MASL 522 - Leading and Managing Change

(3 credits)

Leading and managing organizational change requires knowledge and skills for analysis, development, and the reengineering of organizational processes. The course is designed to prepare leaders to secure a competitive position with respect to creating, managing, and leading change and innovation as means of achieving organizational success and stability. The course is focused on the nature and process of organizational change, and how to be an effective leader, implementer, and recipient of change. It emphasizes the forces for change, the change implementation process, the qualities and skills of successful change leaders, and the behavioral theories and management practices of how individuals and organizations change.

By the end of this online 8-week course, the graduate student will:

To gain an understanding of how organizational change is achieved in varied organizations - profit and non-profit. The word, achieved, means to carry out successfully, to accomplish or perform. We will examine the various theories and concepts of change, along with experiences and dilemmas in practice, that together help us gain an understanding of what contributes to the carrying out of successful and lasting change. The word, achieved, also signals an important role of individual agency and action in change. We will examine how people in front-line, as well as management levels, express agency in change and connect with others to produce change. We will also become actively engaged in achieving change, both in the class sessions as well as in projects studying the implementation of change.
To enhance personal capabilities and abilities to navigate change in our lives. Exploring both the theorizing and experiencing of change, we will develop personal profiles of how we navigate in change, and the relations, convictions and materials that inspire us to undertake and sustain change in our lives. We will enrich our personal toolboxes and ideas for navigating in change and for enacting our theory of implementing change. As well, we will develop a more situated and experience-informed theory of creating organizational change in front line settings.