Curriculum designed to build the judgment, leadership, and cross-functional skills employers actually hire for.
LEAD embraces the necessity for self-discovery and personal development to become a leader in modern organizations. LEAD is designed to allow students to frame their future success in terms of their emotional, social, and cultural intelligences. LEAD explores essential competencies for managing and leading people. These include: assessing the students personal balance sheet against his or her strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; techniques for leading, managing, and influencing group and individual behavior and performance; coaching and mentoring others; inspiring others to embrace organizational vision and mission; communicating effectively both orally and in writing; and negotiating to secure a mandate and the resources to pursue it.
The course focuses on executive presence, personal performance systems, and purpose-driven leadership in increasingly AI-enabled environments. Students examine how leaders mobilize energy?within themselves, teams, and systems?while maintaining effectiveness, well-being, and ethical grounding. Emphasis is placed on aligning personal purpose with performance demands and understanding how AI and emerging technologies shape leadership and work.
This course prepares leaders to act with integrity, creativity, and resilience in complex and uncertain environments. Students explore how to learn from failure, lead creative problem-solving, and influence others ethically while navigating competing interests. Emphasis is placed on learning from setbacks, leading creative problem-solving efforts responsibly, and influencing others through trust, credibility, and principled action.
This course develops leaders? ability to act entrepreneurially while navigating power, politics, and influence. Students explore how opportunities are identified, resources are mobilized, and support is built amid uncertainty and competing interests. Emphasis is placed on effectuation, coalition-building, and persuasive presentations as tools for advancing ideas in politically complex environments.
This course develops leadership effectiveness by focusing on emotional intelligence, talent development, and insight generation. Students examine their ?ideal self? as leaders, practice developing others through coaching and feedback, and learn to visualize complex information to support sensemaking and shared understanding across teams and organizations.
This course emphasizes leadership judgment and negotiation in high-stakes, multi-party, and uncertain environments. Students develop strategic decision-making capabilities and negotiation skills required to represent organizational interests, create and claim value, and manage power asymmetries, political dynamics, and long-term relationships.
This course integrates leadership identity, strategic thinking, and executive communication to prepare students for future leadership roles and transitions. Students examine how leaders intentionally position their leadership brand while navigating competitive and organizational environments. Emphasis is placed on strategic positioning, value creation, and communicating leadership narratives with confidence and credibility to senior audiences.
Taking real world examples from finance, accounting, marketing, production, and human resource management, we will use statistical tools and methods to improve decision making in uncertain environments. Students learn to transform data into managerial insight and actionable information by applying statistical processes and models. Course concepts will be implemented and supported by spreadsheets, statistical software, and direct application to a team project.
Taking real world examples from finance, accounting, marketing, production, and human resource management, we will use statistical tools and methods to improve decision making in uncertain environments. Students learn to transform data into managerial insight and actionable information by applying statistical processes and models. Course concepts will be implemented and supported by spreadsheets, statistical software, and direct application to a team project.
Taking real world examples from finance, accounting, marketing, production, and human resource management, we will use statistical tools and methods to improve decision making in uncertain environments. Students learn to transform data into managerial insight and actionable information by applying statistical processes and models. Course concepts will be implemented and supported by spreadsheets, statistical software, and direct application to a team project.
This course introduces basic financial and managerial accounting tools that are useful to managers. It is designed for the graduate student with no prior exposure to accounting. Students will learn to: (1) record, report and interpret basic transactions and events through the accounting equation and integrated financial statements, as well as prepare basic financial statements, (2) read and interpret audited financial statements, (3) apply analytical tools using managerial accounting data and understand how and when these tools may be used, including estimating and analyzing Cost-Volume-Profit relationships and operational leverage, preparing financial forecasts and identifying relevant cost-benefit information in decision-making scenarios, and to (4) appreciate the role of the financial and managerial accounting systems as planning and control tools.
This course focuses on individuals and teams in organizations, related HR management processes, organizational design, change processes and the broader global context in which organizations operate. It emphasizes how to diagnose and analyze individual and group behavior from different perspectives (using strategic, political and cultural lenses) and various levels (micro, meso and macro) of the organization. The goal of the course is to enhance your knowledge of management concepts and theories so that you can increase organizational effectiveness in terms of better managing yourself, other individuals, and teams, understand the impact of organizational design, power and authority, improve decision-making, manage change processes and the potentially conflicting demands of various stakeholders of the organization. The outcome of this course is to identify leading management practices and appropriate courses of managerial action in a legally compliant and ethical manner. This graduate-level management course should make you a more effective manager independently of your employment sector (private, public and non-profit). Selected cases, instructional vignettes and interactive class exercises are used to apply management concepts to real-world applications. You will learn from your own pre-class readings, lectures, discussions, cases, vignettes, application exercises and your interactions with a diverse group of peers.
This course explores key issues in strategic marketing and the formulation of market driven strategies. Through lectures, readings and case studies students, students learn to design and implement a process of creating relationships with customers that maximize their satisfaction, whether in profit-making, not-for-profit, or governmental environments. Students participate in a computer simulation requiring them to apply concepts discussed in the course. The course emphasizes learning by doing and requires substantial work in teams.
The course helps students acquire problem-solving skills in finance and economics. Students learn to assess the economic role of government and apply macroeconomics to management decisions; to perform present value analysis of present and future cash flows to assess the profitability of investment decisions; apply microeconomic analysis to business models and connect business models to financial models and the creation of value; to identify and treat various types of risk; and to apply financial and economic analysis to investment decisions.
Starting with a framework for aligning business, organization, and technology strategy, we will analyze internal performance by applying a process-oriented lens. Students will be able to articulate key issues and details of implementation lifecycles for business and enterprise applications, e-business, customer relationship and knowledge management initiatives, and to build a case for a business process improvement. Each student will participate in a team project to redesign processes and systems in an organization.
The course exposes student to the high velocity, high complexity world of managing globally. Students learn through targeted case studies, review of empirical research and theoretical frameworks, and a capstone assignment to integrate key learning on global management and innovation. Learning objectives include: understanding the motivations and alternative mechanisms for entering and conducting business across borders; incorporating multiple levels (e.g., firm, institutional, national) into global management decisions; building skills in selecting partners, negotiating, developing networks, and designing alliances; using technology and organizational innovation to accelerate global business; and applying critical and creative thinking skills to practical and theoretical problems of global strategy, structure, cultures, and performance.
Governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws and institutions affecting the way an organization is directed, administered, or controlled. Legal and regulatory governance provides a foundation for establishing stakeholder confidence and exercising fiduciary responsibility in businesses and not-for-profit organizations. This course improves student ability to enhance performance and create value through governance and leadership. Learning objectives include: understanding how historical economic, political, and cultural trends impact relationships, structures, and performance across the business, government, and not-for-profit sectors; evaluating and selecting among alternative institutional and operational arrangements in managing business, government, and not-for-profit organizations; assessing the dimensions of governance and leadership in managing ethics, risk and performance. (Previous title: Creating Value through Governance)
These courses are designed to delve into the issues that will shape management in the future. The course topic changes with each Cohort.
Addressing the question of why some organizations succeed while others fail, the course explores effective cooperation across functions, competitive strategy across organizations, and strategy formation across time. Students learn to create and evaluate business strategies that deal with uncertainty to improve organizational performance, to analyze competitive dynamics so as to sequence initiatives, including investment acquisition and investment decisions, and to manage delegation from strategy to execution. We will apply models and insights from course material to case studies about competitive strategy, resource allocation, market leadership, organizational design, and entrepreneurship/new product development.
To exercise the integrative and scalable skills of innovation and leadership, the IMAP course seeks to provide a learning platform for you to strengthen and apply an integrated understanding of management theory and practice within organizations by completing an integrative project. You will integrate multiple management disciplines including strategy, marketing, finance, accounting, process management, technology, human resources and organizational behavior. The completed project must demonstrate the application and understanding of MBA level content in written format while displaying professionalism in communication and persuasion of executive audiences.
To exercise the integrative and scalable skills of innovation and leadership, the IMAP course seeks to provide a learning platform for you to strengthen and apply an integrated understanding of management theory and practice within organizations by completing an integrative project. You will integrate multiple management disciplines including strategy, marketing, finance, accounting, process management, technology, human resources and organizational behavior. The completed project must demonstrate the application and understanding of MBA level content in written format while displaying professionalism in communication and persuasion of executive audiences.
Willamette University
Ecotrust Building
721 NW 9th Ave
Portland
Oregon
97209
U.S.A.