IWER-Related Courses for MBA Students

Faculty affiliated with IWER teach a wide range of courses for MBAs, as well as courses for Executive MBAs and undergraduates.   Courses for MBA students include:

15.661 | Building Successful Careers and Organizations
Faculty: Emilio Castilla
This course is designed to help students learn more about their strengths, and how they can use those strengths to manage their careers. The course draws on the latest research and practices, experiential exercises, and case studies, and includes guest speakers. It covers the most important aspects of talent (and career) management.

15.662 | People and Profits: Shaping the Future of Work
Faculty: Anna Stansbury 
This course examines managing work in the 21st century as technological advances transform the organization of the firm. Students interview workers and explore leading-edge firms that apply human- and worker-centered design to augment rather than replace people. The course draws on materials from the MIT Task Force on Work of the Future and the online course Shaping Work of the Future.

15.665 | Power and Negotiation
Faculty: Various
This class provides understanding of the theory and processes of negotiation as practiced in a variety of settings. It is designed for relevance to the broad spectrum of bargaining problems faced by the manager and professional. The course gives students an opportunity to develop negotiation skills experientially and to understand negotiation in useful analytical frameworks. The class emphasizes simulations, exercises, and role playing.

15.669 | Strategies for People Analytics
Faculty: Emilio Castilla
People analytics is a data-driven approach to improving people-related decisions for the purpose of advancing both individual and organizational success. While people have always been critical to the success of organizations, many business leaders still make key decisions about their workforce based on intuition, experience, advice, and guesswork. In this course, we explore a number of people analytics strategies used to attract and retain top talent.

15.677 | Urban Labor Markets and Employment
Faculty: Anna Stansbury​ 
This course examines how labor markets work and how they are evolving over time, and analyzes public policy interventions in labor markets. It will focus primarily on contemporary urban labor markets in the U.S., but will also consider evidence from other contexts, time periods, and countries. The course is designed for students who are interested in using rigorous empirical evidence and theoretical frameworks from economics and other social sciences to analyze important current topics in labor market policy, and is suitable for both PhD students in social science or business/management disciplines and for master's degree students in business, urban planning, public policy, or other relevant disciplines.

15.679 | USA Lab: Bridging the American Divides
Faculty: Leigh Hafrey and Ceasar McDowell
This experiential Action Learning Lab is focused on work, community, and culture in rural and urban regions of the United States. The Lab stems from concern about the economic, cultural, social, and geographic issues that are tearing at the fabric of America. Through this course we strive to foster deeper understanding and join with community leaders in the process of uncovering solutions. In addition to classroom discussions, student teams conduct fieldwork on-site in rural regions and small cities in the U.S., working with dynamic local leaders determined to change the trajectory of their communities.

15.768 | Management of Services: Concepts, Design, and Delivery
Faculty: Zeynep Ton 
The course takes an operations point of view to look at companies and industries in the service sector. It builds on conceptual frameworks and draws upon examples from a wide range of service operations: health care, hospitality, transportation, retailing, food service, and financial services, among others. The objective of the course is to design and manage operations to create value for customers, employees, and investors simultaneously.

15.S03 |  Leading the Way: Individual and Organizational Perspectives on Advancing Equity and Inclusion
Faculty: Kara Blackburn and Erin Kelly
This elective addresses both individual skills and organizational strategies for advancing equity and inclusion, and students will be asked to critically review relevant social science and behavioral research. As a result of this course, students will better understand how employees with diverse identities experience recruitment, evaluation, rewards, and development; analytically evaluate competing explanations about inequality within workplaces; consider timely topics such as sexual harassment in the workplace; and develop and practice skills for managing a professional identity, interacting effectively with diverse others, managing difficult conversations, exercising voice, and advocating thoughtfully for change.