Online Programs | Master's Degree Programs | I/O Psychology | General Electives

M.A. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology Degree Program: General Electives Description

General Electives (Choose six credits)

IO 550 Compensation and Benefits Administration (3 credits)
A company's compensation and benefits systems communicate and reinforce the values of an organization. Participants in this course learn how to create a strategic compensation policy that helps attract and retain top talent. Learning outcomes include:

 

  • Structuring a compensation policy
  • Understand and use of different job evaluation methods
  • Understand the value of compensation surveys and how to use them
  • Create market-competitive salary ranges
  • Design internally fair salary structures


IO 551 Legal Issues (3 credits)
Prerequisite(s): IO 520 . This elective gives the student a broad introduction to the area of law and covers Fair Employment Practices and principles related to the Equal Opportunity Commission. Specific laws covered are the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1991, Americans with Disabilities Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Affirmative Action, and the Equal Pay Act. Other issues that will be discussed are negligent hiring, defamation, privacy, disparate impact, and disparate treatment. This course will teach students how to read case law while learning legal jargon and definitions. Students will also learn about the federal court system. Special emphasis will be placed on how to design a legally defensible affirmative action plan.

IO 555 Work Team Dynamics (3 credits)
Prerequisite(s): IO 510. Most organizations use team-based processes to leverage individual strengths and to maximize productivity. Often these teams have fairly complex reporting relationships and no formal leadership structure. The most productive teams are facilitated by skilled process managers who understand how to build teams and to keep them productive over their life span, both as informal and formal leaders. Students will learn how to create effective, productive work teams, manage meetings, and get things done while building long term mutually beneficial relationships. This course is designed to give the participant the skills needed to manage team processes in a way that helps the organization reach its objectives.

IO 559 Talent Management and Succession Planning (3 credits)
Prerequisite(s): IO 400. Today's businesses are undergoing a remarkable and painful revolution brought about by economic pressure, global competition, up-and-down employment, new technology, a diversifying labor force, and customers who demand better service and higher levels of product quality. This class will explore the ways in which large and small organizations are regrouping to meet these challenges and the related psychology underlying effective leadership. The course will examine such topics as "talent management," "succession planning," and high performance human resources strategies. We will distinguish "fad" from "solution," management from leadership, and winner from loser. A central theme in class will focus on aligning internal human resources with business strategy and in turn, strategy with external realities.

IO 561 Consumer Motivation (3 credits)
Consumers today are bombarded by fast-paced, technologically savvy inducements to make spontaneous purchases across media. This course helps students make sense of how potential buyers sort through the stimulus overload. Students learn how to design point-of-sale displays; improve visual merchandising; maintain the integrity of a brand image; and attract and retain customers over time. Individually tailored project work centers on the participant's own work challenges. Learning outcomes include:

 

  • Understanding the basic motivations underlying consumer purchasing behavior
  • Identifying how consumers perceive and respond to product variety and assortment, as well as how individuals vary in their responses to these choices
  • Applying techniques and methods for measuring customer satisfaction, or the degree to which consumers are satisfied or delighted
  • Leveraging how customer goals and identities motivate their buying experiences and preferences
  • Using this information as advertisers, marketers, buyers, merchandisers, and store managers to create increase customer retention and the frequency of unplanned purchases


IO 571 Development and Deployment of Employee Surveys (3 credits)
Employee opinion surveys are powerful management tools that can help strategically enhance productivity, market share, customer satisfaction, and profitability. Participants will learn how to create effective surveys using appreciative inquiry and action planning to measure and implement organizational performance improvement initiatives. Learning outcomes include:

 

  • Creating effective surveys using appreciative inquiry
  • Developing sustainable organizational survey initiatives
  • Using surveys to enhance organizational performance
  • Leveraging survey data to increase organizational effectiveness


IO 722 Production Labor Relations (3 credits)
This course focuses on understanding the role of collective bargaining in building strong, effective organizations. Participants will become familiar with applicable legislation; responsibilities around negotiations and contract adherence; managing multiple bargaining units; and partnering with bargaining unit representatives to make corporate initiatives successful. Learning outcomes include:

 

  • Partnering with bargaining unit leaders
  • Managing the grievance procedure
  • Navigating fair employment and other important labor laws


IO 573 Reaching the Target Market: Qualitative Research Methods (3 credits)
Reaching a specific target market and building market share requires identifying the characteristics of the people in that group, as well as what they look for in products or services that will make them loyal customers. Techniques for collecting and analyzing data covered in this course include:

 

  • An overview of qualitative research techniques
  • Designing, conducting, and managing in-depth interviews; focus groups (on-site, telephone, web) and on-line bulletin boards
  • Ethnographic research
  • Hybrid models that combine interviews and focus groups
  • Preventing, avoiding, and dealing with products associated with qualitative research
  • How to report research findings

 

IO 574 Understanding Customer Perceptions: Quantitative Research Methods (3 credits)
Quantitative (survey) research is crucial to an organization's customer awareness strategy. Surveys make it possible to focus on a specific target market, improve customer satisfaction, and build a brand's image by understanding the public perception of products and services. Learning objectives in this course include:

 

  • When to use survey research
  • Designing, conducting, and managing quantitative research
  • How to ask survey questions that get the information you need
  • How to conduct mail, web, and telephone surveys
  • How to manage, analyze, and interpret survey data
  • How to choose the right types of analysis
  • The impact of sampling techniques and sample size
  • How to report survey findings


IO 575 Legal Issues in Healthcare Leadership (3 credits)
Healthcare administrators must be conversant with the legal framework of the healthcare industry, as well as the ethical issues confronted in various healthcare settings. This knowledge is essential to the operation of an ethical and professional organization. Learning outcomes of this course include:

 

  • Becoming patient-centered
  • Effectively administering licensure and medical malpractice/liability, insurance issues
  • Legal and ethical standards for care and informed consent
  • Protecting medical record confidentiality, patient rights and patient advocacy


IO 576 Strategic Planning in Healthcare Diversity (3 credits)
This course provides a developmental overview of the current healthcare system in the United States, as well as its organizational structure and operation of the various healthcare organizations. Reflecting on the issues faced by major healthcare delivery systems such as clinics, hospitals, long-term care facilities, and healthcare cooperatives, as well as relevant managed care providers, this course takes a long-term look at the strategic planning necessary for the operation of healthcare services in a competitive market. Learning outcomes include:

 

  • Defining the market position and operational role of an organization within the larger health care system
  • Creating a multi year strategic plan
  • Taking a proactive role in planning longer term solutions to current challenges


IO 577 Quality Management in Healthcare Organization (3 credits)
This course provides basic quality management philosophy and strategies to effect positive organizational change. Healthcare leaders are challenged to have the knowledge and skills to assess, evaluate, and design clinical processes; challenge existing methods; rapidly implement new ideas; direct organizational change; and plan for future innovations in a changing healthcare environment. Learning outcomes include:

 

  • Designing, organizing, and analyzing information related to quality improvement
  • Appling problem-solving skills to analyze problems and issues related to quality
  • Designing appropriate organizational structures and teams to implement quality solutions


IO 588 Strategic and Organizational Planning (3 credits)
This course will give students the fundamentals to understand business strategy and organizational effectiveness. The first part of the course will address the concepts and practice of policy formation. Environment analysis and value chain will lead to assessing business level strategy, corporate level strategy, and competitive actions. We will also examine how different cultural perspectives may influence doing business around the world. The second part of the class will emphasize the organization factors in determining and implementing business policy. Organizational planning will be discussed as aligning the business with the environment through strategy, design, operations, supply chain, and culture. Special attention will be paid to how the execution of those functions may vary with differences among cultures. (3 credits)

IO 589 Survey of Quality Management and Process Control (3 credits)
Understanding organizational effectiveness requires knowledge of performance metrics, quality management, and process control. This course will familiarize the student with various methods used for data driven decision making around quality and performance to include: (1) Quality Management Theory (Deming, Juran, Crosby, Taguchi); (2) Six Sigma; (3) Balanced and Strategic Scorecarding; (4) Statistical Quality Control.

For questions concerning any course, or to inquire about the Master’s in Industrial & Organizational Psychology program in general, please call 866-907-4209 or request more information.