This course focuses on practical application of current research and concepts in human behavior in order to understand and analyze organizations. Interpersonal processes, problem-solving, and managerial decision-making are considered through examination of the roles of power, politics, ethics, and conflict in organizations. Topics may include individual behavior, motivation and performance, interpersonal relations, small group relations, the role of leadership, and organizational culture.

Today's workforce is diverse; individuals are frequently interacting with peers, managers and customers, each with different backgrounds, experiences, group affiliations, neurodiversity, sexual orientations, religions, and identities. With equity and respect, these differences can enhance performance and creativity; workplace diversity can also help to increase employee and customer engagement, contentment, and inclusion. This course explores ways in which employees and managers can cultivate an inclusive workplace culture and offers means for expanding appreciation of each individual's uniqueness. This course may review paradigms that limit and promote inclusion, such as unconscious biases, behavioral change, leadership, acknowledgement of the dimensions of diversity, and enforcement of patterns by employers, employees, and society as a whole. Recommended: MGMT 566.

This course addresses the nature, functions, and operations of the legal system and how legal rules affect business operations. Students examine the legal framework of laws, rules, health and safety regulations, and judicial opinions that have direct and profound impacts on managerial decision-making and practice. Considerable emphasis is placed on the federal, state, and local regulations that directly impact business practice; consumer laws, labor and employment law; and the social and ethical environment of business policy and management practice.

In this course, students examine how such issues as globalization, technology, the environment, business ethics, and business-government relations impact how businesses are managed. They also examine how leaders manage leaner and flatter organizations comprised of diverse employees working in teams. Students may explore the broad impacts of these contemporary management issues through reading, research, case studies, and active discussions.