Experimental course.

Experimental course.

Experimental course.

This course is for those who are interested in gaining insight into how organizations work, why they so often don't work very well and how to be more effective working in and with organizations. The purpose of this course is to make you aware of the hidden assumptions, concepts, and principles that underlie the way organizations are designed. Organizations are designed to induce certain kinds of behaviour. This insight will enable you to see what the organization should be good at and the kinds of limitations and constraints that the design puts on its functioning. If you are aware of the intentions and the limitations, you will be able to be more effective in your own work, more effective in dealing with other organizations as suppliers or customers, and ultimately more effective at designing an organization for which you have responsibility.

The target audience for this course is any student interested in developing a sophisticated set of negotiation, influence, and conflict management skills. Students will learn how to implement negotiation, mediation, and alternative dispute resolution methods to resolve disputes in business and other organizations. We will also consider structural mechanisms by which organizations can manage conflict. There are no perfect formulae for successful negotiations and conflict management, but by understanding and analyzing negotiation and conflict situations systematically, especially with a sophisticated appreciation of the social psychology of conflict, you will learn skills that help you to manage new situations and to decide which strategies are most likely to be effective in different situations.

This course is intended for students who aspire to work effectively with other people. This class provides an opportunity for students to develop their interpersonal skills and learn the basics of effective negotiation. Negotiation is the art and craft by which decisions are made, agreements reached, and disputes resolved between two or more parties. This introductory course has three main aspects. The first is to discuss and apply theories you may find helpful in improving your own negotiation skills. The second, to help you sharpen your skills by having you negotiate with other students in realistic settings. The third, to help you feel more comfortable and confident with the negotiation process. This course is intended to be relevant to the broad spectrum of bargaining problems that are traditionally faced by managers.

This course is designed for graduate students who have an interest in learning about new paradigms for talent management. Students successfully completing this course will better understand the role of talent management practices in the strategic management process, and how to align these practices to support the firm's strategic direction. Students will develop their skills at hiring, evaluating, and managing talent. In our increasingly competitive, dynamic, and global business environment, a firm’s ability to attract, develop, and manage talent has become one of the primary drivers of success and a major source of its competitive advantage. Because the management of talent is becoming less of a functional responsibility and more of manager’s responsibility, the concepts that are learned and the skills that are developed in this course are applicable for many positions in a wide variety of organizations.

Students interested in managing within the "international" context will find this course useful. It will prepare participants in identifying challenges in attracting, motivating and retaining talent for international operations. The main objective of this course is to equip participants with a basic tool set that will make them effective in managing within the international context. Its three principal learning objectives are: 1) To develop a framework within which firm growth in the international economy can be understood; 2) To understand the challenges that talent management poses within an international firm; 3) to learn about risks in managing an international workforce and to develop policies to manage that risk.

By taking an integrative approach, this course explores a key question: What can leaders do to direct their organizations to be fearless in seizing opportunities by enabling a culture wherein various forms of talent can find meaningful engagement? Through this course, participants will finesse their leadership stance and add depth to their toolkit. This entails gaining a firm understanding of the instincts that motivate them, frameworks for decision making that inform how they transition through many different roles, and the range of tools they rely upon for enabling innovation.

Building Businesses for Sustainability — in this course, students will learn from a weekly mix of early-stage executives concerning how to build strategic intent around sustainability and innovation, and how to deliver innovation to market through the design and delivery of business models that generate new, sustainable economic growth. Hence, we will examine sustainability as a source of innovation to drive new growth through sustained, long-term resource efficiency. Students will learn how to analyze industry value chains to identify business model innovation, as a means to either optimize existing customer value propositions or design new business opportunities. Moreover, students will learn about entrepreneurship, by working in groups to build sustainable start-ups. Those interested in a career as an entrepreneur or with companies that have built strategies anchored around sustainability and innovation will find this a very practical approach to gaining meaningful insights and learnings from industry leaders.

Inclusive Global Development: Economic Prosperity through Human Development — the goal of this course is to give students a sound understanding of the processes of globalization and development, both economic and social, such that they can find opportunities in the fast-changing world for business in general but also for their own roles (careers) in it. Course learning is framed by two key paradigms. First, it places equal emphasis on economic growth and social progress as the guiding paradigm for inclusive development. Second, it integrates the theories and frameworks of both business and international development in understanding how economies and societies progress, and how they can do so in an inclusive way. Finally, the course examines these themes through the lens of environmental risks and the need for sustainable models of development.

This course is for students interested in accelerating their careers by better understanding the role of social skills at work, receiving numerical feedback on their social skills (via a 360 assessment and experimental exercises), improving their social skills, and learning how to improve the social skills of the people they work with and manage. Students will gain knowledge of what comprises social intelligence and how these skills affect their own professional activities. Students will appreciate the importance of social intelligence to their own leadership and decision making, and in such diverse organizational experiences as negotiations, decision making, customer service, and marketing. The course adopts a People Analytics approach. As such, students will receive and analyze confidential, numerical feedback about their strengths and weaknesses. Students will develop their own social skills and learn how to develop the social skills of other people.

This is a course about learning to use power and influence as effective tools for understanding your surroundings and achieving your goals. It is a course about getting things done in the real world, where politics and personalities often seem to hinder rather than help you. P&I is a course for those of you who want to make things happen, despite the obstacles that might stand in your way. It is also a course to prepare you to use power responsibly, resist its corruptive perils, and wield it to create positive change in organizations everywhere. This course presents conceptual models, tactical approaches, and self-assessment tools to help you develop your own influence style and understand political dynamics as they unfold around you. By focusing on specific expressions of power and influence, this course gives you the opportunity to observe the effective — and ineffective — uses of power in different organizational contexts and stages of a person’s career. The subject matter will challenge you to define for yourself what will constitute the ethical exercise of power in your life.

This course is intended for students interested in developing a sophisticated skill set in leading teams. Teams expand capability beyond what a single individual can do. For this reason, most businesses could not even function without the teams that accomplish the lofty and complex objectives that business seek to do, with teams found among shop floor production crews, in the executive suite, and virtually, spread across locations, time zones, cultures, and at times languages. Even as they are a way of life in many organizations, misconceptions and difficulties stand in the way of effective teamwork, necessitating a need for leadership. However, leaders, too, can be misguided in the choices they make to lead teams, for example, by breaking morale in their pursuit to achieve performance objectives. This course proposes an effective way to lead teams — the coaching model — to accomplish complex objectives and sustain morale.

This course is for students interested in issues regarding/understanding how to build high performing teams, know how to spot "winners," ways to coach high performing teams and methods for overcoming learned helplessness when a team experiences setbacks.

The course takes an intensive, residential retreat format that is based on approaches taken by many leading organizations in supporting the leadership development of their managers and executives. During the leadership retreat, students will be provided with a number of carefully curated exercises and experiences that are designed to help them identify their typical ways of thinking and acting in important and challenging leadership situations and compare and contrast with their desired ways of thinking and acting in similar situations in the future. On the basis of identified differences between default and desired patterns of behaviour, students will be encouraged to articulate and commit to new and effective patterns of behaviour in ways consistent with their developmental priorities. Student preparation for the intensive retreat will leverage 360 and other assessments as well as prior coaching and pre-work completed by the students that helps them synthesize and clarify professional and academic results achieved and feedback received to date in order to identify their own developmental priorities, Following the retreat, students will be encouraged to action their retreat commitments by identifying their desired ways of thinking, acting, and being a leader in important leadership situations that they will face in the future.

This course is for students who aspire to broaden their thinking and add to their decision-making and problem-solving toolkits. In class, we will discover knowledge about how we think and develop methods for improving our skills in identifying, defining, and solving problems.

Students interested in leadership, social innovation, the social economy, and sustainability will find this course valuable. Students who are interested in the application of core course concepts to real-life problems will also benefit from this course, as students will have the opportunity to work directly with not-for-profit organizations to solve unique business and social challenges. Leading Social Innovation introduces students to the practice of deep learning and offers opportunities to engage with this concept in two ways. First, from having an open dialogue with diverse social entrepreneurs and leaders in the social economy and second, by working with and learning from existing not-for-profit organizations on current issues they are facing.

Leadership development requires learning new ways of being for solving increasingly complex strategic organizational problems. The two-pronged responsibilities of the leader — reaching organizational goals and developing people in their teams — can be a difficult task, particularly when professional, personal, and global pressues compete for one’s inner resources. Becoming a leader requires an inner transformation yet changing oneself in adulthood has proven for many to be a difficult task. This course helps explain how the usual path to change — such as implementing a new set of behaviours through willpower — frequently fails because behaviour is only one part of a larger self-system which includes wants, body/past, emotions, and thoughts, all of which can resist movement. All aspects of the self, though intricately linked, have their own mechanisms of change, and for the whole 'self' to change it requires moving all the parts together. We address the five parts of the self in turn, focusing on exercises that clarify and set them into motion. These learnings are then applied to broader organizational dynamics and means of facilitating healthy organizational change.

1) An external organization offers a project that requires some type of individual or group assessment of their business plan or strategy. The Office of Student Engagement (OSE) will inform students of these opportunities through the HUB. 2) A Rotman faculty member has the need for an individual or group of MBAs to do academic research on a specific topic. Any such opportunities are typically handled between an individual faculty member and a student who has indicated an interest in that area. The faculty member acts as the Academic Supervisor for these types of projects. 3) A student has an interest in a particular area that is not covered by the elective course offerings and seeks out a faculty member to provide academic guidance for a mutually defined project. In such cases, it is the responsibility of the student to find an Academic Supervisor.

In partnership with companies across Canada and abroad, the Rotman School has developed unique, internationally focused independent study project opportunities for MBA students. Under the supervision of a Rotman faculty member, students complete a project outlined by the partner. Projects are an in-depth study of a specific country or region and require international travel. Global Consulting Projects (GCPs) offer students a chance to gain real-time experience and contribute to companies abroad. Registration for GCPs is limited to upper-year students in the electives phase of their program. The application process is competitive and requires submission of an MBA resumé, cover letter, and online application to the OSE. Note that approved projects may not substantially overlap another course.

Rotman OnBoard Fellowship — the Rotman OnBoard Fellowship Program pairs talented upper-year Rotman MBA candidates with Toronto-based non-profit boards and charities for a 6- to 8-month fellowship. OnBoard fellows are permitted to sit in on board meetings and work closely with a board mentor to complete a strategic project based on capital deployment or on the organization's needs. Rotman OnBoard provides a unique way for resource-constrained organizations to access valuable business skills in Accounting, Consulting, Finance, Marketing, Human Resources, and other functional areas from some of Canada's top MBA talent. A goal of the program is to develop students’ governance and leadership skills while contributing their time and talent to select non-profit organizations.

CityLab (equivalent to 0.5 FCE, or half of one full-course equivalent credit) pairs talented teams of MBA candidates (second-year FT MBA students and third-year Morning and Evening MBA students) with local Toronto organizations such as Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) for an eight-month consulting engagement. Project teams act as a consulting and advisory resource to the organization and complete a strategic project based on its needs. CityLab aims to make a meaningful impact in a local neighbourhood and in the greater City of Toronto by providing a unique way for BIAs to access valuable business skills in Accounting, Consulting, Finance, Human Resources, Marketing, and other functional areas from Canada’s top MBA talent. This Rotman initiative is directly aligned with the University of Toronto's top priorities which include leveraging our urban location for the mutual benefit of the university and the city; expanding sustainable outreach and partnerships with local municipalities, civic, and neighbourhood organizations; and strengthening relationships with residents’ associations in the city. It also manages to fulfill the university's desire to be globally engaged by working with entrepreneurs who have recently immigrated to Canada.

Impact Investing in an Early-Stage Enterprise — you will learn about early-stage impact investing, including what impact investing is and how fast it is growing, how to develop an impact investing thesis, source early-stage impact investments, conduct due diligence, and prepare and deliver an investment memo and recommendation to an investment committee. Through classes and online materials, you will learn about investing in early-stage companies with social or environmental impact through readings, industry resources and guest speakers. You will also learn how to be an investment analyst by participating in intensive, team-based group work to source, assess and pitch a real early-stage impact company to an investment committee. This course is taught in parallel with the Turner MBA Impact Investing Network and Training (TMIINT) program, a joint initiative of the Wharton and the Bridges Impact Foundation. Students who successfully complete all requirements of the course will also receive a certificate from TMIINT.

Global Practicums provide a framework for understanding the opportunities and risks associated with the emergence of major new markets in the world economy. Trips include stopovers in major cities where students will learn firsthand what it is like to do business in those regions. Participants will also partake in cultural and tourist activities. Site visits to local, international, and Canadian companies provide students with a well-rounded overview of how business is conducted in the country.

By taking an integrative approach, this course explores a key question: What can leaders do to direct their organizations to be fearless in seizing opportunities by enabling a culture wherein various forms of talent can find meaningful engagement? Through this course, participants will finesse their leadership stance and add depth to their toolkit. This entails gaining a firm understanding of the instincts that motivate them, frameworks for decision making that inform how they transition through many different roles, and the range of tools they rely upon for enabling innovation.

GettingItDone® provides participants with a Comprehensive Management System, complete with over 20 proven Leadership/Management Effectiveness Tools, used for developing a winning strategy, getting organizational alignment to that strategy, deploying that strategy, and then consistently and continuously improving. This course is designed for anyone who plays or plans to play a Leadership role and who wishes to achieve results through improved personal, team, and organizational effectiveness. This course is designed for anyone who plans on Getting It (the right things) Done effectively and without wasting time.

The course should be of interest to future consultants, general managers, investment analysts, and entrepreneurs. This is a course designed to make you a better strategic decision maker and to integrate all the skills you have acquired in your career and at the RSM. The course is built on some high level frameworks, such as LogicWorks, that enhance your capacity to reason logically, to identify effective solutions and to learn continuously from your own experiences.