Programs and courses at UBC Sauder

Sustainability and Leadership

Programs: MGEM, MUFL | Instructor: Justin Bull | Course code: FCOR500

This course examines helps students navigate the challenges and opportunities sustainability presents and how to play a leadership role in navigating these issues. Students learn how to manage the complexity of sustainability, identify how it motivates different stakeholders, and be exposed to frameworks that foster leadership and innovative thinking. Students leave the course equipped with the tools to effectively apply sustainable thinking and leadership skills to a wide variety of professional opportunities.

Ethics, Sustainability, and Managing Change

Program: PMBA | Instructor: Justin Bull | Course code: BA503

This course provides a graduate-level foundation in ethics, sustainability, and managing change, and enables learners to understand the connections between these essential business topics. Using case studies that focus on contemporary challenges in the business environment, students apply their learning immediately to their professional practice.

Leading Diversity and Inclusion

Program: FTMBA | Instructor: Rebecca Paluch | Course code: BAHR 580A

Global movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and the Time’s Up movement have increased scrutiny on organizational management of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and increased public demands for companies to be held accountable for perpetuating inequality. Diversity at work can be a powerful tool that broadens perspectives and gives teams and organizations a competitive advantage, but when misunderstood or poorly managed, it can lead to damaging consequences for employee well-being and organizational goals. This course is designed to encourage students to think critically about their workplace experiences and interactions based on their own history and identity as well as consider how the broader workplace context may perpetuate bias, discrimination, and inequality. As a whole, this course provides students with the tools and skills to responsibly lead others in an increasingly diverse work environment

Leadership

Programs: MM, B+MM | Instructor: Wayne Rawcliffe | Course code: BAHR 505

Responsible leadership follows from self awareness and intentional leadership. BAHR 505 provides a framework for students to understand the evolution of their leadership journey through the examination of their family, their past, and their present leadership. As they discover their unique leadership characteristics and values, the design the evolution of their future leadership journey though a rigours personal development plan identifying key competencies and practices, with development activities, resources, and mentor relationships. They migrate from what for many is an organic leadership journey to one of intention rooted in their personal stories and values, focused on the intention to have a positive impact on others.

Leadership Development

Program: FTMBA | Instructor: Daniel Skarlicki | Course code: BA564

A primary goal of our MBA program is not only to develop managers with strong business acumen, but also to develop leaders who have the ability and capacity to make a positive difference for their organization, society, and themselves.

This course is designed to integrate intellectual and experiential learning to facilitate our students’ own capacity for developing themselves as leaders. Students will learn that, with global issues upon us, rapid change, and increasing complexity, organizations and society need different forms of leadership today than in the past.

Students will learn responsible leadership development is about self-development. They will identify their personal values and develop a leadership vision for themselves, and build specific leadership knowledge base and skills to help them as they continue to develop as leaders.

Improvisation for Leaders

Program: BCom | Instructor: Andrew Chen | Course code: COHR 486B

Responsible leadership involves working effectively with others in diverse environments. In this course we use the tools of improvised theatre to enhance collaborative leadership. Students will be empowered to explore societal conflict through Forum Theatre. This format encompasses active-role play, role-switching and perspective taking. The conflicts explored will be selected, written about, and summarized by individual students and presented with their peers. Students are encouraged to choose scenarios from their own community and explore perspectives across demographic contexts. Through experiential learning, students will walk away with realistic, applicable, and practical ways to resolve challenges.

Values, Ethics, and Community

Program: BCom | Instructor: Michael Daniels, Tamar Milne | Course code: COMM 186E

This course is focused on developing students into more self-aware and socially responsible leaders. In this class, students uncover their core personal values, examine the roles and responsibilities of business in society, and explore the ways in which they can make an impact through a career in business. A common thread in the class is on developing and practicing self-leadership as students begin to navigate their education and business careers.

Leadership

Program: BCom | Instructor: Michael Daniels, Tamar Milne | Course code: BAHR505 (or COHR402)

We focus on evidence-based methods of influencing individuals and teams toward the accomplishment of objectives. Responsible leaders respect individual autonomy and help develop shared values, and our approach in this class is to practice these skills in a supportive environment. Responsible leadership also involves working effectively with diverse teams, and we consider both the potential for team diversity to be a critical source of success and the conditions leaders must create to help diverse teams succeed.

Gender and Diversity in Leadership

Program: BCom | Instructor: Rebecca Paluch | Course code: COHR 486A

Responsible leadership involves working to enhance equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the workplace. This can require individuals to interact with colleagues, managers, subordinates, and customers who come with unique backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. While working in diverse environments can provide valuable opportunities for innovation, learning, and productivity, it can also present challenges when differences are misunderstood. This course is designed to provide students with a foundation of EDI topics that support an understanding of how one’s own identity fits into today’s diverse work environments as well as how to effectively work with a wide variety of colleagues and customers. Students will gain insight about how to responsibly and equitably lead diverse groups in ways that support inclusion in the workplace

Innovation Leadership

Program: BCom | Instructor: Marc-David Seidel | Course code: COMM 383

COMM 383 is designed around one simple idea: Encouraging students to challenge the status quo and take ownership of societal change even with limited resources. Project groups gather field data on innovation policy and then integrate theoretical core ideas to actively design societal interventions targeted at making an innovation ecosystem more innovative at solving societal problems. Interventions must be created without significant monetary resources, focusing instead on using the sociological lessons of communal organizing and technological advances. The course design encourages students to take full ownership of the process, setting them up to continue such activities as responsible leaders well after the course, with the goal of making the instructor just “another member of the joint community” by the end of the course.

Business Ethics Leadership

Program: BCom | Instructor: David Silver | Course code: COMM 312

The purpose of the course is to help students develop as responsible business leaders by (a) critically reflecting on both their personal values and the values of their organizations, (b) learning strategies and best practices for "managing for values", and (c) developing as "moral entrepreneurs", who spot and develop opportunities for them to improve the way their organizations deliver on their own values, no matter where they stand within these organizations.