Organizational Leadership

MOL 620 - Multidisciplinary Leadership

Leadership studies are influenced by underlying disciplines of psychology, sociology, history, strategy, philosophy, military studies, and religion studies. This course prepares leaders by offering them a broad conceptual base for understanding leadership behaviors and effectiveness, contextualized in Muhlenberg’s interdisciplinary liberal arts teaching mission. The course features presentations by faculty from across Muhlenberg’s disciplines, using case studies, relevant literature, and critical writing and analysis to explore servant leadership, visionary leadership, and transformational leadership processes.

MOL 624 - Leadership as Personal Journey

Organizational leadership training necessarily requires the leader’s personal development and growth in a personal capacity. This course supports students of leadership by emphasizing their individual growth and change through the reading of theories on change management and research, self-reflective study and analysis, and interpersonal learning with other leaders-in-training. Students assess their own leadership strengths and weaknesses and create a plan for their personal development in critical areas, including emotional intelligence, empathy, and vision.

MOL 644 - Leading in a Global Environment

In an increasingly globalized world, organization leaders must be prepared at any time for changes from around the world affecting organizational outcomes and the requirements that leaders must meet. Global leaders need global awareness, with sufficient cultural knowledge to adapt global strategies to local contexts. This course builds expertise in understanding international trade, security, transportation, human resources, and cultural issues, along with tactics and methods that leaders can use to manage these issues in their organizations. Teaching methods include case studies, close analysis of particular national and cultural settings, and studies of leadership in different global settings.

MOL 680 - Decision Tools and Analysis
This course takes an in-depth look at leadership decisions to allocate scarce resources and decide on choices that include competing alternatives. This course studies decision-making as an individual, social and organizational process, emphasizing both cognitive processes and techniques to facilitate optimal decisions, emphasizing ANOVA, regression, linear programming and decision trees. Students will be exposed to statistical tools, their possibilities, and their limits.

MOL 640 - Strategic Thinking

Organizational leadership involves setting and implementing organization-level strategies to accomplish goals and build capacity in dynamic environments. Students focus on the leaders’ role in creating a compelling vision of the future for themselves, their team and the organization. Students will analyze competitive market and larger social, economic, legal, and technology trends using systematic tools for scenario planning to prepare for strategic choice of markets or sectors. Students study strategic management through the long term planning cycle of the organization. Teaching methods include case studies, market analysis, and critical analysis of scenarios and forecast methods.

MOL 510 - Human Resource Leadership Strategy

The people of an organization are very often its strongest and best source of performance and competitive advantage. This course emphasizes the strategic importance of human resources in organizational action, with an overview of the objectives, requirements, economics, opportunities, and processes of creating the best workforce for long phases of an organization’s life. With an emphasis on the leader’s role in an organization’s HR management and the strategic opportunities and challenges that HR management present to leaders, course methods include on-site learning and studies using current data on organizational performance and the student’s reflection on leadership development.

MOL 632 - Organizational Change Management

Organizations are in constant flux, and leaders need to prepare for change in the organization in response to market, political, economic, social, and other forces, both internal and external. Students use a systems view to examine what drives people to change, how change methods affect people and desired outcomes, misconceptions about change methods, the financial impact of change methods, and common elements across methods. Students consider theories for creating sustainable change efforts and issues associated with the diffusion of innovation. The course prepares leaders for organizational change efforts with simulations, case studies, and examination of the underlying psychological, sociological, and economic characteristics of organizational change.

MOL 512 - Talent Management, Rewards, & Relations

Successful organizations and their leaders realize the importance of sustaining workers over the different phases of their careers, and this course aligns understanding of adult development with organizations’ ongoing needs for leaders and managers. This course fuses key concepts from organizational behavior and industrial organization psychology and applies them to leadership practice building strong relationships and engaged workers. Students study a wide range of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and motivation methods, their theoretical foundations, and how leaders can apply them in different organizational settings and to a diverse workforce.

MOL 636 - Ethical Leadership & Governance

Organizational leaders work in complex societal roles, with internal and external accountability for ethical behavior. Most leadership decision-making has legal and ethical consequences, and executive leadership requires an understanding of organizational governance theory and practice. This multifaceted course presents a broad set of ethical viewpoints to address governance and the ethical and social responsibilities of contemporary organizations. It examines decision-making where legal, reputational, and ethical consequences are especially pronounced. Studying ethical leadership considers leaders’ conduct and leaders’ character using case studies, simulations, and critical writing and analysis.

MOL 690 - Culminating Leadership Activity

The CLA serves as a culminating activity for each individual graduating leader. A variety of projects and outcomes may be suitable, including a thesis, or achievement and documentation of a significant leadership accomplishment, such as an action research project, a significant service, or the creation of a notably complex and rigorous program of guidance and training of colleagues and fellow students.