Management & Organizations

  • QST MO 221: The Dynamics of Leading Organizations
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTSM131) - This course is about understanding, analyzing, and navigating the complexities of contemporary organizational life. After taking this course, you will be able to: (1) Understand yourself, including your personal tendencies, and sharpen your ability to interact and communicate with others in ways that make you more effective at work; (2) Formulate strategies for collaborating, building effective teams, and carving out your role within them; (3) Analyze, predict, and influence others' behaviors, organizational hierarchies, power structures, and cultures; and (4) Apply the principles of organizational behavior to craft feedback, manage conflict, and lead in your work environments. This is done through in-class simulations, individual self-reflection, active participation in class, team exercises, exams, readings, and group projects and presentations. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Teamwork/Collaboration.
    • Teamwork/Collaboration
  • QST MO 356: Leadership and Management of Social Enterprises
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: QST SM131 or QST SI250 or QST SI480 or COM FT591 or SHA HF231; Sophomo re standing - A well-managed social enterprise can translate idealism into action. It can help create a world that is more sustainable, more compassionate, and more just. This course will explore the distinctive aspects of launching, leading, and growing an enterprise -- nonprofit or for-profit -- whose primary goal is social impact. We will study mission, strategy, marketing, ethics, entrepreneurship, and scaling. We will learn that success for social enterprise is driven less by a compelling story or a charismatic advocate than by diligent management and insightful, ethical leadership. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub area: Ethical Reasoning.
    • Ethical Reasoning
  • QST MO 420: People Analytics
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: QST BA222, or QST QM222 - This course focuses on developments in People Analytics, an evolving data-driven approach to employee decisions and practices. Managers must decide how to lead people in the context of new technologies, management practices, empirical methods, and increased collaboration with external stakeholders (e.g. software vendors, consultants, academic researchers). The goal of the course is 1) to provide an overview of the people analytics field, 2) to develop skills in research design, and 3) to understand how to implement people analytics projects in an effective and responsible manner. The course covers theory, practice, and methods that are critical for addressing people- related challenges at companies, such as hiring, retaining, evaluating, rewarding performance, and managing teams and social networks, to name a few. 4 cr.
  • QST MO 441: Human Resource Management
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: (QSTMO221) - Introduces students to the field of human resource management (HRM). Emphasizes the strategic importance of effective human resource management to the success of any organization. Using readings, case studies and outside speakers, specific topics covered include: recruiting and selection, talent, diversity & inclusion, training and development, performance management and rewards and employee and labor relations. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which organizations' strategies and practices around these issues contribute to the strategic objectives of the organization. Individual and group projects enable students to develop skills in making decisions from both the human resource manager's and the general manager's perspective.
  • QST MO 448: Negotiations
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing. Pre-req for SHA students: SHA HF231 - Negotiations are part of daily life inside of organizations and out; yet, effective strategies for negotiation are elusive. Across a variety of negotiation contexts, you will learn different frameworks for thinking about negotiations and best practices. Intellectually, there is an emphasis on the tensions and strategies around claiming and creating value. Practically, there is an emphasis on skill-building through hands-on exercises entailing both individual and team-based negotiations. Students are expected to gain confidence as negotiators through experiential learning.
  • QST MO 460: The Leadership Challenge
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing - Required for Organizational Behavior concentrators. Do you want to develop your leadership skills? Are you interested in learning more about what makes an effective leader? Would you like to lead an initiative that has direct, real-world impact in the community? Then take on the Leadership Challenge! This course dives into the theory and practice of leadership, emphasizing the perspective that leaders are needed at all levels in organizations and society. In addition to studying the practices of effective leaders, the course focuses on developing your leadership competencies through active experimentation and reflection, designing and leading a team community service project, and building leadership, communication, and collaboration skills. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, The Individual in Community. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration.
    • Oral and/or Signed Communication
    • Teamwork/Collaboration
  • QST MO 498: Directed Study: Management & Organizations
    Directed study in Organizational Behavior. 2 or 4 cr. Application available on Undergraduate Program website.
  • QST MO 712: Leading Organizations and People
    This course provides you with an opportunity to deepen your personal practice of management, enabling you to increase your effectiveness as both a manager and team member within your organization. Course content is based on behavioral science research findings as well as concepts and frameworks related to human behavior in an organizational context. Specifically, this course considers: 1) how to develop yourselves as managers, 2) how to work well within teams, 3) how to assess and manage interpersonal dynamics, 4) how to structure more effective organizations, and 5) how to manage organizational change. Tying all of these elements together, we devote particular attention to the traits, skills and behaviors that are indicative of good leadership and how organizations and managers can be transformed for better alignment with the business demands of the future.
  • QST MO 713: Leading Organizations and People
    This course introduces concepts, models and frameworks to help you become better managers of the organizations you work for, the teams you work in, the people you work with and your own professional development. Emphasis will be on behavioral science concepts and research findings related to the major challenge managers face -- how to organize individuals in order to fulfill the objectives and strategies of the firm. Topics that will be examined include: the nature and dynamics of the organization (organizational structure and culture, performance systems and metrics, reward systems, selection and socialization); the elements of individual leadership and personal development (power, decision-making, emotional intelligence, career development, developmental needs, feedback, and mentoring and coaching); managing change within organizational contexts (the dynamics and stages of organizational change and the skills and tactics employed by change agents); and the relationships between the firm and the external environment in which it operates. The course objective is to provide analytical skills and strategies, substantive knowledge, and a professional sensibility that will increase your ability to take effective action.
  • QST MO 825: Future of Work
    Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTMO712 OR QSTMO713) QST MO712 or QST MO713 - This course is an exploration of the future (or, more accurately, futures) of work that allows students to interrogate changing realities of labor in different industries. Industry guests will supplement course materials designed first to lay out a history of work, and then explore the ways it is currently in flux around the world and across sectors. Students will do a deep dive into a self-selected line of work through which they will engage with questions covering workers' experience, technology, inclusion, and meaning.
  • QST MO 830: Leading Mission Driven Organizations
    Mission-driven organizations are created in order to accomplish goals that extend beyond profits for stakeholders and owners. Missions vary, ranging from, among many others, improving health care, providing meaningful work opportunities, educating or protecting youth, safeguarding the planet, eradicating poverty, building sustainable organizations, and enabling spirituality. Such missions occur in the context of various organizations, including non-profit and for-profit, philanthropic and religious, public and private, governmental and non-governmental. This course focuses on leadership theories, frameworks, and practices that take seriously the nature of workers, including both professional staff and volunteers, and their reasons for choosing to work in such organizations. This course is designed to build the capacities of students to use specific tools related to leadership, conflict, and change that are particularly useful in leading mission- driven organizations, and enable them to develop particular insights about specific mission-driven organizations of interest, related to their effectiveness and capacities for change.
  • QST MO 833: Executive Compensation: Strategy and Practice
    This course will provide students with an in-depth understanding of the structure and governance of executive compensation programs and practices. The course material will draw upon the theory and research in executive compensation and explore current legislative and shareholder reform initiatives impacting executive pay. Our approach will be to view executive compensation from a multi-stakeholder perspective taking into account the interests of shareholders, institutional investors, advocacy groups, social activists, governmental regulators, employees, and executives. We will examine the linkages between executive compensation and business strategy, talent strategy, compliance with securities law, tax regulations, accounting standards, and principles of good corporate governance. We will also address current topics of gender pay equity, increasing pay inequality, and investor focus on the role of incentives in reinforcing organizational attention to environmental, social and governance issues (ESG). While the primary focus of the course will be on executive and management compensation, the theory and practice applicable to broad-based rewards programs will also be explored.
  • QST MO 838: People Strategies to Drive Performance
    Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTMO712 OR QSTMO713) - Using readings, case studies and outside speakers, this course focuses on the perspective of the general manager and looks at the utilization of human capital to drive business and organizational performance. The ability to diagnose and improve the alignment between people strategy and business strategy is highly valued in today's economy. Leaders need to not only be able to think strategically and systematically about different aspects of managing an organization's human assets but also the development and implementation of policies and programs to achieve competitive advantage through people.
  • QST MO 842: Power and Politics in Organizations
    This course is about getting things done in the real world, where power and politics might be obstacles in your way. This course aims to build students' intuition for understanding power dynamics and using them effectively to analyze their organizational environment and achieve their goals. Both power and politics profoundly impact how one perceives problems and opportunities and, subsequently, decides upon courses of action. In this course, students will work to unearth their implicit theories and feelings about power and politics, test underlying assumptions they hold, and over-write outdated scripts about gaining power and influence so as to develop a more accurate and realistic point of view. Learning how to navigate, wield, and yield power effectively is like learning any complex skill--it rarely comes naturally and usually takes a lot of practice. This course creates the conditions for this type of learning to occur.
  • QST MO 844: Managing Organizational Change
    Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTMO712 OR QSTMO713) - The premise of this course is that because change is the only constant in today's global business environment, the ability to create meaningful and sustained change through organizations is essential for your effectiveness as a leader. During the first half of the course, we examine frameworks, dynamics and concepts useful for understanding and navigating change processes, and apply them to gain insight into personal and organizational situations of change. In the second half, we explore the non-linear and ambiguous nature of change processes, and consider how to leverage this dynamism for creating fundamentally new ways of working required in the workplace of the future. This course is particularly relevant for those wishing to develop their leadership and consultation capabilities.
  • QST MO 847: Managing High Performance Teams and Project Groups
    This course introduces the challenges of leading and participating in teams and project groups. It emphasizes the role of leadership in composing teams, motivating members, and creating an environment in which teams and their members grow in capacity over time. This course will use cases, experiential exercises, and group projects to help students gain both knowledge of team dynamics and the skills to shape them.
  • QST MO 848: Leadership Challenge
    Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTMO712 OR QSTMO713) - This course examines the essence of leadership; its relationship to managing; and the behaviors, attitudes and perspectives that distinguish leaders. Leadership is considered in a variety of ways: leadership in crises, at the top, in the middle, and in groups. Case studies, students' past experiences, instruments, and other learning activities provide opportunities for students to assess and develop their leadership talents.
  • QST MO 853: Negotiations
    Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTMO712 OR QSTMO713) - Negotiations are part of daily life inside of organizations and out; yet, effective strategies for negotiation are elusive. Across a variety of negotiation contexts, you will learn different frameworks for thinking about negotiations and best practices. Intellectually, there is an emphasis on the tensions and strategies around claiming and creating value. Practically, there is an emphasis on skill-building through hands-on exercises entailing both individual and team-based negotiations. Students are expected to gain confidence as negotiators through experiential learning.
  • QST MO 856: Mediation and Conflict Resolution
    Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTMO853) - Conflict is an integral part of human interaction, and the way organizations approach and manage conflict between people impacts employee morale and attrition, and influences productivity and business outcomes. In order to manage conflict effectively, managers need to understand what causes conflict, how people behave in conflict, and how their responses influence outcomes. In this course students will learn how to identify conflict, assess its impact and respond accordingly. Students will compare different systems of dispute resolution and how to best apply them in the workplace. The course seeks to simulate this process by combining conceptual and experiential approaches, involving exercises, case studies, lectures, videos, feedback, and group work. This course qualifies as basic mediation training, consistent with the requirements of the Massachusetts court systems and Mediator's Confidentiality Statute.
  • QST MO 858: Necessary Conversations
    Graduate Prerequisites: (QSTMO712 OR QSTMO713) - This course focuses on building your capacity to engage effectively in conversations that are necessary for you to thrive, professionally and personally, across a variety of roles and contexts. Each of us needs to be effective in providing and receiving feedback and help in our relationships with peers, subordinates, leaders, family members, friends. Amidst different power dynamics, we need to address interpersonal conflicts, dysfunctional team dynamics, destructive situations, and perceived injustices in ways that strengthen both outcomes and our relationships with others. As managers, we need to use conversation as a primary tool for clarifying and maintaining roles, task boundaries, and scope of authority when delegating to subordinates and working with peers. As leaders, we need to use conversation to navigate the inevitable fallout from significant leadership transitions, painful organizational events, strategic shifts, and larger societal issues that impact organizational life. As partners, we need to move into and through conversations that enable our relationships to grow rather than stagnate. The course integrates theory and practice to enable MBA students to develop knowledge, insight, and skill in conducting such necessary conversations.