MA/PhD Learning & Career Outcomes

What Can You Do with a Degree in Organizational Systems?

Students in Saybrook's Organizational Systems degree programs pursue higher education as a way to advance in their chosen fields or to set out on a new career path.

Many of our students, who come from a broad range of career paths, are already active and engaged in the world. They are business managers and executives, public administrators, human resource managers, healthcare professionals, trainers, coaches, consultants, social activists, and educators.

Students come here to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to bring about effective, socially responsible changes. Working around the world, they have become successful consultants, change managers, CEOs, and community leaders.

The goals and student learning outcomes for the Organizational Systems degree are for students to be able to:

• Assess, design, implement, and evaluate complex organizational change initiatives.
• Design and conduct sophisticated organizational research while employing strong critical analysis in both thinking and writing.
• Apply systems design to transform or create social systems by engaging the whole community in shared model building and action.
• Operate consistently within a solid ethical framework.
• Build authentic relationships through self-awareness, appreciation of diversity, and constructive dialog.

Career Outcomes

Our graduates work in a variety of settings that include:

Why Earn a PhD in Organizational Systems?

Our PhD program develops leaders who are ready and able to contribute to the development of organizations and institutions that can respond to global needs in the 21st century. It is designed for advanced students who have a master's degree, and who want to enhance their skills so they can contribute to emerging social needs for transformative, innovative, sustainable, organizational and social change.

Our perspective is based on the philosophy that future organizations must be able to mobilize the energy and commitment of their people, develop collaborative and innovative operating systems, and respond to the emerging global needs for sustainability that face all organizations, whether private, public, or governmental.

Students in our PhD program currently conduct research in an amazing range of areas:

• emerging Chinese and Western management practices in support of employee engagement
• understanding the phenomena of high performing teams in three distinct cultures
• identifying culture and climate factors that contribute to academic achievement in a high performing urban charter school
• helping leaders design organizational cultures that foster creativity
• supporting a healthcare organization in transitioning doctors to high-performing, collaborative team leaders
• changing governance processes as a way to increase board effectiveness in an American synagogue
• developing sustainable inter-institutional collaborations
• conducting a multi-case study of the individual, organizational, and system obstacles to patient-centric emergency medical services system design
• assessing the relationships between leadership approach, emotional intelligence, and training needs for occupational therapist managers working in the United States
• studying how women transform workplace difficulties through synergic and hermeneutic inquiry
• understanding how leaders effectively manage the complexity of major environmental disasters