Organizational Performance Degree - Master of Science

College of Professional Studies

Curriculum

Major Requirements (36 credit hours)

(Click a course name below to view course details)

• MSOP 501 Performance Management

  In this course, students learn how to develop an effective performance management system that will maximize employee performance by aligning individual and group performance with organizational goals. Course topics include the history of and status on performance management, systems thinking, objectives, problem solving, providing feedback and developing, communicating and linking organizational goals.

• MSOP 510 Designing and Conducting Performance Improvement Interventions

  This course will give students the opportunity to learn how to apply performance improvement interventions to improve output. Course topics include conducting and analyzing needs assessments; organizational design choices; and selecting, implementing, and evaluating performance improvement interventions.

• MSOP 520 Coaching and Mentoring for High Performance

  In this course, students learn about coaching and mentoring in relation to helping each employee improve and maintain performance for maximum output. Students learn about the differences between coaching and mentoring and identify which is useful and appropriate when interacting with employees.

• MSOP 530 Leading for Innovations

  In this course, students learn the importance of innovation as a fundamental source with which organizations achieve competitive advantage. The focus of the course is learning how to systematically foster innovation within an organization.

• MSOP 540 Leading Organizational Change

  In this course, students learn how to develop and promote cultures within their organizations that not only accept but embrace change. Students also learn how to proactively drive development in order to enable their organizations to remain competitive and relevant in the global market.

• MSOP 550 Stimulating Creativity in Organizations

  In this course, students learn how to develop an environment that promotes and develops creativity within an organization.

• MSOP 560 Organizational Design

  This course encourages the application of advanced conceptual and theoretical perspectives to the design of organizations and the linkage mechanisms that organizations must develop to manage their environments. Learners practice diagnosing and resolving organizational problems related to the growth, survival, and decline of organizations. Research emphasis is placed on how size, structure, technology, and organizational culture impacts operations, strategic contingencies, and competitive advantage.

• MSOP 565 Human Resource Management

  This course investigates, examines, and assesses selected critical human resource issues, functions, and approaches that managers use. Course emphasis includes human resource issues and methods in the areas of planning, recruitment, selection, fair-employment and related legal compliance, performance appraisal, compensation, training/development, mentoring/empowerment, data and information systems.

• MSOP 570 Applied Management Research

  This course deals with the general art of collection, analysis and transformation of data into information for the purpose of decision making. Descriptive methods are introduced for graphical, tabular and numerical summarization of data. In particular, surveys are emphasized as a tool to collect data and generate information to improve organizational decisions and performance.

• MSOP 575 Ethical Decision Making

  This course investigates, examines, and interprets ethical decision-making issues within modern organizations. While the orientation of topics is that of democratic and market-based societies, ethical topics are approached through several philosophical, moral, socio-economic, and cultural foundations. Examination of these foundations provides perspective of the basic approaches taken in ethical decision-making. Topics in collective moral reasoning, business/organizational social responsibility, socio-cultural beliefs and values, personal values, and related legal systems provide frameworks to describe, examine, and interpret specific ethical decisions within their contexts.

• MSOP 635 Crafting A Strategic Vision

  This course helps the student to develop an understanding of how strategies are formulated and implemented within the business organization. The integration of the functional areas of management and how to deal with the various trade-offs from the perspective of management are considered. Emphasis is placed on the role of strategy development in unifying the organization in its development of sustainable competitive strategy through the use of case studies.

• MSOP 685 Applied Project

  This course allows the student to complete a project within their own or a selected organization, providing a venue for application of previous coursework. The practicum will be conducted under the advisement of an approved mentor in the organization.