Management and Organizations
Degree Types: PhD
The PhD program in Management and Organizations (“MORS”) integrates psychological, sociological, economic, and complex systems perspectives on the study of organizations and their members. Faculty and students pursue research on the behavior of individuals, groups, organizations and groups of organizations, with the goal of advancing theoretical understanding of these phenomena. The MORS program maintains an active training program for researchers with interests in individual decision making, management and organizations, complex systems, and management broadly defined.
The hallmarks of the program are a first year curriculum that provides a broad theoretical background in the disciplines of psychology and sociology that underlies the behavior of individuals, groups, organizations and their environments; students' active involvement in scholarly research from day one; and the breadth of faculty expertise that fosters innovative and high-impact research.
Additional resources:
Learning objective(s)/Students should be able to…
- Learning objectives are provided within the program handbook.
Management and Organizations Courses
MORS 499-0 Independent Study (1-3 Units)
Students who have established superior records and who wish to study more in depth than what is provided in regular courses may register for independent study with a selected instructor. Permission of the instructor and the department is required.
MORS 521-1 Special Topics in Management & Organizations: Micro (1 Unit)
The course covers classic and recent research topics in micro-oriented areas of Management and Organizations. Topics are drawn from social psychology, organizational behavior, and micro-organizational research methods.
MORS 521-2 Special Topics in Management and Organizations: Macro (1 Unit)
The course covers classic and recent research topics in macro-oriented areas of Management and Organizations. Topics are drawn from sociology, organizational theory, and macro-organizational research methods.
MORS 521-3 Special Topics in Management & Organizations: Emerging Topics in Computational Social Science (1 Unit)
Social scientists increasingly have access to data sets of unparalleled scope and complexity. At the same time, there has been remarkable development in fields like network science, data science, and machine learning over the past decade, which offers us a wide range of tools that help us make sense of this data with growing accuracy and robustness. Together, the new data and computational methods offer researchers opportunities to explore and understand human behavior at an unprecedented level of scale and detail, fueling the emergence of an exciting, interdisciplinary field called computational social science. This course surveys the emerging frontiers in the field, open to students from both computational and social science backgrounds. For those new to the social sciences, this is an opportunity to see where your computer science and statistical skills can go, with innovative applications to problems of massive societal interest. For those new to computational methods, this is a chance to develop the tools necessary to make new and exciting contributions, tools that will shape the originality and power of your work for years to come.
MORS 524-1 The Individual and the Organization (1 Unit)
Individual behavior in organizational settings. Topics include recent theory and research on social cognition, decision making, negotiation, groups, norms, fairness, and equity theory.
MORS 524-2 Social Processes in Organizations (1 Unit)
Group behavior in organizational settings. Topics include recent theory and research on group formation, social influence, group composition, group performance, group decision making, diversity, coalitions, intergroup relations and social dilemmas.
MORS 525-1 Behavior in Organizational Systems (1 Unit)
Theory construction, with effort at verification, drawing on empirical studies. Macro-level analysis of internal organizational system problems such as goals, structure, roles, power, authority, communications, and controls.
MORS 525-2 Organizations in Their Environments (1 Unit)
Analysis of organizations as open systems in relation to social, cultural, political and economic environments. The course covers classical, canonical and contemporary approaches in management research and organizational sociology, as well as selective research in other disciplines.
MORS 526-1 Micro-Organizational Research Methods (1 Unit)
This course provides an introduction to research designs and methods for "micro" research in organizations. The purpose to develop students' skill at designing, executing, interpreting, and evaluating micro-organizational and social psychological research. The course addresses both theoretical and practical considerations of research methods, with a special focus on the role of laboratory experiments and other common methods in behavioral research.
MORS 526-2 Macro-Organizational Research Methods (1 Unit)
This course examines the empirical research methods commonly used to test key concepts in macro-organizational theory. It focuses on developing doctoral students' skills in (1) identifying interesting research questions, (2) linking them creatively and appropriately to specific research contexts, measures, and analyses, and then (3) ensuring a clarity of writing at the level of a publishable study.
MORS 590-0 Research (3 Units)
Independent investigation of selected problems pertaining to thesis or dissertation. May be repeated for credit.