Ross School of Business Management & Organizations MBA Electives, Fall 2011

MO 512: Bargaining & Influence, 2.25 credits (M, W: 8-10:20AM; 10:20AM-12:40PM; 2:10-4:30PM; 6:30-8:50PM OR T, TH : 2:10-4:30PM)
Course Description: To have a social impact and build a career of contribution requires influencing others. In other words, the ability to negotiation effectively. This becomes even more challenging without the benefit of authority. Negotiation is the science and art of securing agreements between two or more parties who are interdependent and who are seeking to maximize their outcomes. This course provides participants with the opportunity to develop their negotiation skills in a series of simulations and debriefings that address a variety of bargaining processes in the contexts of deal making and dispute resolution. Each simulation has been chosen to highlight the central concepts that underlie negotiation strategy. These concepts are the fundamental building blocks for developing a negotiation strategy, managing the negotiation process, and evaluating the quality of negotiation outcomes. Successful completion of this course will enable you to recognize, understand, and analyze essential concepts in negotiations and build strong business relationships. If you take advantage of everything that this course has to offer, you will be more comfortable and effective in your future negotiations.

Sanchez-Burks

Morgan

MO 561: Interpersonal Dynamics in Management 3 credits (Fri, Sat: 8:30AM-6PM)

Course Description: This course provides you with a broad set of management skills that will help you bring out the best in your direct reports, peers, and bosses throughout your career. We will begin this course by discussing the characteristics that predict professional and personal success, as well as why some high potential individuals excel on the job while others derail. We will then focus on five foundations of effective relationships: self-awareness, developing trust, communicating effectively (including having difficult conversations), leveraging diversity, and developing power and influence. Next, we will focus on three types of work relationships every professional faces -- relationships with direct reports, peers, and bosses. Each of these relationships has rewards and challenges. We will then discuss the foundations of high-performing teams. Finally, we will focus on crafting a life that is both professionally and personally rewarding (e.g., work/life balance). The best practices are made memorable through readings, simulations, role-plays, movies, self-assessments, and other activities. The assignments for this class include an individual paper in which you develop an action plan designed to help you achieve your work/life goals, as well as a practical and creative team skilltraining module designed to enhance class members' effectiveness, career development, and/or quality of life. The team skill training module is presented on the last day of class.

Caproni

MO 563: Leading Creativity & Innovation 1.5 credits (M: 9AM-12PM)

Course Description: This course is designed to introduce students to the practices necessary to stimulate and manage innovation in a business. You will be given frameworks and methods for designing, developing and implementing innovation in real work situations. The aim of the course is to provide you with the perspective and skill base necessary to manage innovation-focused projects, people and ventures.

DeGraff

Tschirhart

http://www.bus.umich.edu/Academics/Departments/MO/

MO 603: Navigating Change: Skills & Strategies for Consultants & Managers 1.5 credits (Fall A, Tues: 7-10PM; Fall B, Tues: 6:30-9:30PM)
Course Description: What makes change agents effective? What practices, capabilities, and approaches enable organizations to transform themselves appropriately? This course addresses these questions with focus on change leadership tools and approaches. We study successful and unsuccessful change, explore factors that shape the outcomes of change agents' efforts, and review students' experiences with organizational change from a variety of perspectives. We help prepare leaders to diagnose and implement successful change both when they are in charge and when they must work through others.

Cameron

MO 611: Business Leadership in Changing Times 1.5 credits (W 2:105:10PM)

Course Description: The objective of this course is to develop a useful approach for recognizing and dealing with rapid change in business. This course deals with business leadership during periods of rapid change and managing a business during difficult times. It focuses on the early recognition of, methods of coping with, ways of learning from, and prevention of critically disruptive situations. One part of the course involves identifying and understanding the more frequent disruptions that business executives encounter. This is accomplished through readings of current literature and case simulations. Teams of students reconstruct outstanding cases based on reading, experience, and creative thinking.

Meyers

MO 617: Developing & Managing High Performing Teams 1.5 credits (Fall B, Fri 8:30AM-6PM)
Course Description: Not surprisingly, people who are able to create high performing teams get better results at work and are more likely to get promoted. The most effective team leaders understand that their job is not to do the work of the team, but rather to design a team environment that enables the team to do its best work. This course is designed to provide you with perspectives and skills that will help you create high performing teams. Specific course topics include: Foundations of high performing teams; motivating teams, decision-making in teams; creating X-Teams (a type of team that typically gets better results than regular teams), managing team conflict and creativity; avoiding dysfunctional team dynamics; managing diverse teams; leading virtual teams; and understanding the characteristics of high-performing team leaders. The most effective team leaders understand their leadership style and how this affects team performance. Therefore, you will complete a self-assessment of your leadership style and receive feedback from 5 other people on your style as well. The course assignments include an individual paper in which you discuss what actions you will take to become a more effective team leader, as well as a team project in which you observe a team in action, identify the teams best practices and areas for improvement, and present your assessment to the class in a creative way.

Caproni

MO 672: Leading Non-Profit Organizations 1.5 credits (Fall A, Fri-Sat 12:30-4:30PM)

Course Description: This is a course intended to give students a broad overview of the leadership challenges of the non-profit sector. The course content is designed for students who not only plan to lead non-profit organizations, but who may also serve as volunteers or on non-profit boards. The core framework for this course will focus on non-profit leaders as capacity builders. This includes the leadership capability to create a mission centered non-profit organization aligned with its strategies, skills, organizational culture and a supporting infrastructure. In addition, we explore the leader as external agent building capacity through advocacy, working with businesses and collaborating with other non-profit organizations.

Wooten

MO 700: Organizing for Sensemaking & Meaning 3 credits (T, TH 11:30AM-1PM)

Course Description: The focus of this course is on the ways people in organizations organize and manage meaning, both short-term (sensemaking) and long-term. The central premise is that events in organizations are typically both complex and ambiguous. As a result, these events are subject to different interpretations. For action to take place, the diversity of these interpretations must be reduced. For action to be coherent, these interpretations must embody direction. And for the meanings to be retained, they must be embodied in good stories. Successful managing is as much about interpretation as it is about analysis.

Weick

http://www.bus.umich.edu/Academics/Departments/MO/