• Highest level of accreditation available
• Flexible to fit your work schedule
• Two brief residencies and live online classes
• Outstanding faculty and curriculum
• The best way to take your career to the next level

And in a subject that always in demand in the challenging business environment of today: leadership! Strengthen your strategic thinking skills, your ability to create and motivate a high-performance team, and your understanding of the very latest theories and practice around how to build great organizations.

The Master of Science in Management (MSM) degree is the way to do it. This accredited master's program is fast-paced, challenging, and flexible, designed to fit perfectly with the needs of your career and providing you with essential leadership skills in such areas as:

• Managing group behavior and conflict
• Strategic leadership and influence
• Organizational communications
• Ethics and social responsibility
• Succession planning
• Business law and HR

The program emphasizes the leading theories taught in our nation's top business colleges, as well as the best practices from business and financial services industry. Those who complete the program will not only gain a broader understanding of managerial leadership, but will also develop performance improvement techniques that positively influence organizational cultures.

Call today about our next session, which begins with a one-week residency allowing for valuable face-to-face interactions with faculty and other students. The balance of the program is completed through a series of convenient live, online courses, with a final one-week residency at the conclusion of the program.

To begin the MSM, you first must be formally admitted to the program. Applicants are selected on the basis of academic and professional criteria. To be admitted into the program, you must have a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university, pay the required application fee, and submit official transcripts from each college or university attended.

Provides a comprehensive approach to communicating at work from the perspective of the executive, enabling the leadership student to understand and correct the poor communication processes and systems in many organizations. Students focus on mitigating conflict through constructive communication, projecting the appropriate perception of power, customizing communication to maximize clarity of understanding, swiftly dealing with crisis communications and generally communicating effectively, whether in a conversation, within a group, by e-mail, or to an audience.

Differentiates management skills from leadership skills. It reviews the essential research of the last 100+ years as it describes the traits, style and functions of a leader, as well as situational aspects, team leadership and transformational leadership. The twin aspects of humility and will, which are essential to move from good leadership to great leadership, are discussed. Contemporary issues of leadership as they relate to changes in society are also covered.

Strategic management is concerned with determining the future direction of an organization and implementing the decisions aimed at achieving the organization’s long-term and short-term objectives. The strategic management process consists of seven major interrelated subprocesses, including the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis approach. The process enables a leader to formulate and implement strategies that accomplish the mission and vision of the organization.

The primary goal of this course is to enhance the leadership candidate’s perception of the three primary aspects of the organization: individuals, groups and the organization itself. These three interrelated perspectives are always present in a leader’s perception. To achieve at the executive level, the leader must lead the organization, drive the groups, systems and processes and inspire at the individual level. The leadership skills covered in this course include influence, persuasion, diplomacy, innovation, negotiation, conflict resolution and reflective practice.

A year-long course designed to provide students with skills useful to their current work as it prepares them for greater leadership challenges in the future. It begins in Residency I and ends in Residency II. The leadership methods taught in this project are the best practices employed by top executives in many successful companies to facilitate change and improve performance. Methods will vary for individual projects; specific methods will be recommended to fit students’ work settings.

Understanding organizational behavior as a necessary requirement for whole systems in developing organizations is the central content of this course. The course connects the drives of human behavior to group behavior in dealing with learning, stress and conflict and the subsequent impact on an organization’s culture and strategy as they continue to change. Also, it demonstrates the importance of power, influence and politics on human behavior and why it is critical to develop the skills to delegate, motivate, appraise performance and still be flexible and creative. The relationships between individual performance and the environment of the organization are analyzed in depth.

Shows the relationships between law, compliance processes, employee compensation and benefits packages, social responsibility and the success of an organization. Building on the behaviors explored in GS 940, it elaborates on the importance of human resources expertise regarding job analysis, recruitment, selection, compensation, measurement of performance and diversity in leading a successful organization. The course demonstrates the importance of the organization’s compliance with government requirements of fairness at work, and it includes a discussion of contemporary human resource management and leadership principles and practices.

This course enhances the leader’s skill sets by providing the theory and applications of personal, interpersonal and group and organizational skills. The personal skills emphasize leader self-awareness; the interpersonal skills place emphasis on the one-on-one interaction; and the group and organizational interpersonal skills place the emphasis on teams. An array of articles is used to illustrate major skills that are discussed in the text. The latter part of this course asks the student to conduct several self-assessments based on the idea that one must understand one’s self before understanding those who are led.

Examines the individual and collective factors that affect the decisions managers make in their everyday routine at work. The approach is descriptive and prescriptive as it focuses on how managers actually make decisions, as well as how they ought to make them to optimize fulfillment of organizational and personal goals. There are two main sections of the course: the first deals with individual-level processes that influence decisions; the second considers the collective forces that affect managers’ and leaders’ decisions.

Covers four areas: ethical awareness, ethical analysis/ethical decision making, current ethical issues in the financial services industry and ethical management in an organization. This class provides the skills required to make reasoned responses to ethical dilemmas, deal with daily and long-term ethical challenges and build an ethical culture in an organization. The course explores the emotional influence on behavior and decisions, and it explains how to learn from success and failure. In this highly participative course, the leadership candidate is expected to complete both the reading material and written assignments before arriving on campus.

• The Office of the Registrar determines and certifies that you have completed all degree requirements. Once certified, you are considered to have graduated with all the rights, privileges, and obligations pertaining thereto.
• Degrees are awarded on the first day of the second month following the month earned. For example, if a student completed the final course in April, they could commence using the degree June 1.

If you are unable to complete the MSM program, please call Graduate Administration at 610-526-1451 for the refund schedule.