Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Organizational Leadership

This course presents a comprehensive, integrative, and practical perspective on contemporary leadership theories that have emerged over the past several decades. Additionally, the course explores how individuals can build their leadership capabilities while acting with authenticity, integrity, and creativity.

The purpose of this course is to move away from leader-centered theory to more integrated theory that includes the leader’s relationship with and influence on followers. In doing so, this course will take into account not only those who exercise power, authority, and influence; but also those on whom power, authority, and influence are being exercised.

This course explores differentiated concepts of interpersonal behavior in small groups. Students will learn about research in the field of group dynamics as well as the applicability of that research to modern organizations.

This course examines how organizational culture and climate can be bolstered and transformed. Through comprehensive assessment and understanding of an organization’s current strengths and weaknesses, leaders can use culture to help attract and retain loyal and committed employees.

This course presents effective communication as an integral component of leadership strategy. A leader’s competence in this area will aid in developing a foundation for designing effective messages, both written and oral, from concept to delivery.

This course will examine current and historically relevant ethical, legal, and professional issues in the field of I/O psychology. The course will examine both how I/O professionals can identify and react to ethical, legal, and professional concerns in organizations as well as how I/O professionals are to behave and interact with organizations themselves.

This course will explore how innovation involves developing a consensus in multi-stakeholder groups, managing organizational change or leading the development of an innovative product or service. Innovation requires leadership that has vision, the ability to inspire and empower others, and courageously make strategic decisions.

This course focuses on qualitative research methods and provides students with firsthand experience to prepare them for the initial stages of the research process. The course provides in-depth analysis and discussion on various qualitative research methods and design approaches in terms of their pros and potential cons when exploring a variety of research questions.

The course will allow students to understand the process through which data becomes information, information becomes knowledge, and how knowledge can be exchanged and transferred among different stakeholders. Students will observe how different theoretical lenses, ethical and cultural values, and personal backgrounds can shape the interpretation of data and information.

This course will examine the impact of resilient leadership on organizational sustainability. In particular, resilience will be explored on the individual, team and organizational level. Students will learn how to ensure their own health and productivity, as well as increase their accountability and adaptability.

This advanced course will use the tenets of organizational behavior and organizational theory to explore the factors that most influence successful business decisions and interactions.

This course focuses on effective consulting by presenting students with common and unique business challenges and exploring possible solutions. Students will be presented with multiple data points on organizational challenges and be asked to find solutions for these challenges with a mock client.

This course focuses on how professionals engage in psychological testing in organizations with a broad scope of assessments of individuals and groups.

This course will analyze the impact of common performance management practices as well as new trends and approaches in assessing individual and group performance within organizations.

This course provides students with the opportunity to integrate socially responsible strategies with operational psychology in military environments. By focusing on the use of human factors in various military settings, students learn how to support and promote the behavioral health and welfare of service members and families, performance of individuals and teams, and success in military operations.

This course explores how resiliency theory and positive psychology can be applied to the military community in an effort to minimize the long term impact of stress related to life in the military.

This course prepares students to conduct survey research in organizations to measure employee or consumer attitudes. Students will learn how to design a survey, evaluate the reliability and validity of a survey, utilize statistics to analyze the survey data, and interpret and present survey results to clients.

This course presents students with diverse strategies with relevance to the fields of coaching and consulting. Evidence-based coaching methods will be applied in a variety of contexts.

The course provides students with a thorough understanding of the role of a training and development practitioner. Students will be provided with an analysis of current best practices as they relate to adult learning, instructional design/ strategy, and program evaluation.

This course explores theories of change and impactful social movements as a means of preparing students to lead change processes. It examines the activities, contexts, challenges and ethics of community-based social change as they relate to organizations and institutional systems, work/task groups and individuals and the role of the community leaders in these processes.

In this course, students will learn how to lead high performing teams that are collaborative, consistently learning, and able to achieve bottom line results. Specifically, students will learn best practices for composing a team and aligning individual and team goals.

This course introduces students to the principles of individual assessment and their role in leadership development. Frameworks for conceptualizing the assessment process, specific strategies for assessing individual personality, cognitive ability, and workplace relevant behaviors will be considered.

This course introduces students to entrepreneurship and the development of the entrepreneurial mindset. Students will learn about the entrepreneurial process, skills required and the necessary resilience to meet their business goals.

Complex challenges and issues involve the interplay of a multitude of stakeholders, organizations and institutions. Students will be introduced to systems design, theory and methods to identify and design systemic interventions for social, policy, and business change.

This course examines everyday issues facing organizations such as attracting, selecting, and maintaining a productive workforce in today’s competitive operating environment. Further, other nuances such as training and development, compensation, and employee performance evaluation will be discussed.

In this course, students learn human resource practices and styles of management in public organizations. Topics include sociological, economic, and political science theories of organizational behavior and management within the public sector; the values associated with the five general models of public personnel systems are considered within a historical context.

This course introduces the knowledge and skills related to strategic management and leadership in government and public services including the articulation and aligning of organizational goals in accordance with the mission.

This course examines the relationship between business and government, the influence one has over the other; how governmental policies influence the decisions of corporations, businesses and industries and vice-versa, and the economic and development issues arising in an increasingly integrated global economy.