Master of Business Administration – Human Resource Management Concentration
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- Master of Business Administration – Human Resource Management Concentration

Description
The Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree program focuses on relevant business concepts, application of business research skills, and job-related behaviors critical for success in today’s competitive environment.
The MBA program provides the training and expertise needed to gain an edge in an ever-evolving business climate. Courses in the MBA program integrate strategies and theories aligned with organizational operations and business structures.
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY’s online Master of Business Administration with a concentration in human resource management focuses on the methods in which students can change and improve upon the organization’s effectiveness and productivity. This graduate degree program is well-suited for individuals who seek to lead these initiatives within an organization.
This degree program aligns with the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) HR Curriculum Guidebook and Templates. THE AU is also a certified Top Employer by the HR Certification Institute® (HRCI®).
Upon completion of the program, students should be able to do the following:
- Evaluate the concepts of professional integrity.
- Analyze processes that influence the control and management of organizations.
- Explain how key international factors affect business.
- Apply the various theories and methods associated with employee motivation and morale.
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Curriculum
The Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree program focuses on relevant business concepts, the application of business research skills, and job-related behaviors critical for success in today’s competitive environment. The MBA program provides the training and expertise needed to gain an edge in an ever-evolving, business climate. Courses in the MBA program integrate strategies and theories aligned with organizational operations and business structures.
Equips students with the skills, knowledge, and competencies required to perform sound human resource (HR) management practices effectively as well as understand how HR interacts with organizational strategy. This knowledge of HR management systems is needed to maximize the efforts of organizational effectiveness and improve productivity, while reducing risk to the organization.
Major Requirements | Total Required Semester Hours: 24
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Description
Analysis of how sociology can be used to study sport in society. Focuses on sports and sport-related behaviors as they occur in social and cultural contexts and uses concepts, theories, and research as tools that enable students to examine sports as a part of culture.
Objectives
- Describe the sociology of sports and reasons it should be studied.
- Relate modern social theories to better management and decision-making in sports.
- Evaluate the impact sociology of sports has on decision-making in high school and college sports.
- Describe how organized sports programs affect the socialization of children.
- Discuss principles and concepts of deviance and violence in sports.
- Assess societal issues that result from gender, race, and ethnic diversity in sports.
- Discuss commercialization of sports such as the role of money and power.
- Explain the global impact of sports.
PreRequisites
None
Textbook(s)
Sports in society: Issues and controversies (Rev: 11th ed.)
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (2015)
Author: Coakley, J. J.
ISBN: 978-0-07-802252-4
Price: $162.18
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
Examines the theoretical and practical implications of marketing in the sports industry by presenting a framework to help explain and organize the strategic marketing process. Offers a growing appreciation on the globalization of sports and an understanding of the ethical issues emerging in sports and their impact on sport marketing decisions.
Objectives
- Provide a framework or conceptual model of the strategic marketing process that can be applied to the sports industry.
- Evaluate the growing emphasis on the globalization of sport.
- Analyze current research in the area of sport marketing and interpret the results.
- Explain the ethical issues that are emerging in sports and their impact in sport marketing decisions.
- Offer a balanced treatment of all aspects of sports marketing at all levels by listing up-to-date treatments.
- Explain the concepts and theories unique to sports marketing and discuss basic principles in the context of sports.
- Interpret comprehensive coverage of the functions of sports marketing.
PreRequisites
None
Textbook(s)
Sports marketing: A strategic perspective (Rev: 4th ed.)
Publisher: Prentice Hall (2009)
Author: Shank, M. D.
ISBN: 978-0-13-228535-3
Price: $125.26
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
Reviews the theory and practice of fundraising in sport-related fields and provides specific, helpful ideas for conducting fundraising activities in sports business. Combines fundraising theory and practical advice so learners can organize and develop fundraising plans.
Objectives
- Explain the fundraising process, to include the importance of fundraising.
- Explain the nature and principle of sport business.
- Identify different types of fundraising methods.
- Develop practical fundraising plans in sport programs and/or events.
- Discuss varied methods for implementing potential fundraising plans.
- Create a fundraising plan that includes how to induce potential sponsors.
- Recognize publicity and promotional tactics.
- Discuss personnel management in the operation of fundraising projects.
- Examine key legal issues that include, but are not limited to, liability concerns, risk management, and insurance matters.
PreRequisites
None
Textbook(s)
Fundraising for sport and athletics
Publisher: Fitness Information Technology (2012)
Author: Leonard, R.
ISBN: 978-1-935412-33-5
Price: $74.10
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
A study of the principles of efficient management and leadership concepts as applicable to the sport industry. Focuses on principles and techniques of management relating to programs, facilities, special events, and personnel. Topics include key personnel issues in sport management situations; ethics, law, and governance in sport management; the role of the marketing process in sport administration; and economics, accounting, and budgeting.
Objectives
- Analyze the field of sport management.
- Examine sport management and governance.
- Explain the importance of ethics in sport sociology for sport managers.
- Classify issues in the sport business industry, to include social, cultural, legal, and economic.
- Explain the process of consumer decision-making in sport management.
- Describe organizational behavior in the context of the sport industry.
- Discuss career opportunities in the sport industry.
- Analyze the efficient management and leadership strategies used in labor-management relations to resolve disputes involving professional sports teams.
- Summarize the influence of marketing on sport management.
PreRequisites
None
Textbook(s)
Contemporary sport management (Rev: 5th ed.)
Publisher: Human Kinetics (2014)
Author: Pedersen, P. M., & Thibault, L. (Eds.)
ISBN: 978-1-4504-6965-4
Price: $116.48
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
A comprehensive look at the skills necessary to successfully manage an emergency incident. Using nationally accepted standards, students analyze and apply the strategic considerations necessary to be successful on the fire ground. In addition, students gain valuable knowledge of the NIMS (National Incident Management System) as well as how to employ the Incident Command System (ICS) on the fire ground.
Objectives
- Identify the fundamentals of emergency incident systems such as Incident Command System (ICS) and National Incident Management System (NIMS).
- Discuss the responsibilities of emergency response personnel.
- Analyze the functions of command.
- Assess organizational health during a large-scale event to ensure appropriate personnel assignments.
- Compare cue-based and classical decision-making models.
- Describe how incident management is impacted by fire behavior.
- Summarize strategies for successful incident management on the scene of an emergency incident.
PreRequisites
None
Textbook(s)
Firefighting strategies and tactics (Rev: 3rd ed.)
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Learning (2015)
Author: Angle, J. S., Gala, M. F., Jr., Harlow, T. D., Lombardo, W. B., & Maciuba, C. M.
ISBN: 9781284036435
Price: $97.12
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
Provides a solid background of the key factors that influence international trade and the manner in which economic policy affects both trade flow and the nature of economic activity. Relationships between trade and growth, effects of labor and capital movements between countries, and the key factors that influence relative costs between countries are also examined.
Objectives
- Examine why countries trade.
- Discuss how trade affects production and consumption.
- Define important terms in international trade.
- Describe the major theories and models used in international trade.
- Analyze how importation of goods will raise consumption and lower production in the importing country.
- Examine the recent trends in international trade.
- Compare balanced economic growth and biased economic growth.
- Distinguish the effects of trade, industry and other import restrictions.
- Examine how firm-specific advantages can overcome inherent disadvantages of international trade.
- Discuss international trade policies and agreements.
PreRequisites
None
Textbook(s)
International trade (Rev: 4th ed.)
Publisher: Worth (2017)
Author: Feenstra, R. C., & Taylor, A. M.
ISBN: 9781319061739
Price: $197.87
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
Provides an introduction to theoretical, applied, and professional issues associated with the management of human resources within organizations. The course seeks to familiarize students with facets of the human resource management function and to explore a range of theoretical and applied perspectives on how human resource management impacts performance at both the organizational and individual levels.
Outcomes
- Summarize a strategic approach to human resource management.
- Explain managing work flows and the role of job analysis.
- Assess equal opportunity and the legal environment.
- Explain the benefits of effectively managing diversity.
- Generalize the HR functions of recruiting and selecting employees.
- Assess career development.
- Explain the importance of effectively managing compensation.
- Recommend the key objectives of rewarding performance.
- Explain why organizations design and administer benefits for employees.
- Assess the importance of developing effective employee relations.
- Discriminate between the implications of employees’ rights and effectively managing discipline to organizational success.
- Discuss working with organized labor.
- Assess the importance of workplace safety and health.
- Explain the challenges in managing international HRM.
- Explain managing employee separations, downsizing, and Outplacement.
- Compare and discriminate the purposes of appraising and managing employee performance.
- Explain the importance of training to organizational success.
PreRequisites
None
Textbook(s)
Managing human resources (Rev: 6th ed.)
Publisher: Prentice Hall (2010)
Author: Gomez-Mejia, L. R., Balkin, D.B., & Cardy, R. L.
ISBN: 9780136093527
Price: $151.45
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
Meets the critical thinking, written, and presentation outcomes of the MPA program. Students demonstrate integrative knowledge and comprehension of the theoretical constructs and methodological tools that they have learned in each of the previous MPA core courses. Students apply theory to practice and evaluate the usefulness of technology and e-government, e-learning, and e-training in a public sector context. Students develop a final project based on current and near future technological innovation and evaluate the usefulness of the technological innovation to enhancing the service provision of a governmental or nonprofit organization or agency.
Outcomes
- Critique theories to effectively manage the mission and goals in public organizations.
- Evaluate issues of diversity, equality, and equity in public service organizations.
- Differentiate functions of domestic and international public organizations in various democracies around the world.
- Evaluate challenges of crafting public policies in a participatory government.
- Assess public administration scholarship through transparent and collaborative governance.
- Discuss real-world problems facing public service organizations using e-government, e-commerce, and elearning tools.
- Relate major challenges facing the field of public administration and public managers to career development.
- Formulate solutions to real-world problems in public administration through integrated knowledge and comprehension of ethics, public policies, technology, and human and data resources.
PreRequisites
- PUA 5303
- PUA 5306
- PUA 5304
- PUA 5301
- PUA 5307
- PUA 5302
- PUA 5305
Textbook(s)
The future of public administration around the world: The Minnowbrook perspective
Publisher: Georgetown University Press (2010)
Author: O’Leary, R., Van Slyke, D. M., & Kim, S. (Eds.).
ISBN: 978-1-58-901711-5
Price: $78.29
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
CONCENTRATION | Total Required Semester Hours: 12
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Description
A study of trade and international economics. Considers comparative advantage, production factors, and how growth is influenced by trade and various alternative trade theories. Analysis of trade restrictions and the effect of trade on environment and political policies.
Objectives
- Distinguish between international and domestic economic issues.
- Explain why seven themes recur in international economics and discuss their significance.
- Explain how the Ricardian model, the most basic model of international trade, works and how it illustrates the principle of comparative advantage.
- Explain how differences in resources can cause international trade.
- Discuss why trade often creates losers as well as winners.
- Explain the effects of tariffs and subsidies on trade patterns and the welfare of trading nations and on the distribution of income within countries.
- Detail the “dumping” arguments used by domestic industries as a basis for protectionism and explain the relationship between dumping and price discrimination.
- Discuss the role of external economies and knowledge spillovers in shaping comparative advantage and international trade patterns.
- Discuss the causes, as well as the winners and losers, from migration and labor mobility between nations.
- Articulate arguments for free trade that go beyond the conventional gains from trade.
- Evaluate national welfare arguments against free trade.
- Summarize the basic ideas behind “economic dualism” and its relationship to international trade
- Discuss the recent economic history of the East Asian countries, such as Taiwan and South Korea, and detail the relationship between their rapid economic growth and participation in international trade.
- Summarize the more sophisticated arguments for interventionist trade policy, especially those related to externalities and economies of scale.
PreRequisites
None
Textbook(s)
International economics: Theory and policy (Rev: 9th ed.)
Publisher: Prentice Hall (2013)
Author: Krugman, P., Obstfeld, M., & Melitz, M.
ISBN: 978-0-13-214665-4
Price: $172.58
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
A study of economics in the international context of foreign exchange and currency markets and their impact on international economics. The interrelationship of exchange rates and economics factors are also discussed.
Objectives
- Examine the concept of the current account balance.
- Employ the current account balance to extend national income accounting to open economies.
- Apply national income accounting to the interaction of saving, investment, and net exports.
- Evaluate and discuss the national money markets in which interest rates are determined.
- Compare how monetary policy and interest rates feed into the foreign exchange market.
- Discuss the concept of the real exchange rate.
- Analyze the factors that affect real exchange rates and relative currency prices in the long run.
- Explain the role of the real exchange rate in determining the aggregate demand for a country’s output.
- Demonstrate causes and effects of balance of payments crises.
- Evaluate how alternative multilateral systems for pegging exchange rates work.
- Explain how the goals of internal and external balance motivate economic policy makers in open economies.
- Summarize how the monetary and fiscal policies of a large country such as the United States are transmitted abroad.
- Analyze the economic function of international portfolio diversification.
- Explain factors leading to the explosive recent growth of international financial markets.
- Analyze problems in the regulation and supervision of international banks and nonbank financial institutions.
PreRequisites
- MBA 6081
Textbook(s)
International financial management (Rev: 2nd ed.)
Publisher: Prentice Hall (2012)
Author: Bekaert, G., & Hodrick, R.
ISBN: 978-0-13-216276-0
Price: $182.85
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]
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Description
Presents the foundational theories and methodological tools used in public finance and budgeting. Students apply their knowledge to make use of finance and budgeting methodological tools, such as cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis in the application of finance and budgetary theory to practice, create, and oversee public sector fiscal processes. Students evaluate a budget and identify important budget items that public managers must consider in preparation and presentation of a budget. The usefulness of finance and budgeting theoretical constructs and methodological tools are applied to solve real-world public finance and budgetary case studies.
Objectives
- Assess the relationship of historical and contemporary finance-budgeting theory to real-world public administration issues.
- Discuss the ethical implications on the budget process at the federal, state, and local levels.
- Compare contemporary financial management practices at the federal, state, and local levels.
- Identify political factors that influence and determine financial management practice in the public arena.
- Evaluate a model budget.
- Consider the impact of citizen influence on the budgetary process at various levels of governance.
- Describe the impact of budgetary deficiencies on public agencies.
- Apply practical methods to reconstructing finance and budgeting techniques.
PreRequisites
- PUA 5301
Textbook(s)
Public finance: A contemporary application of theory to policy (Rev: 11th ed.)
Publisher: Cengage Learning (2014)
Author: Hyman, D. N.
ISBN: 978-1-285-17395-5
Price: $266.14
* Disclaimer: Textbooks listed are based on the last open revision of the course. Prior revisions and future revisions may use different textbooks. To verify textbook information, view the course syllabus or contact the AU Bookstore at [email protected]