Leading People and Organizations (Undergraduate) (LPBU)

LPBU 3223. Principles of Management. (3 Credits)

In Principles of Management, you will learn about why good management is critical for successful people, teams, organizations, and societies. This unique course centers all around the concept of excellence, or what the Jesuits term magis. This is the idea that, through self-reflection, we can aspire to always do more and do better for the common good in order to achieve human flourishing in business and society writ large. Although intelligence and technical skills are certainly important for good leadership, being an excellent leader requires more than these skills alone. A significant determinant of leadership effectiveness is understanding how people (including ourselves) work. Therefore, this class is designed to introduce you to the principles of management as both a body of knowledge and a personal practice. You will deepen your knowledge about organizational behavior, and you will learn what you can do personally to improve your own effectiveness as a teammate, employee, and leader. An overarching theme of the course is self-awareness. Throughout the entire course, you will engage in self-reflection, mindfulness practices, and interactive teamwork in order to become an effective change agent in your journey to human excellence.

Attribute: BUMI.

LPBU 3226. Exploring Entrepreneurship. (3 Credits)

An introductory course that allows students to discover and grasp the nuances of entrepreneurship—particularly how to think, feel, and act differently to achieve entrepreneurial success, the three cornerstones of the Entrepreneurship program. Using a variety of reading assignments, case studies, and interactive projects, students will learn how to identify and evaluate potential business ideas, push the limits of their imagination and creativity, challenge the status quo, and learn to embrace change.

Attributes: BLEB, ENT, NMAC, NMDD, SOIN.

LPBU 3227. Innovation and Resilience. (3 Credits)

This course focuses on the process of innovation, including the resilience required to weather inevitable ambiguity, risk, mistakes, and even failures along the journey. Topics include: identifying opportunities, managing creativity, evaluating ideas, decision-making in uncertain environments, and resilience.

Attributes: 0PMA, ENT, NMAC, NMDD, SOIN.

Prerequisites: MGBU 3226 or LPBU 3226.

LPBU 3233. ST:Start-Up Venture Experience. (3 Credits)

Intern duty and weekly seminar during which students analyze their work experience with a faculty member. Selected readings, case analysis, and written projects. The course will be taught in a business incubator, and include interaction with startup entrepreneurs. The focus will be real world exposure to the issues and uncertainty that exists for a startup with limited resources.

Attributes: ENT, PRQU.

LPBU 3234. ST: Leading for Impact. (3 Credits)

In this course, students will delve into some of the world's most pressing social and environmental issues and learn how they can take the lead on moving toward innovative solutions to address them. The course will examine existing business models that are already generating a positive impact, guiding students toward using their own creative ideas to achieve social impact. Using a systems-thinking approach, students will delve deep into a social or environmental issue that matters to them and explore, probe, and research all of its connecting elements and factors. As part of the course, students will participate in Map the System, a global competition sponsored by the University of Oxford. The course and the competition will foster global connections and use a learning-first approach to social change. Students from any discipline are encouraged to enroll.

Attributes: 0PMA, ENT, SOIN.

LPBU 3235. ST:Inside Tech Ventures. (3 Credits)

This experiential course is designed to give students the opportunity to gain an in-depth look and understanding of tech-based ventures from inception to exit. The merging of Entrepreneurship and Technology is - and will continue to be - the foundation of business for the foreseeable future. The course includes a one week intensive in Silicon Valley (required) hosted by NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center. The overall objective is for students to be better prepared to take on a leadership role in a tech-based venture to maximize profitability and impact.

Attributes: ENT, SOIN.

LPBU 3236. Personal Development: The Start–Up Called You. (3 Credits)

Choosing a meaningful career or "discovering one's calling" can be a challenging and tricky process requiring self–awareness and leadership skills to navigate a path to career success. In this course, a follow–up to The Principles of Management, students learn theoretical frameworks along with research–based methodologies and techniques to address these challenges effectively. Course objectives include: utilizing insights regarding one's talents and career aspirations to create a personal brand, conveying one's unique value, improving networking, and creating opportunities.

Attributes: 0PMI, ENT.

Prerequisites: MGBU 3223 or LPBU 3223.

LPBU 3237. ST: Leadership Forum. (1.5 Credits)

LPBU 3430. ST: Sustainable Business. (3 Credits)

Foundations of Sustainable Business. This course will provide a general overview of the problems and opportunities provided by the challenges of sustainable management. Students will learn what it means to manage for planet, people and profit simultaneously. In the first part of the class, students will be exposed to the context of business in the 21st century and learn how strategies of the 20th century need to be rethought. In the second part of the class, students will examine the traditional perspectives on the organization (business) and how it needs to be rethought to successfully address the challenges of sustainable management. We will examine business strategy, supply chain management, and the supporting functions of finance, accounting, marketing, communications and information technology.

Attributes: 0CMG, 0PMA, ENST, ENT, ESEC, ESEL, PJEN, PJST, PRQU, SOIN.

LPBU 3432. ST: Modern Economics for a Sustainable World. (3 Credits)

The goal of this course is to demonstrate a novel perspective on economics that allows for well-being for all on a healthy planet. Students will learn the philosophical and religious as well as the modern scientific basics for sustainable development. This course focuses on applications of modern economics for global challenges.

Attributes: ENST, ESEC, ESEL, SOIN.

LPBU 3433. Industrial Relations and Personnel Management. (3 Credits)

An advanced treatment of issues, problems and techniques in personnel management. Findings from the behavioral sciences are applied to the problems and practices of human resource management in organizations. The course utilize small group and organization-theory as frameworks for analyzing the latest methods in the areas of selection, training, compensation, collective bargaining and performance measurement.

LPBU 3436. ST: Capitalism and Its Alternatives. (3 Credits)

What is the philosophical foundation of capitalism? What are the viable alternatives to capitalism? This course considers answers to these questions from the fields of economics, political theory, and humanistic management. Authors covered include Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and FA Hayek.

LPBU 3446. ST:Social Entrepreneurship. (3 Credits)

This course discusses ways of creating social value through the principles of entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is a rapidly developing movement that is blurring the boundaries between government, business, and the NGO sector. Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society's most pressing social problems. Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem, spread the solution, and change the system by persuading entire societies to take new leaps. We study examples of successful social entrepreneurs, such as Mohammad Yunus (Noble Laureate, 2006), and identify patterns that promote positive social change. We will also engage in Social Business Plan writing based on the students' project ideas.

Attributes: 0PMA, ENT, PJEC, PJST, PRQU, SOIN.

LPBU 3449. Leading And Investing in Change. (3 Credits)

This course is designed to provide students with the skills and knowledge to influence and lead social impact in business and generally through a specifically crafted case and exercise. By the conclusion of this course, each student should have a robust toolbox of frameworks and concepts inherent to social impact and social change, and a clear understanding of capital deployment as it relates to impact investments. This class utilizes a digital gaming exercise designed for this type of course. The case $50 Million for Change requires students to step into the role of a player in the impact funding mix in a fictional city and state.

LPBU 3450. Research in Management: Managing Professional Relationships. (3 Credits)

This course introduces students to research in impression management within the organizational behavior field in management. It aims to improve students' understanding of scholarly research effort in defining impression management concepts, theories, methodological techniques, and findings, as well as to improve students' analysis and usage of impression management in the workplace. This course is also designated as Fitness Integrated Learning (FIL), which is an innovative way of teaching and learning course material while students are engaged in a physical activity of spinning. The class will take place in the Spinning studio at the McGinley Center. Students will be riding stationary bikes at their own effort level throughout the duration of the class.

Attribute: 0PMA.

Prerequisites: MGBU 3223 or LPBU 3223.

LPBU 3451. ST: Business Trends & Disruption. (3 Credits)

This course focuses on the inevitable in business: change. In today’s business world, your company/industry is either doing the disrupting or being disrupted. Students will do a deep dive into business and technology trends in a variety of industries to learn how to 1) ride the wave of current and future trends, and 2) embrace disruption. The skills, knowledge, and mindset acquired will position students to be impactful thought leaders and change makers.

Attribute: ENT.

Prerequisite: LPBU 3223.

LPBU 3452. ST: Mindful Leadership. (3 Credits)

This course offers students understanding and application of mindful strategies for leaders. The curriculum provides knowledge of how the brain works, how emotions and conflict can disrupt critical thinking, and frameworks for successful collaboration. Students learn about self-reflection, self-regulation, and how mindful leadership can be applied in a variety of professional and global contexts. Mindful practices serve as a foundation for dialogue, collaboration, and change.

Attribute: 0PMI.

Prerequisite: LPBU 3223.

LPBU 3454. ST: Design Thinking. (3 Credits)

Design thinking is an iterative problem-solving process of discovery, ideation, and experimentation that, when combined with business models, provides decision-makers with effective tools for innovation and transformation. This hands-on course will guide students in the use of a variety of design-based tools and techniques to clarify and solve human-centered organizational, business, and public service challenges.

Attribute: ENT.

LPBU 3455. ST: Research for Consulting. (3 Credits)

In this course, students will explore various analytical frameworks for problems companies experience (i.e., environmental challenges, social legitimacy challenges, cost pressures, positioning challenges, human motivation challenges etc.). They will do research to apply the various frameworks and analytical skills needed to address such problems. Students ultimately will develop their research skills and present potential solutions to various sets of problems companies typically hire consultants for. This course will also be designated as Fitness Integrated Learning (FIL), where students will have the option to ride on stationary bikes at their own speed during class lectures.

Attribute: 0CMG.

LPBU 3456. ST: Foundations of Consulting. (3 Credits)

This course focuses on building skills relevant for consulting jobs. It provides an overview of the consulting industry, its job profiles, and the consulting process. It focuses on managing professional relationships for consulting engagements, including creating offers, pitching offers, project management, team dynamics, leadership, and presentation skills.

LPBU 3457. ST: Applied Innovation Consulting. (3 Credits)

This unique, “hands-on” course that many refer to as “an internship on campus” will give you the chance to experience what it’s like to work as a consultant. You’ll be provided with a real-life consulting engagement and along with a team of your peers, be responsible for working directly with your client organization, helping them address pressing business challenges with social impact implications. The course projects are set up for you to gain valuable expertise in the stages of the consulting process. In lieu of a final exam, at the semester’s end, each team presents their research results and recommendations in the form of a written report and an oral presentation to their client organization. Clients have included Juice Press, Stratasys, Lafayette 148, the Responsible Business Coalition, Sheltersuit, EggXYt, and the Resilience Center for Veterans and Their Families (and the USVA).

Attributes: 0CMG, 0PMA.

LPBU 3458. ST:Awareness & Self Leaders. (3 Credits)

This course will take a deep dive academically and experientially into what we know about individual differences and managing ourselves to create benefit for ourselves and the society we are embedded in.

Attribute: 0PMI.

LPBU 3461. ST: Sustainable Fashion. (3 Credits)

This course delves deeply into the principles that define sustainable business, as well as the impact areas that are considered both the cause, and areas of cure, within fashion’s environmental, social, and economic footprint. It is through this greater understanding of the forces in sustainability that a more comprehensive set of strategic decisions can be considered in the planning and marketing of business within the fashion industry’s transforming reality. Through using different readings, cases, and assignments, students will master the analysis of more deeply structured marketing strategies that filter decisions through a broader lens of people, planet, and profit.

Attributes: ENST, ESEC, ESEL.

LPBU 3550. ST:Film,Character&Leadership. (3 Credits)

This course uses the inherent power of the cinema to better clarify the topics of character and character-based leadership.

Prerequisites: MGBU 3223 or LPBU 3223.

LPBU 4001. Fair Trade and Microfinance. (3 Credits)

This course examines the structure of Fair Trade as an alternative form of commerce which specifically expresses solidarity with the poor. The course is concerned with running all aspects of a small Fair Trade business. The class acts as employees on a team which seeks to make profit sustainably, yet effectively. Readings support a greater understanding of the realities of poverty.

Attributes: ENT, GLBB, PJEC, PJST, SOIN.

LPBU 4003. Spirituality and Fair Trade. (3 Credits)

This course is designed to ignite a spiritual awareness of economic injustice which ultimately motivates action, large or small. We begin by exploring the mechanisms of poverty, and looking at alternative forms of commerce. We look at why Fair Trade is able to answer some of the human rights issues associated with poverty. Readings highlight spiritual leaders from the past, and the models for action that their life stories provide. How should business students evaluate their lives and their careers? What might "solidarity with the poor" mean, in a variety of contexts.

Attributes: GLBB, PJEC, PJRJ, PJST.

LPBU 4004. Entrepreneurship and Fair Trade. (3 Credits)

This course focuses on the entrepreneurial response to economic injustice, as expressed in the Fair Trade movement. The class will be divided into teams, to consult with emerging Fair Trade businesses in the New York area, ongoing throughout the semester. Against this backdrop we will learn from problem solving methods of entrepreneurs who have involved themselves with using business structures as a means of fighting poverty.

Attributes: ENT, GLBB, PJEC, PJST.

LPBU 4005. ST:Fair Trade Entrepreneurship. (3 Credits)

Fair trade is a global response to social injustice and poverty. Whether it is capital for "startups" or markets for fair trade coffee, the fair trade movement promotes socially and environmental responsibility business practices here and abroad. This course reviews the fair trade movement's successes and failures to find alternatives to business as usual that reduce poverty and build a sustainable global economy. Students focus on country specific examples of fair trade and microfinance social innovation that reduce poverty by creating viable livelihoods. Marketing, insurance, finance and management can all be applied to build a socially justice and sustainable global economy. "We urgently need a humanism capable of bringing together the different fields of knowledge, including economics, in the service of a more integral and integrating vision," Pope Francis argues in his recent Encyclical Letter. This course explores this vision.

Attributes: ENT, IPE, PJEC, PJST, SOIN.

LPBU 4006. ST: Launch Your Startup. (3 Credits)

Come see where theory meets practice! This hands-on, applied course focuses on the creation, evaluation, and development of YOUR business venture. In this course you will create/refine your business model as well as develop, test, and validate your business and customer assumptions. You will also take a deep dive into product and market analysis, your go-to-market strategies, team selection, management, financing, legal considerations, and more! Students who complete the class will have developed comprehensive new venture-planning documents, an investor pitch deck, a minimum viable product, and a validated business model. To enroll in the class, you must have a business or well-developed business idea, which will be presented on the first day of class.

Attribute: ENT.

Prerequisite: LPBU 3226.

LPBU 4440. ST: Advanced Management. (3 Credits)

This course fulfills the requirements for the management concentration and mandatory course requirement for the secondary concentration in Personal Leadership and Development (PDL). Through case studies and current events, we will explore and identify the most pressing global challenges facing leaders today and the skills that will help them lead others and organizations toward a sustainable future. You will gain foundational knowledge in organizational dynamics as well as changemaking skills for teams and organizations. The course also affords you the opportunity to sharpen your consulting skills using the Burke-Litwin model to diagnose organizational performance issues and recommend solutions for a member company of the Business Roundtable.

Attribute: 0CMG.

Prerequisite: LPBU 3223.

LPBU 4443. ST: Personal Leadership. (3 Credits)

This is a course that covers the topic of leadership in a personal way. The class starts with the premise that leadership is personal because it is manifested and comes through you, a human with a unique persona. The second premise is that generic lectures about attributes of leaders are less useful than helping you find an approach to leadership that fits your strengths. This helps you spend your time trying to become the best version of yourself rather than a mediocre copy of someone else. Not only do we all not have to lead the same way, followership is just fine as well and perhaps you learn a style of followership that works for you and adds value to others as well. The goal of the course is to help students develop their own style for their careers and their lives. The core of the course is the contribution that has been made to the leadership literature from the domain of research on emotional intelligence.

Attribute: 0PMI.

LPBU 4466. ST: Global Immersion Israel. (3 Credits)

The course provides students the first-hand opportunity to explore a vibrant business environment of Israeli organizations. Students are introduced to the management, marketing, and organizational practices across start-up, national, and international organizations within the country of Israel. Through the examination of impactful environmental factors, the role of national cultural, historical, and political setting are analyzed on how they shape and drive the unique business landscape in Israel. The course is a combination of in-class and online learning during the semester and culminating in a global immersion trip to Israel during the winter break.

LPBU 4467. ST: Global Immersion: Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Rwanda. (3 Credits)

In this course, students will examine the impact of Rwanda’s history, politics, culture, and economy on the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Students will receive training and preparation on the challenges that startup entrepreneurs typically face, particularly in developing economies, and develop innovative solutions to address them. Students will travel to Rwanda during the break to gain firsthand knowledge of the context while applying what they have learned, working in teams on consulting engagements with selected entrepreneurs connected with Westerwelle Startup Haus Kigali.

Attributes: ENT, GLBB, SOIN.

Prerequisite: LPBU 3223.

LPBU 4476. ST: Cross Cultural Negotiation. (3 Credits)

This course exposses students to the legal, ethical, and practical challenges of negotiating globally. It develops negotiation skill sets and enhances appreciation of the impacts of cultural difference and international institutional settings on business negotiations. Case-based simulations offer the opportunity to refine in practice the concepts learned in reading and films. Students will emerge from the course better prepared to work in multi-cultural teams and business settings.

Attributes: 0PMA, GLBB, INST, ISIN.

LPBU 4488. ST: Sports Management. (3 Credits)

An in-depth treatment of special topics in sports management, that integrates the sport industry and strategic management, will be explored through the use of case studies, lectures, and projects. Sport management programs that train people for positions in such areas as professional sports, coaching, college athletics, fitness centers, officiating, marketing, and sporting goods manufacturing will be highlighted.

LPBU 4706. ST: Honors Thesis II - Mgt. (3 Credits)

Selection of honors thesis topic. Monitoring of progress on the thesis over the term. A module in advanced communication is included. Students will complete their thesis and present them to the seminar.

LPBU 4999. Independent Study. (1 to 3 Credits)

Independent Study.