Curriculum Design & Competency Areas

Our curricula are designed around six core competency areas. These competency areas cover the essential skills for positive and progressive leadership in organizations.

OM Core Competency Areas

Group Dynamics and Collaboration

Collaboration involves the ability to create a common mission, vision, values and norms, finding common ground while respecting and incorporating human differences. It relies on effective communication, the ability to manage both task productivity and relationships, and the ability to manage conflicts. Students develop conceptual frameworks and skills for collaboration within three contexts: interpersonal work relationships, task groups, and the broader context of social and cultural diversity.

Financial Management

Effective organizational decisions are based on social responsibility and sustainability as well as the bottom line. Students develop technical understanding of financial systems including accounting, financial planning, budgeting, cost-benefit analysis, and cash flow management within the broader organizational context described earlier. With this knowledge, students become more effective planners and decision makers.

Leadership and Self Development

Leadership is an extension of the self and requires ongoing personal development. This involves clarity of and commitment to one’s mission and values, and the development of a conceptual framework and skills to put mission and values into practice. This competency focuses on the core elements of effective leadership in complex environments. Students examine and reflect on their own leadership style from a cognitive, behavioral, and emotional level. Students integrate conceptual knowledge and self awareness within the context of ethical practice, social responsibility, and the entrepreneurial spirit of creative thinking and innovative practice.

Management and Decision-Making

The best vision remains only a vision unless there are effective ways to plan, develop resources, manage knowledge and information, make decisions, implement strategy, and evaluate results. This requires knowledge and managerial skill to effectively coordinate all of the organization’s activities and human resources. Students acquire knowledge and skills in designing, implementing, and evaluating organizational research with particular emphasis on data-driven decision making. Students gain a conceptual foundation and application of management models and implementation strategies and understand how to effectively manage and develop human resources.

Purposeful Systemic Change

In order to thrive in today’s complex and dynamic environment, organizational leaders and members must know how to participate in change within the context of an entire system. They must competently identify and implement strategies to transform organizational structures, processes, and culture. All students have the opportunity to use a variety of strategic intervention techniques and practices to support individual, group, organizational, and community change.

Systems and Strategic Thinking

Social system theories give us a conceptual framework and language to illustrate the complexity and interconnectedness of organizational systems. Students analyze organizational processes and practices in relationship to theories connecting societal, economic, political, and environmental factors. Students develop an ability to see organizations as sets of interdependent components which form meaningful wholes within broader, and often turbulent, environments.

Last Updated: 4/21/08