Course Descriptions
Our courses are clustered in four core areas: Public Relations, Management, Electives, and a final Capstone Project.
Public Relations Core
An advanced understanding of the history communication and its theoretical foundation is a necessity for professional and ethical practice. These courses will provide you with a deep foundation in leading communications roles and models, organizational and management processes, ethics and law, and research. (5 required courses; 15 units)
- COM MGMT 711 / Organizational Public Relations
- The course focuses on how excellent public relations are carried out in organizations. Management theories applied to public relations, public relations roles and models, strategic management processes, theories of organizational effectiveness, and such organizational characteristics as participation and authority, culture, diversity, globalization, and change. The framework of excellence permits an examination of the history, research, social effects, and ethics of public relations.
- COM MGMT 712 / Public Relations Research
- Nature, formation, and communications of attitudes and public opinion in public relations settings. Application of methods for measuring attitudes, opinions, and public relations performances. Sampling, interviewing and data analysis techniques.
- COM MGMT 715 / Applied Ethics in Communications Management
- This course will use the case study method to investigate contemporary applications of the theory and philosophy of ethics in the practice of communications management. Case studies will be taken from corporate communications, media relations, investor relations, advertising, brand journalism, government relations, public affairs, political communication or other sub-fields of communications management.
- COM MGMT 741 / Crisis Communications and Issues Management
- Crises are a fact of organizational life. From the small, not-for-profit organization to the global, multi-national corporation, crises can suddenly disrupt an organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively achieve its mission. Organizational crises rapidly consume unbudgeted financial and human resources and diminish an organization’s reputation and goodwill. The economic, social, and political fallout from organizational crises have been significant and warrant a renewed focus on research and scholarship.
- COM MGMT 744 / Data Science and Analytics for Communications Management
- This course will introduce students to data science methods, analytics and practical coding basics through working with ready-made data science and analytics tools. The course will have a “learn-by-doing” approach and focus on communications and marketing applications, such as quantifying media narratives with NLP or spotting emerging consumer trends with time series analysis. A consideration of the growing importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning will be included, as will the ethical procurement and reporting of data, analytics and metrics. This hands-on course assumes no prior knowledge of programming or data science.
Management Core
Effective communications management requires a firm understanding of the language of business, including financial management and accounting. These courses, traditionally found in graduate management programs, provide the business acumen necessary for developing effective strategies to support an organization’s bottom line and senior management.
(4 required courses; 12 units)
- COM MGMT 721 / Strategic Management
- An integrative course that pulls together, through the concepts of “strategy”, fundamentals learned in previous management courses. Business “fundamentals” are used to study full organizational issues. A basic premise is that functional area decisions cannot and should not be made in isolation. Such decisions need to be consistent in ways that provide an organization with a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace and enable the most effective and efficient achievement of the firm’s short and long term goals. Case studies are used to assist students to learn how to analyze the competitive structure of industries, how to assess and choose the “best” strategies for organizations, and how to ensure that the various functional area decisions follow from and help facilitate, rather than obstruct, the realization of chosen strategies.
- COM MGMT 722 / Financial Reporting and Management Accounting
- Accounting information is fundamental to business decisions. Managers are familiar with accounting systems and their potential for providing them with critical data and information about their organizations. Given this perspective, this course provides sufficient understanding of the accounting process and how to recognize the potential of accounting information to become a more effective manager. What accountants do and why they do it, not how they do it, is the focus.
- COM MGMT 723 / Financial Management
- An introduction for the non-finance manager to the issues faced by the finance managers of large businesses. No prior knowledge of business finance is expected from the students. However, understanding of the basic accounting principles (balance sheet and income statements) is a prerequisite. The course begins by examining a corporation’s responsibility to its various stakeholders – stockholders, employees, customers, and society. This leads to a well-defined objective of financial management. Various decisions and responsibilities of the financial manager consistent with the objective above are studied. These may be divided into two components: capital acquisition and its deployment. Key aspects of the financial environment and some methods of determining the financial health of a corporation are also studied.
- COM MGMT 742 / Digital and Social Media: Strategy and Management
- Digital and social media management are an essential part of strategic communications. This course provides students with the critical, analytic and technical skills they need to communicate transparently, build trusted, two-way relationships with various online and offline publics, and achieve organizational goals. The course blends readings and interactive discussions around network, interactivity, relationship, and community theories, with practical case studies and examples. Students will explore the historical context of digital and social media, emerging trends, mobile communications, multimedia storytelling, influencer relationship management, best practices in paid, earned, owned and shared media, online crisis management, effective measurement techniques, semantic and voice search, and ethical and privacy considerations.
Electives
The MCM program offers a number of electives in communications theory and management, allowing students to explore and gain experience in different areas of the profession.
(Two courses, 6 units)
During the second term, students will vote for a total of three electives, which will be offered in the third term subject to the availability of instructors.
- COM MGMT 714 / Strategic Public Relations Management
- Relates management function of policy formation to the communication process of disseminating ideas and information to the organization’s public. Applies management science techniques to communication planning and information dissemination.
- COM MGMT 724 / Marketing Management
- The fundamentals of marketing and the management decision-making skills related to the design of marketing strategy. By the end of the course, students can: (1) understand the role that marketing plays in an organization; (2) analyze how the environment affects marketing strategy; (3) analyze how consumers make a purchase decision; and (4) design a marketing strategy for a product or service.
- COM MGMT 725 / Understanding Audiences for Strategic Communications
- This course presents students with an evidence-based approach to research management for understanding evolving audiences and their application to communication management fields such as: media, public relations, marketing, fund-raising, and public affairs. It provides theoretical, historical, contemporary, and practical viewpoints on models of audience and the evolving means of measuring audience engagement and impact.
- COM MGMT 727 / Organizational Social Responsibility and Sustainability
- This course will examine communication strategies and tactics for organizational social responsibility and sustainable operations in the private, not-for-profit and public sectors from an integrated communications perspective.
- COM MGMT 728 / Investor Relations and Financial Communications
- This course will examine strategies and tactics for effective investor relations and financial communications in the private, not-for-profit and public sectors from an integrated communications perspective. Topics covered will include, amongst others: year report writing, shareholder and stakeholder financial communication, and compliance with the rules and regulations of the Canadian Securities Commission and various Canadian governments.
- COM MGMT 730 / Leadership, Persuasion and the Successful Executive
- Leadership, Persuasion and the Successful Executive offers an intensive examination of the leadership-communication connection. In other words, how do successful executives engage employees, teams and organizations to effect change and influence behavior in an often contested and challenging environment through effective communications? This course focuses on how executives successfully exert their leadership in the broader external environment.
- COM MGMT 731 / Strategic Reputation Management
- This course focuses on reputation management strategy and best practices using a variety of new theories on the subject, case studies and interactive exercises to point out successful techniques.
- COM MGMT 732 / Communications Frontiers
- Preparation for developing business, regulatory, and technical trends that will be part of the students’ careers as communications managers. The class looks for evidence of some of these trends as they are experienced in public relations through an original research project.
- COM MGMT 733 / Communication Theory
- An introduction to the process of interpersonal, group, and mass communication. Perception, attitude, opinion, and other principles of psychology, social psychology, and other social sciences related to the communication process are explored.
- COM MGMT 735 / Negotiation: Theory and Practice
- Introduction to negotiation theory and the skills associated with successful practice. Explore tensions between distributive and integrative negotiation principles of interest-based negotiation. Importance of preparation, sources of power, role of culture, and ways to overcome dirty tricks and other barriers to successful negotiation. Interactive learning approach, using lecture, discussion, exercises, and simulations to build personal capacities for successful negotiating. Exercises include two-person to more complex multi-party negotiations, in both domestic and international cases.
- COM MGMT 743 / Independent Study
- This course enables an MCM student to craft reading list and a plan of study with an MCM faculty member on a individual basis on a topic not currently offered in the list of MCM course offerings. The course must have a significant deliverable (case study, research essay or technical report) supported by qualitative or quantitative research.
- COM MGMT 745 / Organizational Change Communications
- This course is designed to focus on applying critical, insights-based topics in organizational change management (OCM) communications. While considering all internal audiences as important, a primary objective of the course is to understand the critical role that public relations and communications professionals have to play with executive and senior leadership in sponsoring organizational change, and how communications can be integrated and improved to help organizations achieve value realization from their change initiatives. This course seeks to examine current change management and organizational change communications theories and practices for the purpose of applying the best of these towards managing change within the organization.
Major Research Capstone Project
Students in this program complete a professional capstone project (3-units) and will require three electives to complete their degree. The capstone is an opportunity to pursue original independent research. Students will be matched with an MCM faculty member who will supervise their research on a topic not currently offered in the list of MCM course offerings. The course must have a significant deliverable (case study, research essay or technical report) supported by qualitative and/or quantitative research.
- COM MGMT 740 / Professional Project
- The Professional Project course is seen as an independent research project that results in a communication product or program (“deliverable”). The Professional Project embodies original and/or secondary research and solves a specific problem or challenge for an organization or industry or the greater public relations/communications management profession.