Curriculum

Core Courses

• Wellness Management

  This course focuses on managing employee safety, security, mental, attitudinal, and health-related outcomes. It will also discuss managing absenteeism, turnover, and counterproductive behavior. The course will cover attitude surveys, OSHA, and security and safety audits.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the origins of job stress and develop coping strategies.
  • Understand and apply appropriate occupational safety standards.
  • Assess and understand the antecedents of employee attitudes, counterproductive and self-destructive behaviors.
  • Conduct security and safety audits.
  • Develop occupational safety and health interventions.
• Employment Law and Human Resource Management

  This course focuses on the legal and regulatory factors surrounding human resource management. The emphasis will be on creating awareness of legal risks and legal constraints when making HR business decisions. Case studies will be used to illustrate and discuss legal implications. These are cases of human resource disputes on the verge of going to court, as well as mock trials based on real human resource disputes. Numerical analysis of the workforce to assess adverse impact will be discussed.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Evaluate the legal implications of HR-related decisions such as those concerning selection, promotion, compensation, and training.
  • Carry out adverse impact studies.
  • Design legally defensible selection procedures.
  • Design legally defensible performance evaluation systems.
  • Conduct legally defensible performance feedback interviews and terminations.
  • Understand social security and employment taxes.
  • Handle accidents and workers' compensation cases appropriately.
  • Understand the legal environment of unionization and collective bargaining.
• High-Involvement Human Resource Management

  This course focuses on human resource practices that motivate and empower employees to excel on their job by fostering their participation and involvement in organizational decision-making. Motivational and leadership theories discussing participatory decision-making, self-managed teams, total quality management, and others will be reviewed. Students will learn how to conduct high-involvement audits and benchmarking studies so that they can successfully implement such systems in their organizations.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the psychological principles and benefits of participatory decision-making.
  • Conduct a high-involvement audit.
  • Develop high-involvement selection systems.
  • Create productive self-managed teams.
  • Develop high involvement performance and reward management systems.
• International Human Resource Management

  For the global organization, success and indeed survival depends on how well it manages its work force. A global work force includes the home country, the host country and often, third country nationals in a variety of employment settings. Decisions about how to recruit, train, compensate, and generally manage these employees will be discussed. Cross-cultural differences in values will be examined. Emphasis will be made on managing the international assignee. Students will be given opportunities to specialize in a particular nation by conducting individual or groups projects.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Understand issues and practices pertaining to the major HRM functions within the context of a multinational environment.
  • Recognize and value cultural differences.
  • Develop successful programs for international assignees.
  • Become an expert in a particular country with regard to issues and practices pertaining to major HRM functions.
• Labor Issues and Conflict Management

  This course offers students techniques and skills to enhance their conflict management of disputes. It is designed to teach students methods to “productively” manage inter personal disputes between/among parties. It emphasizes building partnerships, long-term positive relationships in the business world. Students will investigate the theoretical and practical aspects of power, personality traits, conflict assessment, communication and political disputes and problem solving with regards to appropriate strategies, tactics and goals in conflict resolution.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the nature of conflict in society, in groups, in organizations and within the individual.
  • Enable students to understand themselves, their personality and their reaction to conflict.
  • Learn techniques to manage conflict in their personal and professional lives.
  • Build communication and analytical skills to more effectively handle conflict resolution.
  • To learn the techniques and practices within a third party intervention framework. This includes arbitration and mediation.
• Human Resource Knowledge Management

  This course focuses on the management and development of the organization's human capital. The course will cover topics such as the identification of learning needs in line with the corporate strategy, current and future performance problems and individual development of a culture; learning principles, web-based technology and post-training techniques that can maximize the return on investment through transfer of training; and the evaluation of training programs through quantitative (e.g. field research) and qualitative methods (e.g. scorecards). The students will learn how to design challenging yet attainable and measurable instructional objectives.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Diagnose performance problems and training needs.
  • Develop a self-learning climate and culture.
  • Design web-based training delivery platforms.
  • Evaluate training impact.
• Human Resource Analytics

  This course focuses on the linkage between human resources and the organization's financial plan. The processes of analyzing, benchmarking, controlling, and measuring the effectiveness of human resource programs will be discussed. The application of research design and measurement theory to develop meaningful HRM metrics will be emphasized. The students will learn how to report findings in a practical and influential manner. They will also learn how to use statistical software to analyze their data and draw meaningful conclusions.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Costing HR programs.
  • Designing scorecards to measure HR effectiveness.
  • Evaluate HR measures' basic properties such as reliability and validity.
  • Design experimental and quasi-experimental research designs that evaluate the impact of HR programs while controlling for extraneous variables.
  • Design, administer and analyze on and off-lie HR surveys in organizations.
  • Write and present reports that effectively communicate findings and conclusions for executive decision-making.
• Human Resource Strategy and Planning

  This course discusses the notion of strategic planning in the context of human resource management. Different strategies (e.g., cost, differentiation) are reviewed along with their implications for human resource management. Basic notions of strategic management such as the development of mission statements, the identification of the organization's competitive advantage and core competencies, and the development of corporate and business strategies are covered. In addition, the tools that facilitate strategic human resource management such as HR inventories, knowledge management, and the alignment of the organizational culture and the organization's strategy are reviewed. This course will include case studies used to diagnose strategy.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the importance of strategic alignment in human resource management.
  • Make the HRM function a strategic partner in the organization.
  • Forecast HR needs and future scenarios.
  • Identify, measure, and evaluate the organization's core competencies.
• Performance and Talent Management

  This course focuses on the development and implementation of effective performance management systems. Design issues such as criterion contamination and rating formats will be covered so that the students learn how to design valid performance measurement systems. The development of multi-source and electronic performance monitoring will be covered. The process of diagnosing performance problems will be discussed. Implementation issues such as facilitating effective performance feedback interviews, coaching employees, handling poor performance and trouble employees, and documenting performance problems will be reviewed. A systems thinking model of succession planning and leadership development in today's volatile workplace will be discussed.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Design valid performance measures.
  • Diagnose performance problems.
  • Provide effective performance feedback.
  • Design and implement progressive discipline systems.
  • Create and improve effective succession and leadership development systems.
  • Develop career strategies and transition plans in times of change.
  • Employee and career coaching.
• Reward Systems Management

  This course covers all aspects of compensation and reward systems such as the strategic alignment of compensation and other HR systems, job evaluation, merit- and skill-based pay, cost-effective benefit programs, and the increasingly flexible compensation systems demanded by today's dynamic and diverse work force.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Design reward systems that facilitate the attraction, development, and retention of a flexible work force.
  • Design compensation practices and benefits that conform to relevant laws.
  • Design compensation structures that reflect job worth through job evaluation practices.
  • Design strategically aligned skill-based pay systems according to job-analytic procedures.
• Staffing Organizations

  This course focuses on the identification, recruitment, selection and promotion of successful employees. The development of systems that comply with regulatory issues such as equal employment opportunity and affirmative action laws while satisfying business goals will be covered. Measurement issues will be discussed in the context of their relevance to not only legal issues but also validity of the measures. The pros and cons of various recruitment approaches and selection techniques will also be discussed. Case studies illustrating legal issues in selection will be evaluated. The use of emerging technologies in selection and assessment will be covered.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Assess the presence of adverse impact in the selection procedures.
  • Carry out job analyses to identify job requirements.
  • Design valid and legally sound employment interviews.
  • Evaluate commercially available selection tests.
  • Identify managerial potential through simulations and assessment centers.
  • Design and evaluate the effectiveness of recruitment efforts.
  • Understand the legal boundaries of employee screening and invasion of privacy.
• Critical Thinking in Human Resource Management

  This course focuses on developing critical thinking skills to solve complex and multidimensional human resource management problems. The course will emphasize the analysis and discussion of real HR issues and scenarios. The students will be presented with opportunities to apply HR knowledge acquired throughout their different courses to problems that have human, legal, and business dimensions. In turn, they will receive the preparation they need to test for an HR professional certification exam. The course will provide a comprehensive review of the entire body of HR knowledge. Exams and assignments will include sample questions from different sources to reinforce class-room review sessions and topics that may appear on the certification exams. The class will provide classroom reinforcement while utilizing the HRCP program and the SHRM Learning System.

  Learning Objectives:

  • Integrate HRM knowledge acquired in different HR courses into holistic solutions to address multidimensional problems.
  • Recognize and summarize the six functional areas of HR.
  • Define all terms within the six functional areas along with all major HR legislation.
  • Describe the major HR responsibilities within each of the HR functional areas.
  • Demonstrate a high-level of professional proficiency and mastery of the HR body of knowledge.
  • Analyze the HR body of knowledge to formulate appropriate solutions to real, HR/business challenges.
  • See HRM problems from different angles, understanding that there are multiple solutions, each one with both strengths and weaknesses.