MG 590 Internship in Management (1 credit)
A 1-credit field-based educational experience for Bentley students with the opportunity to (1) observe management practices, (2) apply and test hands-on the organizational concepts and methods learned in classes, (3) develop leadership skills, (4) test aptitude and personal preferences for various career directions, and (5) establish a basis for future professional employment. This Internship option is available to Bentley graduate students. Students must work a minimum of 200 hours at an organization suitable for the individual student's field learning experience, and complete specific requirements during their Internship, demonstrating the ability to apply and integrate business/management knowledge, in order to receive academic credit. A student is limited to doing one such 1-credit internship before degree completion.
Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
MG 600 Entrepreneurial Thinking (3 credits)
This course focuses on all aspects of starting a business: selecting promising ideas, initiating new ventures and obtaining initial financing. It concentrates on how ventures are begun, how venture ideas and other key ingredients for startups are derived, and how to evaluate new venture proposals. This course explores business plan development and legal and tax considerations.
Typically Offered: Fall
MG 630 Emotionally Intelligent Leadership (3 credits)
This course develops a conceptual foundation based on theories of emotional intelligence and interpersonal dynamics as essential elements of the leadership role. It considers such topics as perception, personality and attitudes, interpersonal communication, and relationships. The course applies these models and concepts to behavior in the workplace, especially leadership and other managerial and organizational issues. It enhances emotional intelligence and interpersonal competence by developing key skills, such as active listening, assertive expression and conflict resolution.
Typically Offered: Spring
MG 632 Leading Effective Work Teams (3 credits)
Organizations use a variety of complex work teams to accomplish their objectives. Unfortunately, many organizational teams are not particularly effective. This course is designed to help students lead, participate and work effectively in a variety of team environments -including virtual teams and groups. You will develop a greater understanding of group dynamics, of your own behavior in teams, and team leadership skills. The course is highly experiential and involves working in teams on graded and non-graded assignments. These assignments include team presentations and written and oral analysis.
Typically Offered: Spring
MG 635 Negotiating (3 credits)
This course explores the theory and practice of negotiating, with an emphasis on bargaining within an organizational context. It develops the knowledge of bargaining concepts and models, as well as skills to apply this knowledge in real-life negotiating situations. The courcse uses multiple negotiating case role plays to increase involvement and to deepen understanding of negotiating principles in face-to-face and virtual online negotiating environments.
Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
MG 638 Corporate Governance (3 credits)
This course explores relationships among management, boards of directors and shareholders. It also addresses company relationships with stakeholders more broadly, including employees, customers and suppliers; the communities in which operates; and society, more generally. The increasing roles of institutional investors and activist shareholders are explored, as are the impacts of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank on issues including executive compensation, succession planning and risk management. A variety of corporate scandals are analyzed to see what lessons can be learned to improve corporate governance. While the primary focus of the course is on U.S. companies, attention also is paid to key corporate governance issues in other countries, especially those in Europe and Asia. Guest speakers will talk to the class about their experiences as board members, institutional investors and/or corporate governance experts.
Typically Offered: Spring
MG 640 Managing Strategic Alliances (3 credits)
The course begins by introducing students to the rationale for establishing strategic partnerships, alliances, and collaborations in the contemporary global business world. We then discuss the major managerial issues associated with alliance creation, implementation and evolution. Based on these foundations, we move on to learn tools and frameworks that enable managers to respond effectively to the challenges of strategic alliances and maximize their value. The course explores the mindset, skillset and toolset of partnering, its value as a strategic tool, the pitfalls to avoid and ultimately to help improve the probability of partnering success.
MG 645 Leading Change (3 credits)
This course seeks to improve participant awareness of change dynamics, including: the changing nature of change; understanding the enhanced change complexities in a global, virtual environment, readiness for a change versus continuous change; and the challenge of building change capacity (skills and capabilities). The course focus includes key individual, group and organization-level factors essential for informing leaders and followers as they navigate change efforts in organizations.
Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
MG 646 Leading Technology-Based Organizations (3 credits)
This course prepares students for leadership positions in technology-based organizations. The course introduces principles of technology growth and diffusion and how they impact business strategy and planning, markets, the performance of cross-functional teams, product design and project management. Through this course, students gain an understanding of theories, tools and best-in-class practices required to commercialize new technologies or to adapt existing practices in response to either sustaining or disruptive technological innovation. Through lectures, group discussions, case studies and research projects, students explore how leading businesses are creating value from emerging technologies and may continue to do so in the future.
MG 647 Leading Effectively in Global Business Environments (3 credits)
This one-week intensive course uses a combination of expert-led classroom discussions and plant visits to examine the challenges and best practices of managing in todays global business environment. Company visits, case studies and dialogue with senior managers and scholars provide the setting for studying global organizational systems, processes and practices. The course stimulates critical thinking and insight into global management issues such as virtual team leadership, strategic alignment, open innovation, accelerating development, and integrating projects across multinational lines. As a partnership program of Bentley and the University of São Paulo, the course is open to graduate students from both universities.
MG 651 Project Management (3 credits)
This course presents the specific concepts, systems and techniques for managing projects effectively. It leads students through a complete project life cycle, from requirements analysis and project definition to startup, reviews and phase-out. The role of the project manager as team leader is examined, together with important techniques for controlling project costs, schedules and performance. Lectures, case studies and group discussions are combined to develop skills needed by project managers in today's environment.
Typically Offered: Spring
MG 652 Strategic Innovation (3 credits)
In the increasingly complex and global marketplace, innovation is becoming a necessity for competitive strength and survival. Creativity and good ideas alone are not enough for success; they must be transformed into viable goods and services and offered to customers through innovative business models. This course focuses on strategies that leaders use for stimulating and implementing innovation in the workplace. It looks at innovation strategically at the level of the firm and industry. The innovation strategies of successful and unsuccessful firms are highlighted. The course covers topics such as sources of innovation, design thinking, disruptive innovation, business model innovation, first mover advantage/disadvantage, value innovation, and dominant design and standards battles. During the semester, the students will tour innovative companies, and hear from experts in the financing and valuation of small innovative firms.
Typically Offered: Fall
MG 653 Leading Service Innovation (3 credits)
Many companies now look to service innovation to obtain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. This course introduces the different types of service innovation and identifies how they each contribute to the long term success of an organization. Topics presented in this course include (a) open service innovation, (b) service process design, and (c) tools for encouraging customer feedback, all of which focus on service process innovation and continuous improvement. In addition, the role of technology in developing new service innovations is integrated throughout the course with specific emphasis on (a) creating added value by shifting the work boundary between the service provider and customer, (b) understanding how customers access services, and (c) providing new approaches for obtaining and analyzing customer feedback.
MG 654 Excellence through Quality Analytics (3 credits)
All world-class performance organizations have undertaken distinct approaches towards excellence. Understanding these approaches and practicing quality analytics that make them successful are the focus of this course. The course draws its origin from the classical quality management discipline and revitalizes it with the twenty-first century developments in organizational innovations and data analytics. The students will learn in the course several international frameworks of performance excellence, including Lean from Japan, ISO 9000s from Europe, and Baldrige and Six-Sigma from the U.S. via examining the practices of various world-class organizations, such as Toyota in 1980s, Apple since 2000s, and recently Tesla and SpaceX. They will also learn technical tools that help with the successful implementation of these practices. Moreover, the students will apply lessons in a real-world project to achieve world-class performance for an organization.
Typically Offered: Spring
MG 657 Lean Process Improvement (3 credits)
Taught in the context of an engaging, fast-paced project based or simulation exercise, this course covers the theory and practice of process improvement methods and tools in a unique and exciting learning environment. Students will take on a role within a fictitious company on day one and will work in teams supporting a real-world process. They come together for brief lectures on the modules noted above and then return to their breakout rooms to apply the tools they have learned to improve their work processes. At the end of the course, the participants will have demonstrated to themselves and their peers via the dramatic improvement in their work process performance their newfound Lean Process Improvement Skills. Students may have the option of bringing a project from their employer for a more “real world experience”.
Typically Offered: Every two or more years
MG 658 Developing Leaders for Global Sustainability (3 credits)
This course equips sustainability leaders with crucial analytical and implementation skills, covering scientific literacy, stakeholder management, and risk assessment. Leaders gain a toolkit for effective change, grounded in a deep grasp of scientific truths and power dynamics in environmental sustainability. Learn sustainable practices, driven by the obligation to leave future generations the option to be as well off as we are. Explore "global sustainability" to address the world's need for sustainable practices, influencing organizations across industries, positions, and professions. Delve into climate change and energy challenges in this course, exploring the "who" and "how" of planetary preservation. Discover leaders taking on these challenges. Investigate what current leaders know and need to know for effective global issue resolution. Harness the power of science in understanding human behavior and systems, guiding informed decisions and impactful interventions.
Typically Offered: Fall
MG 659 Stakeholder Management, Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability (3 credits)
This course investigates business and society issues with a stakeholder lens through the concept of the social contract—a set of reciprocal understandings and expectations that characterize the relationship between business and its stakeholders. In the stakeholder view of the firm, managers must perceive as stakeholders not only those groups that managers believe to have some stake in the firm, but also those stakeholders, including the natural environment, that may be affected by the actions, decisions, policies or practices of the firm. Hence, this course examines the ways in which managers might view issues of social concern and sustainability from a stakeholder frame of reference. For managers, this includes converting what may seem like unmanageable stakeholder issues into ones that can be dealt with in a balanced and impartial fashion, while also integrating traditional economic and financial considerations with ethical and social considerations.
Typically Offered: Fall
MG 661 Management Across Cultures (3 credits)
This course contributes to the development of knowledge and skills needed to manage effectively in, and with people from, different cultures. Students will develop an awareness of the pervasive and hidden influence of culture on behavior, particularly with respect to management and management practices; become familiar with the types of situations and issues which managers often confront when working internationally; gain an appreciation for the challenges of working virtually with multicultural team members; and gain insights into their own intercultural skills and attitudes. This course is concerned with understanding differences in behavior which stem from diverse national cultures and developing tools for effectively managing those differences. The readings, cases and exercises have been chosen to focus students' attention on effective intercultural behavior their own as well as that of others.
Typically Offered: Once a year
MG 670 Leading in a Diverse Workplace (3 credits)
This course addresses the knowledge, skills and attitudes leaders need to more fully employ all the resources of the increasingly diverse workforce. The course examines the dynamics of different social identities in the workplace, in the context of exploring how people who are different from each other can work together effectively. Investigates the impact of diversity on individuals, groups, teams, and the organization as a whole.
Typically Offered: Fall
MG 700 Dir Study (3 credits)
A Directed Study is designed for highly qualified students who, under the direction of a member of the sponsoring academic department, engage in an agreed-upon in-depth independent examination, investigation or analysis of a specialized topic.
Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
MG 701 Internship in Management (3 credits)
This course affords students the opportunity to enhance self-realization and direction by integrating classroom study with experience in vocational learning situations. It requires development of a study plan to identify the student's professional goals and to demonstrate how these goals can be enhanced through an internship experience. It includes regular meetings in which students discuss issues and business problems related to their work experience, and defend proposed solutions before fellow students and the internship coordinator.
Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
MG 704 Management Consulting Skills (3 credits)
Teaches the fundamentals of management consulting. Students learn about consulting primarily from the perspective of external consultants delivering services to clients, although the course is relevant for internal consultants as well as for consumers of consulting services. The primary goal is to enhance the skills needed to be an effective consultant. Topics include the ethics of consulting, issue identification, contracting, the discovery process, feedback to the client, managing client resistance, implementing change, and marketing and sales skills. The course is designed for graduate students who are internal or external consultants, who may be interested in a consulting career, or who may do occasional consulting outside their primary job. Case studies along with experiential exercises are the primary vehicles for learning about management consulting.
Typically Offered: Fall
MG 755 Special Topics in Management (3 credits)
Pre-Req: Varies by topic
This course focuses on a different management theme in each semester. Currently planned themes are managing corporate alliances, managing with influence, implementing ethics in organizations, issues in leadership, and managing effective work teams.
Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
MG 799 Experimental Course in MG (3 credits)
Pre-Req: Varies by topic
Experimental courses explore curriculum development with specific content intended for evolution into a permanent course. Topics may be offered twice before it becomes a permanent course. Students may repeat experimental courses for credit with a different topic.
Typically Offered: Fall and Spring