Flexible MBA Specialization in Leadership
Add a specialization in Leadership.
Leading an organization is not about maintaining the status quo. Emerging technologies make organizations dynamic, present challenges, and create opportunities. Managing through change and uncertainty is both difficult and necessary. The leadership specialization prepares experienced and budding managers to lead with confidence.
Course content in the leadership specialization spans project management, human capital considerations, power and influence, social impact, and strategy, among others.
The specialization builds “soft” skills such as effective communication, productive teamwork, bias-free decision making, adaptive problem solving, and emotional intelligence to lead teams and navigate conflict. Becoming an inspiring leader isn’t learned in a day. We provide the science to make your lived experiences meaningful, so you become a better, smarter negotiator and a savvy leader.
Leadership curriculum highlights
Required courses to earn the specialization
BU.141.710 Effective Teaming (2 Credits) required
In today’s businesses, teams are a basic organizational building block. Working within a team is perennially listed as one of the top skills that recruiters look for in graduating MBAs. This course conveys knowledge and practical tools that will help you become a more productive team member and leader. Topics include the characteristics of high-performing teams, leadership strategies for creating high-performing teams, strategies for avoiding dysfunctional team dynamics, and best practices for managing diverse and virtual teams.
BU.151.770 Power & Politics (2 Credits)
Immerse yourself in issues and dynamics related to power and politics in organizations. We seek to make power and politics discussable, recognizable, and usable. In other words, this course is designed to fuel the learning of concepts that are useful for understanding, analyzing, and harnessing power and political processes. But beyond discovering ways to extend your own power, influence, and political skill, you will also learn about ways in which power and politics can obscure and deceive you, and how you might better navigate situations in which you are up against relatively more powerful people or forces. We will use a range of learning methods including theoretical and business articles, cases, exercises, assessments, and simulations. We will cover a variety of topics ranging from political skills, bases of power and influence, dangers of power, power and change, and leading with power.
Electives (must take at least three to earn the Leadership specialization)
BU.131.601 Business Leadership and Human Values (2 Credits)
This foundational course develops an understanding of yourself as a moral agent in a complex environment of competing values and often ambiguous ethical challenges inherent in business. Through a rigorously discursive exploration of human moral capabilities, value systems, ethical frameworks, and contemporary ethical dilemmas, you will clarify your personal moral compass and develop a toolkit of knowledge and practices for sound ethical leadership in business and society.
BU.152.740 CityLab Catalyst: Business Innovation for Social Impact (2 Credits) and BU.152.745 City Lab Practicum: Social Impact Project (2 Credits)
For the first time in history, humans are an urban species; the livability of cities now determines the future of humanity and the planet. CityLab is an urban innovation platform engaging students in a global experiment of reinventing cities by revitalizing urban neighborhoods from within. The CityLab toolkit immerses you in the concrete context of people and places dealing with the disruptive uncertainty and frustration of livability challenges that threaten the environment, human health, social cohesion, civic order, and prosperity of cities. It introduces strategies, tools, and practices for tackling these challenges as opportunities to co-create value for the flourishing of humanity and the planet. This course is a hands-on, active learning experience requiring a high degree of individual commitment, initiative, self-discipline, adaptability, and collaboration. Learn more
BU.151.720 Corporate Strategy (2 Credits)
This course is concerned with the formulation and analysis of corporate strategy. Corporate strategy asks the question, “In what industries should a firm compete?” These are the objectives and policies that collectively determine how a business positions itself to increase its returns and create economic value for its owners and stakeholders. Learn analytical techniques for diagnosing the industrial landscape of a business and a firm’s overall portfolio, and identify and analyze specific business options. These concepts and frameworks will help you learn to put structure on complex and unstructured problems in corporate strategy to provide a solid foundation for managerial decision making.
BU.610.705 Crisis Management (2 Credits)
In this course, we will examine the entire crisis management life cycle – from prevention and preparedness through response, recovery, and mitigation – and consider the life cycle’s principles and practices. We will identify and use the entire crisis management toolkit to address challenges faced by managers when organizations face any crisis, due to either external factors outside the organization’s control or internal control or strategic management failures. We will develop a complete crisis management plan, including tools and methods to identify potential crises, implement response and mitigation strategies to limit exposure, manage crisis response teams, and create communications to address stakeholder and public relation issues.
BU.142.680 Foundations of Innovative Leadership (2 Credits)
This course is a leadership-intensive seminar and developmental workshop designed to provide foundational experiences, relationships and conceptual frameworks for students who have been accepted into the Center for Innovative Leadership (CIL) Fellows program. The course uses an experiential learning approach in which students are immersed in a variety of activities and challenges and provided with repeated opportunities for guided reflection and feedback. Students will engage both as leader and follower many times throughout the course. They will build a deeper conceptual understanding of leadership behaviors and skills, practice and hone their own leadership capacity and develop a plan for their ongoing leadership development, particularly as they engage in the Fellows program. In addition, the course provides an opportunity for students to build strong working relationships with one another that they will continue to foster throughout the Leadership Fellows program and beyond. Registration and participation in this course is by application, due to the 10-month commitment to the CIL Fellows program that begins upon successful completion of this course. Applications and details about the Fellows program can be found on the CIL website .
BU.003.903 Global Immersion: Peru - Cross-Cultural Teaming on Business Challenges (2 Credits)
In this virtual experiential course, graduate students from both Carey and CENTRUM Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) will work together in cross-cultural teams on an international business challenge. At the start the course, the students from each school are introduced to their teammates and learn about the scope of the real-world business challenges they will tackle together. In preparation for their collaboration, the students are guided through effective multicultural team-building principles to create a team contract and develop their project work plan. Students explore the variances between their respective countries’ business environments and share their own perspectives about the project topic. Lectures are delivered by faculty from each academic institution. Weekly synchronous class sessions include virtual business site visits, workshops, expert panels, and cultural enrichment activities to complement the intensive team project work.
BU.003.900 Global Immersion: United Kingdom - Navigating Through Crises (2 Credits)
Whether financial collapse, public health emergencies, infrastructure failure, or geopolitical tension, business leaders across all industries face a variety of risks that can quickly evolve into crises. Using recent events in both the United Kingdom and continental Europe as case studies, students in this course will sharpen their skills to manage effectively through a wide variety of challenging business situations. This course includes two pre-departure virtual lectures, with a week-long travel component in London, United Kingdom. Combining interactive seminars, guest lectures, and site visits to corporate and/or governmental organizations, students will depart with in-depth knowledge and practical leadership skills.
BU.151.620 Global Strategy (2 Credits)
This course provides students with the conceptual tools necessary to understand and work effectively in today's interconnected world by developing strategic perspectives that link this changing environment, the state of the global industry, and the capabilities and position of the firm. The course provides frameworks for identifying and taking advantage of the opportunities presented in a dynamic global environment at the level of the country and industry. It then focuses on firm-level strategic choices regarding where to engage in which activities. Finally, it covers the challenges of integrating the multiple perspectives, functions, and interests that constitute the multinational firm.
BU.003.910 Innovation for Humanity (2 Credits) and BU.003.915 Innovation for Humanity - Part 2 (2 Credits)
Innovation for Humanity draws upon the disciplinary knowledge and qualitative/quantitative analytic skills acquired in the MBA to provide a learning experience focused on the challenges of building socially impactful and profitable businesses in emerging economies. The course aims to create in each student an appreciation for the opportunities in critical sectors of human need in complex, resource-constrained markets that are plagued by fragmented infrastructure and underdeveloped institutions. Students will learn first-hand how to create businesses that serve these needs while creating positive spillovers for the community. Success in the course requires students to work collaboratively, communicate with project sponsors and partners in distant markets, and function flexibly and adaptively to meet project goals in unstructured environments. The 4-credit course series consists of synchronous virtual sessions as well as a required in-country residency - travel locations will vary.
BU.003.893 Leadership Development Expedition (2 Credits)
Develop your leadership capacity in this leadership-intensive seminar. The course utilizes the unique opportunity for leadership development embedded in outdoor experiential education, providing students the challenge of serving as a leader. The course combines a thorough academic introduction to leadership development and opportunity for self-assessment with repeated reflection and feedback to help students develop their own path as leaders. This is a physically demanding course. You should be in moderate physical condition. However, no technical outdoor skill or experience required – this is beginner-friendly. Expedition destination, activities, physical demands, fees, and eligibility requirements vary. Registration and participation in this course is by application. Learn more
BU.300.620 Managing Complex Projects (2 Credits)
This course aims to equip you with effective techniques, methods, and practices for defining, scoping, and planning a project, and then managing it to a successful completion. Special areas of emphasis in the course are driven by practical experiences with large and complex projects frequently being late, over budget, and failing to meet specifications. We will pay particular attention to understanding project complexity, risk, and uncertainty so you are prepared to address these challenges. You will gain experience using a leading project management software package.
BU.142.720 Managing in a Diverse & Global World (2 Credits)
Business organizations and other critical organizations operate in both a market and nonmarket environment. Examine contextually global diversity, inclusion, and multicultural issues through the lens of multiple dimensions. Successful, globally minded managers align the firm’s capabilities with the demands of both its market and nonmarket environment. This course examines political, regulatory, and societal factors of influence. You will learn to analyze the motives for focused intervention to better judge when and how political developments may affect business or organization interest. Explore the rise of “private politics” (activists, civil society networks, and NGOs), which are increasingly complementing conventional “public politics.” This new plurality also opens exciting new nonmarket strategic opportunities for profit and socially driven business, providing it with new potential allies. This course stresses collective moral agency and the ethical dimensions of business and management in such a global political economy. You will explore cross-cultural perspectives on economics and business culture, and how to analyze and proactively manage the nonmarket environment through integrated market and nonmarket strategies. Cumulatively through class interaction and team activities, students develop strategies for managing aspects of global diversity and inclusion within the context of a real organization opportunity.
BU.142.730 Strategic Human Capital (2 Credits)
Developing and managing human capital is vital for the success of any organization. In this course, examine ways in which human resources management can be used to enhance organizations’ competitive capabilities. The goal will be to understand how an organization can select, train, and retain the right employees, and how it can effectively motivate them to make decisions that will allow the organization to successfully implement its overall strategy. You will explore and master topics such as hiring and layoff decisions; human capital and on-the-job training; turnover; the provision of incentives; the advantages and disadvantages of alternative compensation schemes; objective and subjective performance evaluation; relative performance evaluation; promotions and other career-based incentive schemes; team production and team incentives; stock options and executive compensation; intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; non-monetary compensation; and mandated benefits.
BU.152.735 Strategy Consulting Practicum (2 Credits)
This course is concerned with the formulation and analysis and practical application of business strategy. Business strategy is the set of objectives and policies that collectively determine how a business creates value for stakeholders. Strategy is concerned with answering two central questions: “What businesses should we participate in?” and “How should we compete?” Students will learn analytical techniques for diagnosing the competitive position of a business, evaluate strategies, and identify and analyze strategic options. You will integrate and apply previous course work to strategic challenges addressed by organizational leaders. Analytic, integrative, and decision-making skills are also developed as you and your teams confront these strategic challenges. Creativity and innovation are critical to achieve success; to follow often-traveled strategic paths is unlikely to result in superior performance. You are challenged to use both critical and creative thinking as you perform analyses and provide strategic recommendations to clients.