Master's of Human Resource Management (MBA) Program Outline

This non-credit orientation is a foundation-building experience that introduces and refreshes the skills necessary for success in your Master's Degree Program. You'll learn how to navigate ProQuest, Ashworth College's online library, and review the distinguishing characteristics of academic journals and other publications. Internet research skills are polished enabling you to identify credible and unbiased Web sites for your research. Emphasis is placed on submission requirements, project structures, and writing formats used throughout your coursework, and APA writing style. The final portion of this course provides you the opportunity to research and explore the various career fields in the world of Business Administration.

Plan for increased productivity. Learn about the organization, its structure, and its relationship to the economic, political, and social environments surrounding it. Examine theories and guidelines for dealing with geopolitical events, consumer trends, and new developments in information technology. You'll study a model of strategic management using the 'strategic audit' as an approach to addressing complex organization-wide issues.

Discover how marketing serves as a foundation for making critical decisions related to identifying customers, delineating which needs to satisfy, developing products and services that satisfy these needs, setting prices, using appropriate communications, staging sales promotions, managing the sales force, selecting channels of distribution, maintaining funding and coordinating partnerships. Concepts presented are directed to the marketplace realities of the 21st century, including global marketing.

Integrate accounting data into your decision-making process. Managerial accounting is an essential tool that enhances managers' abilities to make sound decisions. You'll examine concepts and procedures of managerial accounting from the user's viewpoint, how they are typically applied in real-world situations, and see the role they play in improving the decision-making process within all types of organizations. Also discussed are issues in cost basics, cost management systems, planning and control, and product costing.

Develop your leadership potential. Discover the qualities, talents, and vision that leaders need to survive and grow in a changing world. You'll examine how today's theories of leadership and motivation have evolved, and how leadership concepts and motivational techniques are applied in a wide variety of business environments. Case studies reveal how executives and other decision makers lead, motivate and succeed.

Link human resource activities to business strategies. Examine specific management challenges faced by actual firms and the role of human resources. Learn about recruitment, employment planning and forecasting, testing, interviewing, training, organizing teams, appraising performance, compensation, financial incentives, benefits, labor relations, collective bargaining and more.

Use financial data to your advantage. Learn what financial disclosures contain and how they effect management decision-making, plus the principles and economic factors behind publicly reported disclosures, their limitations and constraints, and how to analyze them. You'll examine research methods and how they help you convert raw data into useful information that influences decisions about financial performance, wealth creation and economic valuation.

Design and manage successful staffing processes. Learn the secrets of effective staffing procedures in light of evolving strategic, technological, legal and practical issues confronting organizations. Explore staffing models, legal compliance, affirmative action, internal and external recruitment and selection strategies, retention and staffing system management.

Train and develop the talents of employees. Examine proven training and development practices, focusing on technology, knowledge sharing, career enhancement and employee motivation. Analyze the components of instructional design in light of cultural diversity, skill obsolescence and outplacement. Learn how to assess needs, evaluate training outcomes, use e-learning, and ensure that training relates to effective business strategy.

Design and administer pay structures. This course culls beliefs from facts, wishful thinking from results and opinions from research to help you make strategic choices in managing compensation. You'll examine the elements of compensation and pay structure theory, job analysis, job evaluation, competitiveness, pay-for-performance plans, benefit options, the impact of unions, budgeting and legal issues.

Understand employee benefit options. A detailed analysis of the various elements of today's benefits programs, how they function and under what circumstances they are used. You'll learn the advantages and limitations of different types of retirement plans, health insurance programs, life and disability insurance, social security programs and more. You'll also examine options for accommodation and enhancement benefits such as flexible scheduling, paid time-off from work, educational assistance and more. This course also includes an analysis of strategic planning involved in the administration of benefits programs, and pertinent benefits laws and regulations.

Stay competitive through internationalization. Globalization has challenged the competitive advantage of organizations, demanding the transfer of know-how not only from the parent company to the developing world, but among subsidiaries in an international network. This course establishes this premise and examines how human resource managers can respond to global challenges in socially responsible ways and develop innovative leaders for tomorrow.

Use your business skills and knowledge in thought-provoking case studies. You'll begin by learning the fundamentals of economics - the study of the allocation of resources to satisfy both needs and wants. Then, you'll analyze case studies on a variety of businesses from a small company to an entire industry - set in the environments of local, national, and global economies. Conclude with a Capstone Project and Exam.