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Bachelor of Arts in Leadership and Management | Undergraduate Degree Program

Bachelor of Arts in Leadership and Management

Online Bachelor of Arts Degree in Leadership and Management

Earn your Bachelor of Arts in Leadership & Management (BALM) from Ottawa University and gain the skills you need to lead teams at every level of business. The undergrad Leadership and Management degree promotes the conceptual awareness and practical abilities needed to help organizations run efficiently, effectively and ethically. Students learn how to plan, budget, coordinate, and influence within an organizational setting. They develop ways to analyze systems, interpret data, and set priorities. By enhancing key skills such as communication, problem-solving, decision making, and conflict resolution, they are better equipped to manage and lead others as well as formulate strategic approaches to operational implementation.

Ottawa’s BALM was designed to help you make a difference in your organization immediately following graduation. Through examination of contemporary and classic leadership theories, investigation of successful leadership behaviors across a wide range of environments, and discovery of the strengths and development needs of their personal leadership style, students will develop the skills to lead their organizations to new levels of performance.

Leadership and Management Concentrations

Additionally, students in the Bachelor of Arts in Leadership & Management program will have the option to personalize their education by selecting one of two areas of concentration:

Why Earn a Degree In Leadership and Management?

Coordination of financial, material, and human resources to achieve organizational goals is a key component of the leadership and management degree program. It provides a broad range of skills, including accounting and finance, human resources, sales and marketing, project coordination, and strong communication, both written and verbal.

Related Degrees

Master of Arts in Leadership

Master in Business Administration

Master in Human Resources

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What is an MBA?

For curriculum and course descriptions please download a program overview.

If you’re ready to learn more about earning the undergraduate degree in leadership and management, contact us today.

Leadership and Management is offered at the following locations.

  • Ottawa, KS (Residential Campus)
  • Surprise, AZ (Residential Campus)
  • Overland Park, Kansas
  • Brookfield, Wisconsin
  • Online

Education and Qualification for Leadership and Management Positions

Leadership and management positions regularly require a bachelor’s degree, with preference given to those with master’s degree, including a master of business administration (MBA). Ottawa graduates often continue their education with an MBA.  Persons interested in management should have good leadership and communication skills and be able to establish effective working relationships with many different people, ranging from managers, supervisors and professionals to clerks and blue-collar workers. They should be analytical, detail-oriented, flexible, and decisive. They must be able to coordinate several activities at once, quickly analyze and resolve specific problems, and cope with deadlines.

Leadership and Management Careers

Companies who invest in leaders do better financially. A study conducted by the leadership development firm Development Dimensions International (DDI) found that organizations who have managers with strong leadership and management skills “showed significantly greater net profit and return on assets.” A bachelor’s degree in leadership and management from Ottawa University distinctively positions graduates to help businesses achieve their most aspiring growth goals and, as a result, corporations, government agencies, and non-profit organizations are willing to pay employees more for this skill set.

Career Outlook

Overall employment of leadership and management professionals is expected to increase by 9% from 2020 to 2030, resulting in the creation of nearly 906,800 new positions, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median annual wage for leadership and management occupations was $109,760 in May 2020, which was the highest wage of all the major occupational groups.

Leadership and Management Foundation Courses

Accounting for Business Operations | ACC 20364 (4 credits)
Introduces operating activities of business. Emphasis on using income statements to plan and evaluate the operations of a for-profit entity.

Macroeconomics | ECO 20163 (3 Credits)
Focuses on inflationary consequences of monetary and fiscal policies designed to eliminate poverty and unemployment, significance of money and government deficits on attainment of goals of high employment and economic growth in a non-inflationary environment and role of the dollar in international trade.

Microeconomics | ECO 20263 (3 credits)
Study of the role of prices in allocating and developing scarce resources to meet the needs and demands of consumers, the impact of the profit motive on business size and efficiency, the economic power of large-scale business firms, the interplay of private and public choice through price controls, business regulation and taxation.

College Algebra | MAT 10643 (3 credits)
Emphasizes problem solving techniques using algebraic concepts. The focus of the course is directed toward exploring how algebra is used in the social and physical sciences. Topics covered include fundamental concepts of algebra, equations, and inequalities, functions and graphs, systems of linear equations, exponential and logarithmic equations, composition and inverse functions.

OR

Discrete Mathematics | MAT 20043 (3 credits)
Offers an intuitive exposure to mathematical concepts useful in a wide variety of disciplines.  The course focuses on concepts associated with propositional logic. 
 

OR

Business Mathematics | MAT 20143 (3 credits)
Focuses on basic mathematics skills, business mathematics applications and problem-solving strategies. Concepts include properties of real numbers, fundamental operations of rational numbers, fractions, decimals, percentages, numerical and graphical descriptions of data, basic probability, and logical thinking.

Business Statistics | OAD 30763 (4 credits)
Focuses on basic methods of research design and analysis of data including descriptive and inferential statistics. Topics include mean, median, mode, frequency distributions, range, standard deviation, probabilities of sampling selection, Z-score, T-value, regression and correlation, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, and Chi-square analysis.

OR

Quantitative Methods in Business | OAD 31564 (3 credits)
Introduces use of quantitative methods in business emphasizing quantitative analysis techniques using Microsoft Excel. Includes spreadsheet preparation of financial and operational schedules and application of financial analysis, budgeting and forecasting, economic and investment opportunity analysis, data analytics, programming and mathematical functions relating to supply and demand decision-making. 

Business Ethics | OAD 31664 (3 credits)
Introduces development of personal and group norms required for workplaces. Topics include moral reasoning in business, employee rights and responsibilities of corporations.

*MAT 20043 is recommended to fulfill the foundation requirement. 

 

Leadership and Management Major Courses

Entrepreneurial Vision and Strategy | OAD 30020 (4 credits)
Examines the role of personal values and insight in the creation of companies and their ongoing management. This course explores the meaning of being an entrepreneur and how to combine idea (vision) and action (strategy) for personal and business success.

Leadership of Creativity and Change |  OAD 30030 (4 credits)
Examines the role of an organizational leader. Assesses individual skills and discusses the role of a leader in managing teams through environmental and organizational change. Includes extensive application exercises designed to develop leadership skills.

Behavior in Organizations |  OAD 30063 (3 credits)
Study of human behavior in work organizations. Focuses on individual satisfaction and motivation as related to organizational structure, nature of task and locus of power. Topics include small group formation, maintenance, organizational conflict, communications and leadership.

Conflict Resolution | OAD 30364 (4 credits)
Examines and develops skills in different dispute resolution methods. Topics include: mediation, MED ARB, problem solving, grievance handling, listening skills, fact finding and body language.

Management | OAD 30563 (3 credits)
Discusses process for managing organizations including planning, organizing, leading, and evaluating. Examines administrative role in organizations and concepts relevant to its function and historical development of administrative thought.

Leadership and Communication |  OAD 36364 (3 credits)
Focus on leadership as action and understanding others and interpersonal theory as the connection between leadership and communication in an organizational context. Both didactic and experiential teaching methods used.  


Planning and Budgeting |  OAD 40264 (4 credits)
Overview of basic financial systems used in business settings. Includes business planning and budgeting tools and models such as balance sheets, income statements, cash flow analysis, time value of money concepts and project planning techniques.

Managing Cultural Diversity |  OAD 41864 (4 credits)
Examines impact of gender, ethnicity and other cultural diversity dimensions on the work organization and management and supervision of a diverse workforce for organizational effectiveness while encouraging individual professional development.

Seminar in Applied Management |  OAD 49300 (4 credits)
Capstone course that guides student in the integration of functional content areas in the field of professional management. Addresses management issues and applying management theories and techniques to problems and cases through a process of decision-making. Prerequisite: Completion of all required core courses in the major.

For complete curriculum and course descriptions please download a program overview.

Full Degree Catalog

University Accreditation

Ottawa University, as a whole, is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.

Specific degree programs within our institution have also been accredited by relevant bodies within the field:

We are proudly recognized for our commitment to student excellence by the following designations:

Why Choose Ottawa
Almost all courses in Ottawa University’s programs are available online and accredited by The Higher Learning Commission. We make it easy for you to transfer credits in order to help keep tuition costs down. We also offer courses in accelerated 8-week terms in order to reduce your time to completion. These are just a few of the reasons why we are proud to be the best, fastest, and most affordable option locally in the Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Phoenix areas, as well as serving students nationally through our online degrees.

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