600

This seminar explores the different leadership theories and practices over the years. Topics include not only the historical, sociological, and cultural perspectives on leadership, but also ways of improving leadership effectiveness in organizations. Class members will be required to critically evaluate their own leadership style, analyze the situational and contextual factors of their organizations, and devise strategies to improve their leadership effectiveness.

This course examines aspects of ethics and leadership in one or more of the following key areas of society: education, religion, the military, corporations, and politics. The focus will be on core principles of conduct and on relevant virtues, such as courage, humility, hope, patience, faith, prudence, and justice. Theory and practice will be analyzed together, as examples will be drawn from important historical episodes, such as the American Founding, the Second World War, and the Civil Rights Movement. Students will gain an understanding of the relation of ends and means, of the meaning of integrity in the workplace, and of the moral demands of leadership.

This course examines strategies to effectively lead today's diverse workforce in organizations. Using the latest literature in human resource management, strategies for effectively selecting, retaining, and developing human resources will be explored. Emphasis is placed on the management of human capital within today's legal, ethical, and social environments. This course will utilize case studies from educational, business, and community-based organizations to illustrate the opportunities and challenges of managing human capital.

This course examines the role of communication in effective leadership and provides strategies for increasing communication effectiveness. Topics include different communication styles, negotiation strategies, media management, crisis management, electronic communication, and managing interpersonal conflict in organizations.

Prerequisites: LEAD 601 and LEAD 602 or Permission of Instructor

This course examines the leader's role in effectively managing change and transformation. It covers change both from a micro and macro perspective. On the micro level, it examines organizational change and the role leaders play in effectively transforming organizations. On the macro level, it focuses on the role of leadership in promoting social innovation and change.

This course presents financial responsibility and accountability as a moral imperative far leaders. It provides an overview of the effective strategies that leaders should take ta be good stewards of their organization's financial resources. Topics include effective budgeting techniques, risk management strategies, debt management strategies, financial transparency, and smart-spending strategies.

Prerequisites: LEAD 601 and LEAD 602 or Permission of Instructor

This course focuses on policy development at the local, national, and international levels. Given the importance of navigating the political and community landscapes to the creation of a fair and just society, leaders are introduced to the major theories and approaches to policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. Principles of effective advocacy will be examined in human rights, social justice, and economic justice. The role of technology in advocacy and policy is also examined.

Prerequisite: LEAD 601 and LEAD 602. This course centers around the topic of organizational sustainability and embeds this topic within the framework of the triple-bottom line approach. It emphasizes the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of organizational success and challenges leaders to consider organizations within their larger eco-systems. Topics discussed include social responsibility, stakeholder management, issues management, government relations, and community relations.

For nearly four hundred years, Americans have founded numerous private institutions and voluntary associations, uniquely shaping their leadership and governance practices. Today, both nonprofit and for-profit organizations make significant contributions to society and the economy. This course examines the purpose, architecture and effectiveness of governing boards, both in nonprofit and in for-profit organizations.

This course introduces students to the theories and techniques of qualitative inquiry including research design approaches, data collection strategies, data analysis techniques, evaluation tools, and presentation of results. Emphasis is given to the use of qualitative research as a decision-making and problem-solving tool. The legal and ethical ramifications of research are also emphasized.

Prerequisites: LEAD 601 and LEAD 620.  This course presents an overview of social science research and presents the most popular quantitative data analytical techniques. Topics include analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, discriminant analysis, multiple regression, factorial analysis, and correlational analysis. Remedies for validity threats such as multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity, are addressed.

This optional course will offer an introduction to statistical methods for social science research. This is a recommended course for those who need a refresher in basic descriptive and inferential statistics prior to taking LEAD 621 Statistical Methods for Social Science Research: Design and Analysis.

This course presents the fundamentals of social science research methods and explores applications of evidence-based reasoning and measures/tools for addressing questions in business and other organizational settings. Emphasis is on evaluating the construct, internal, external and construct validities of existing and independent quantitative research.

The organizational world is increasingly being transformed by innovation in information systems. Digital initiatives are reshaping the nature of business models. Algorithms and analytics are upending traditional processes, and new data-centric management approaches are giving rise to new paradigms of leadership. This course prepares leaders with frameworks to assess and understand an evolving digital landscape, strategies to guide teams, and organizations to take advantage of new economics and technology platforms. It also offers an understanding of emergent issues around security, privacy, social and ethical practice.

After the successful completion of doctoral coursework to date and the comprehensive examination, students will need to continue to develop their research, writing, and dissemination skills in order to become successful scholar practitioners. The course focuses on scholarly communication through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to scholarly or professional communities and made accessible for future use. Throughout the course, students will work on honing their writing skills for disseminating their research through a number of venues, including conference presentations, poster sessions, book reviews, blogs, and the gold standard of research, the journal article. Students will identify the dissemination venues that will best serve their research and professional goals. The course will also serve as a professional learning community of practice as students embark on the most challenging part of a doctoral program: research and writing the dissertation. They will learn to practice scholarly tasks in the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise and will continue to work in their own community of practice.

Prerequisite: LEAD 622 or Permission of Instructor

The purpose of this course is to enable students to develop the theoretical model that underlies their dissertation study.  This is a research and reading intensive course where highly independent work is expected and required.  Emphasis is placed on the formulation of the research problem, review of the literature, analysis and evaluation of benchmarking studies, and development of the theoretical model.

The Dissertation Prospectus Support Course provides the added time, structure and content for candidates to successfully submit their dissertation prospectus. The doctoral candidate can enroll in this course at the advice of and in consultation with the LEAD 630 instructor. The doctoral candidate must enroll in the course until the prospectus is successfully submitted to Chalk and Wire. The candidate has one semester after the end of LEAD 630 to submit the prospectus at a satisfactory level.  The candidate pays tuition for one credit doctoral course plus the comprehensive fee each semester. 

Prerequisite: LEAD 630 or Permission of Instructor

The purpose of this course is to enable students to operationalize the theoretical model of their dissertation project into an empirical model.  The course prepares the doctoral student for the dissertation proposal defense.  Emphasis is placed on choosing the appropriate research design, instrumentation, setting and participants, pilot study, and data analysis methods.

Prerequisite: LEAD 630

The dissertation proposal support course provides the added time, structure and content for candidates to successfully defend, revise and upload the finished proposal and accompanying IRB documents to Chalk and Wire. The doctoral candidate must enroll in the course until the IP is removed from LEAD 631. The candidate has one semester after the end of LEAD 631 to defend and upload the final proposal. After that time, the candidate will enroll in LEAD 631A until the proposal is defended, revised and uploaded to Chalk and Wire. The candidate pays tuition for one credit doctoral course plus a reduced comprehensive fee when taken without any other credits. If any additional credits are taken with this course, students will be billed the standard doctoral comprehensive fee.

Prerequisite: LEAD 631 or Permission of Instructor

This is the third course in the dissertation sequence of classes in the doctoral program.  It requires students to collect data regarding their dissertation study, analyze it, and present results to the partner organization and to the doctoral dissertation committee.  Students will complete the dissertation paper and present it in the appropriate format to the committee.  Students will also orally defend their dissertation project.

Prerequisite: LEAD 631

The Dissertation Support Course provides the added time, structure and content for candidates to defend, revise and upload the finished Dissertation to MD-SOAR and ProQuest. the doctoral candidate must enroll in the course until the IP is removed from LEAD 632.  The candidate should defend in summer or fall of Year III.  After that time, the candidate will enroll in this course until the dissertation is defended and uploaded.  The candidate pays tuition for one credit doctoral course plus a reduced comprehensive fee when taken without any other credits. If any additional credits are taken with this course, students will be billed the standard doctoral comprehensive fee.

Prerequisite: LEAD 621 and LEAD 622; or Permission of Instructor

This course applies qualitative and quantitative research methodology to an applied research project. Emphasis is given to data collection, preparation, analysis and interpretation and its application to different doctoral level research design methodologies.

Pre-requisites: Permission of Instructor and Doctoral Program Director 

Reading and/or research in a selected field. An approved title for the independent study must be submitted with the registration forms. A maximum of 8 credits may be applied to the degree program.

A learning experience with an appropriate business/nonprofit organization to provide opportunity for leadership.  The student is responsible for developing appropriate work projects, and each must meet department guidelines and be approved by the Program Director.  At least 40 hours of work will be completed for each credit. Permission to enroll required.

The study of selected topics and issues that are of interest to doctoral students in Organizational Leadership. Issues and topics will be examined from the perspective of specialists within the discipline. Students will participate in readings, discussions and complete projects with a research component.