Strategic Organizational Communication

Organizations are created through the process of communication, whether in the form of verbal agreements, written policies or enacted behaviors. As a result, organizational communication is highly interdisciplinary. It is inextricably linked to management, sociology, psychology and organizational behavior.

Managing Communication is about the process of understanding the systems, structures and processes that are integral to creating and maintaining organizations. This survey course will work through a model of organizational design to touch on a wide variety of the macro-level areas of the field of organizational communication, including the organizational structure, partnerships, networks, teams, culture and reward systems.

An understanding of research methods is essential to successfully navigate the current professional business world. In this course we consider research from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective.

The course is designed around the principle that the best way to learn is via doing. Each week students apply the instructional materials to a range of problems simulating real-world scenarios. The course presents a range of methodological approaches, and multiple opportunities are provided to tailor the assignments to student personal interests.

More and more organizations find they have to be much more strategic in their communication with their stakeholders. No more can a company or a nonprofit focus on its key messages at the expense of stakeholder perception. This class simulates the issues and stakeholders a U.S. publicly held company has to deal with on a regular basis. The class members play the role of the chief communication officer and create data-based strategic communication plans. Students work both on group and individual assignments throughout the semester.

Successful creative campaigns communicate consumer benefits in simple, unexpected and compelling ways. This course provides an overview and application of marketing communication principles and strategies. It focuses on key concepts and frameworks for creating and managing an integrated marketing communication plan.

Topics will include situation analysis, consumer research, branding, campaign objectives, creative strategy, promotion strategy, media strategy, and campaign management and evaluation. Special attention will be given to social media and other current trends and innovations.

Markets are becoming more and more intertwined, and it has become imperative for all entities to analyze their consumers and their competitive landscape in global terms. The ability to effectively do so provides a key competitive advantage to create, capture and deliver value in an evolving global landscape.

This course provides participants analytical tools to identify the challenges and opportunities in the global marketplace. The analysis draws on relevant interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks as well as practical applications from case studies to bridge the gap between theory and practice utilizing lectures, articles and industry reports.

Focus on storytelling approaches, methods, and tools, from data visualization techniques to storyboarding, mind-mapping, ideation drills, improv and more. Students develop strategic narratives for brands, causes, and themselves.

Engage the theory and practice of social influence processes used every day to inform, change people’s attitudes, change behavioral intentions, change behaviors, and/or change beliefs and norms. This course reviews traditional social psychological communication theories as well as current trends such as viral advertising, word of mouth, “influencer” campaigns, uses of social media, games (both “serious games” and “alternative reality games”) and transmedia narratives. Students will learn how to be effective in persuading an audience, understand why audiences respond to messages the way they do as well as the underlying processes or theories that explain success and failure in a persuasion campaign.

In this course you will engage in detailed research-orientated examination of a topic. Topic selection is guided via a discussion with your instructor to design an achievable research goal that fulfills the goals of the program and your goals as an individual.

This course serves as the capstone experience of the program and as such is oriented to allow you to produce your best work while demonstrating what you have learned in the program. Due to the individually tailored and student-oriented research projects, each student engages in very different work, which results in very different final deliverables.