Management

Finance: Stakeholders and the Bottom Line
Economics and finance are combined into a unified exploration of basic economic concepts, their historical development and the financial scorekeeping system used by economic organizations. In concert with micro- and macro-economics, a sequence of managerial finance examines the framework and tools used to analyze and manage financial aspects of organizations. Students wrestle with some of the inherent contradictions and limitations of current economic theories and financial standards and examine alternative perspectives and practices.

Marketing: Creating Customer Value
This class explores ways to create and satisfy customer demand, the traditional province of marketing and operations. Marketing topics include defining customer value, creating and forecasting demand, channel management and effective operations. Operations management looks at how different operations strategies are employed to match various marketing and business strategies. The class examines where and why common strains occur between operations and other departments. The major team assignment for the quarter is a combined marketing and operations consultation project for a community organization. By the end of the quarter, students understand and are able to apply the basic vocabulary, key concepts and analytical tools in the fields of marketing and operations. In addition, they have a grasp of emerging issues and areas of debate in both fields, and are able to cast business issues in terms of their impact on customer value.

Strategic Thinking and Planning
Students explore various planning concepts and methodologies for strategic leadership. These include strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, scenario planning, search conference, action learning and action technology. The class covers the fundamentals of systems theory and practice by understanding the evolution of organizational systems, diverse paradigms, spiral dynamics, self-organizing systems and systems dynamics.

Leadership and Change
This class is an opportunity to address specific personal, organizational and global issues related to management and leadership in the 21st century. Recent topics explored in collaborative teams include: complex social systems; personal goals and creativity in group settings; entrepreneurial teams; spiral dynamics; and action research. The content and emphasis of collaboratively designed topics changes each year to reflect the rapidly developing needs of the world of manager-leaders.

Sample Capstone Change Projects

Project Stop Hate
This was a collaborative project that taught elementary school students to recognize and respond effectively to racism through building trust, sharing leadership and creating community.

Large for-profit Corporation
Students implemented several knowledge-sharing methods as ways to retain and share technical knowledge in this organization. The project specifically addressed environmental issues that may hinder or encourage knowledge sharing.

Ethiopian Community Mutual Association
This project focused on launching a community tool that enabled the organization to recruit new members and engage existing members in meaningful conversations.

Virtual Team Technology
A student researched the potential of technology to tackle adaptive organizational challenges and enable transformative change to enhance organizational effectiveness with globally dispersed teams.

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