Capstone in Human Resources and Employment Relations

Catalog description

This is the capstone research course designed to support students as they synthesize prior learning with a topic of interest about which they will conduct research. This capstone course incorporates a review and synthesis of material from across the entire human resource management and employment relations curricula. Domestic and international research and issues relevant to workers, other stakeholders in the employment relationship, and the effective acquisition and management of organizations' human resources will be central to the course, as will the legal, ethical, and diversity related issues that pertain to them. Topics to be reviewed and integrated include: - Strategic human resource management - International human resource management - Functional areas of human resource management - Employment relations and global worker rights - Data analytics - Legal, ethical, and diversity related issues By way of an example, if a student were interested in exploring the rise of the gig economy, they would be encouraged to observe this phenomenon first from the perspective of how this impacts the HRM strategy of an organization. They would then look at the global implications of the gig economy, and then consider how this might affect different HRM functions such as performance management or training of gig economy workers. The topic would then be considered from the perspective of how employment relations theories enhance understanding of gig economy workers. In the following two weeks, students would explore empirical evidence through data analytics specific to the gig economy. Finally, they would review the legal, ethical and diversity issues related to the gig economy. In this way, the student week-by-week constructs an in-depth research paper that adopts a multi-perspective approach based on both theory and empirics.