencies.

Organizational Communication for Leaders. Explores and applies the communication perspectives, theories and principals necessary to understand and succeed in organizations. Considers ways to assess and improve communication processes in various organizational communication and organizational culture, impact of organizational theories on communication behavior, and impact of technology on communication behavior.

Strategic Communication. Strategic communication considers the ways organizational leaders use communication to influence opinions and behavior of various constituencies. Topics include persuasive theories and principles, image building and improvement, negotiation and mediation strategies, and crisis communication strategies.