Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership

Lead with Purpose. Inspire Lasting Change. 

CIAM’s Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership empowers you to become the kind of leader who doesn’t just manage change—but drives it. Rooted in the enduring principles of Peter F. Drucker, this transformative program prepares you to lead with vision, strategy, and character in an ever-evolving world. 

Built around three foundational pillars, the program offers: 

  • Organizational Development & Change – Master the tools to lead transformative change, cultivate adaptability, and build resilient organizations positioned for long-term growth. 
  • Operations & Productivity Leadership – Gain the insight to streamline systems, enhance team performance, and turn strategy into measurable outcomes. 
  • Character of a Leader – Develop the ethical compass, emotional intelligence, and personal integrity needed to lead with authenticity and impact. 

This program is more than a degree—it’s a launchpad for purpose-driven leaders ready to make a difference across industries and communities. 


Program Highlights 

  • Experiential, Project-Based Learning – Tackle real-world challenges through hands-on projects that build practical leadership skills. 
  • Flexibility and Convenience –Seven-week terms with two weekend residencies. 
  • All-Inclusive Textbooks – Course materials are provided at no additional cost. 
  • Industry-Experienced Faculty – Learn from expert instructors dedicated to your growth and success. 
  • Personalized Learning Environment – Enjoy small class sizes (maximum of 25) that foster meaningful interaction and peer collaboration. 
  • Cutting-Edge Online Platform – Engage with dynamic content through our advanced virtual learning tools. 
  • Generous Scholarship Opportunities – Access multiple funding options to support your education. 
  • Financial Aid Available – For those who qualify, we offer a range of financial support options. 
  • No GMAT or GRE Required – Streamlined admissions with no standardized test requirements. 
  • Simple Online Application – Apply quickly and easily through our user-friendly online portal. 


A Bright Future:

Leadership Through the Lens of MLA

At the heart of CIAM’s MA in Organizational Leadership is the powerful philosophy of Management as a Liberal Art (MLA). This interdisciplinary approach equips future leaders with a well-rounded understanding of key management domains—from economics and finance to strategy, communication, and negotiation. By integrating MLA into the curriculum, students are empowered to think critically, act ethically, and lead effectively across any organizational landscape. This foundation fosters not just competent managers, but visionary leaders prepared to navigate complexity and drive meaningful, lasting impact. 

Why Organizational Leadership?

In today's dynamic business environment, the demand for effective organizational leadership has never been more critical. Workplaces have evolved dramatically, with operations spanning multiple locations and time zones, driven by technological advancements and collaborative platforms. Additionally, shifting cultural norms now emphasize flexible work styles and diverse settings. 

 

As a significant portion of the workforce approaches retirement, businesses face a looming shortage of skilled professionals. This challenge underscores the urgent need for leaders with strong interpersonal abilities, capable of mentoring and guiding the next generation of talent. Effective organizational leadership not only ensures operational success but also cultivates a resilient and innovative workforce prepared to navigate the complexities of a rapidly changing world. 



Admission Requirements

Applicants must hold a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution and have a minimum of one year of professional experience in a relevant field. Meeting these criteria ensures that students enter the program with a strong academic foundation and practical knowledge that will enhance their learning experience. 

 

Click here for full details on eligibility, required documentation, and additional admissions criteria. 


Become A Leader of Tomorrow

Build valuable relationships

Learn how to lead diverse teams of experts to solve real-world problems in any industry

Finish Fast!

Finish your degree in less than a year and gain modern leadership skills that are in-demand

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Learn the best practices of leadership through hands-on learning projects with real clients

Explore Our High Impact Learning Practices

PROGRAM COURSES

The MA in Organizational Leadership consists of ten 3.0 credit core courses:

CORE COURSES:

  • LEAD501 (3) Principles of Leadership

    3.0 Semester Credits


    Scholars have framed leadership using different approaches to understand what makes leaders great, inspirational, and effective people. The focus of all these different leadership approaches has been to discover and explain leadership profiles including characteristics, behaviors, situations and conversely, the followers’ conditions which produce an effective and positive impact over organizations. Students will explore different theories and approaches to gain an understanding about leadership foundations. The course will also address the seven habits of effectiveness and leadership perspectives. Finally, students will evaluate their own leadership behaviors, while developing individual experiential learning projects where each student can execute and increase their leadership competencies.


  • LEAD503 (3) Managing Oneself and One's Career

    3.0 Semester Credits


    This course explores self-management, leadership development, and purposeful contribution across extended careers, engaging deeply with Peter Drucker's wisdom on knowing your strengths, values, and passions, taking responsibility, continuously learning, focusing on opportunities, and managing time and energy amid complexity. Bridging personal growth, professional excellence, and social impact, students synthesize Drucker's insights to create personal leadership blueprints grounded in moral foundations and aligned to their temperaments, aspirations, and society's needs. The course deliverables center on selfassessments, career planning, reflective essays, case analyses, and a final project to design a futureoriented ethical endeavor to develop knowledge workers and executives as self-aware, adaptable, lifelong learners who make meaningful differences through their unique gifts.

  • LEAD537 (3) Character of a Leader

    3.0 Semester Credits


    Applying Peter Drucker’s concept of management as a liberal art encompassing self-knowledge, wisdom,and leadership, this course explores foundational character virtues and emotional/social aptitudes for values-driven leadership, including integrity, vulnerability, humility, and compassion that orient leaders to dignity and growth; participants assess contexts, balance change and continuity and model behaviors awakening institutional possibility via participative, ethical frames while equipping adaptive skills and systemic orientation for learning-centered journeys grounded in moral meaning; students understand the importance of continually developing self-awareness, regulation, social awareness, and relatability to lead as empowering servants fostering human fulfillment.

  • LEAD561 (3) Leading Change Through Liberal Arts Perspectives

    3.0 Semester Credits


    This graduate practicum integrates Peter Drucker’s leadership philosophy with liberal arts perspectives, offering students an immersive, hands-on experience in addressing complex organizational and societal challenges. Guided by Drucker’s principles of ethical responsibility, results driven management, and a human-centered approach to leadership, students engage in real-world projects and collaborative team exercises that draw on diverse lenses from history, literature, philosophy, and the arts. Through reflective analysis and iterative feedback, students refine their adaptive leadership skills, critical thinking, and empathy. Emphasizing practical application, this course prepares students to lead with both strategic insight and cultural awareness, effectively managing change in dynamic, real-world environments.

  • LEAD585 (3) Drucker on Management

    3.0 Semester Credits


    This course profoundly explores management's art, science, and philosophy through the engaged scholarship of Peter Drucker's perspectives encompassing the social and liberal art dimensions of leading institutions amidst complexity. Students synthesize Drucker's wisdom spanning organizational purpose and ethics, decision making, productivity, leadership development, and humanistic psychology to evaluate and redesign entities for empowerment, adaptation, and conscious evolution. The course deliverables center on literature reviews, case analyses, and project plans applying timeless principles to imagine more humane yet highly effective enterprises, to develop reflective executives committed to exemplary stewardship, enlightened follower development, and leaving healthy legacies advancing lives.

  • LEAD589 (3) Operation & Productivity Leadership

    3.0 Semester credits


    This course explores optimizing enterprise performance and productivity through engaged analysis of Peter Drucker’s management principles spotlighting economic contribution, opportunities over problems, abandoning yesterday to create tomorrow, concentrating on strengths and results, and responsible decisions leveraging financials, competencies, and social outcomes. Students diagnose complex organizational contexts via lenses of efficiency, effectiveness, and ethics to architect transformations focused on value creation, knowledge-worker engagement, and continuous improvement. Course deliverables center on case evaluations, literature reviews, and final projects to redesign an existing entity’s operational blueprint guided by Drucker's wisdom to develop purposeful, socially conscious institutions where empowered teams find meaning while responsibly advancing industries, communities, and lives.

  • LEAD631 (3) Innovation and Entrepreneurship

    3.0 Semester credits


    This course explores innovation and entrepreneurship as the key drivers of change, progress, and economic growth, with students engaging deeply with Peter Drucker’s perspectives to understand how purposeful innovation, entrepreneurial management, strategies, and mindsets enable creating and capturing value from change. The course synthesizes Drucker’s interdisciplinary approach to innovation as a discipline and social ecology with contemporary entrepreneurial leadership principles, equipping innovators to hunt for opportunities systematically, realize ambitious goals through agile execution, empower knowledge-based teams, and lead sustainable change within organizations and society. Students gain practical entrepreneurial toolkits while expanding their capacities to envisage, architect, and responsibly steward systemic shifts that uplift industries, communities, and lives.


  • LEAD675 (3) Developing Today and Tomorrow: Organizational Development and Change

    Applying Peter Drucker’s concept of management as a liberal art encompassing systems thinking, ethical reasoning and uplifting human dignity, this course explores organizational development through multiple frames to identify performance gaps and transformation opportunities, evaluates Druckerian insights on empowerment, community benefit and abandoning yesterday to formulate interventions and metrics spanning structural, political, human and cultural dimensions, adopts a social ecologist orientation for students to diagnose contexts, architect development plans embedded with autonomy, creativity and meaningful uplift of teams while equipping an adaptive skillset to foster agility, resilience and cultures of perpetual improvement grounded in moral foundations and liberating organizational members’ energies and passions.


  • LEAD699 (3) Management as a Liberal Art: Developing the Reflective Executive

    This capstone course explores management as a liberal art through engagement with Peter Drucker’s readings, applying timeless wisdom to develop students as reflective executives and future-oriented leaders. Exploring self awareness, critical and systems thinking, moral reasoning, creativity, innovation and the cultivation of people, participants learn to pursue efficiency and competence in tandem with personal fulfillment, community contribution and addressing society’s major challenges. Students synthesize learnings across management disciplines while expanding intellectual frameworks and ethical sensibilities to envisage sustainable, socially conscious organizations. Centering Drucker principles to spur personal leadership development and inquire into deeper purpose and possibilities amidst disruption, course deliverables include reflective essays, case analyses, textual discussions, and an integrative project to design an ethical enterprise applying liberal arts-based management.

  • LEAD698 (3) Capstone


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“CIAM provided me with professional business experience that is absolutely invaluable to me as a working professional now. I was able to complete consulting projects for real world clients and through these immersive experiences I learned how to give professional level presentations, create quality business reports and manage a professional team... I am forever grateful to CIAM for the practical knowledge and skills that I walked away with.”


Erika Tan (left), MBA Alumna

Are you ready to start your journey?

If you are eager to expedite your professional goals, CIAM's MA in Organizational Leadership will teach you the

invaluable skills needed to lead a organization in today's complex business world.

Complete the form below to speak to an Admissions Counselor: