Nicholas Switanek
Nicholas Switanek

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONS
Visiting Assistant Professor of Management & Organizations

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Nick Switanek is Visiting Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, his M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University, and his B.A. and B.S. from the University of Arizona. Professor Switanek’s research and teaching explore the intersection of organization theory, management strategy, and environmental sustainability.
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Teaching Interests
Professor Switanek’s teaching explores the intersection of organization theory, management strategy, and environmental sustainability. He developed and teaches Business Design for Environmental Sustainability (MORS 925-0). He also team teaches a project-based course on energy innovation with faculty from Northwestern’s Schools of Engineering, Law, and Arts & Sciences.
Doctoral
Special Topics in Management & Organizations: Advanced Statistical Methods for Organizational Research (MORS-530-2)
This is a practice-based course in applied statistics. The instructor will introduce two modern families of methods with application to organizational research at both the micro and macro levels: event history analysis and hierarchical/multilevel regression models. Students will learn to implement and interpret a variety of both types of models, and gain facility using statistical tools for exploration, explanation, and prediction of social phenomena.

Full-Time / Part-Time MBA
Business Design for Environmental Sustainability (MORS-925-0)
Will you lead the next industrial revolution? To lead and profit from the revolutionary alignment of business practice with environmental sustainability requires abilities to rethink and redesign the core functions of business organizations. Through a mixture of case studies, class discussion, team-based projects and class visitors, this course helps students build strength in designing organizations for environmental sustainability. Students will learn how the green redesign of core organizational processes is generating competitive advantage for existing companies throughout the world; develop skills in identifying and prioritizing the many profitable opportunities to green business practices in light of shareholder value and ecological integrity; and consider how relations between organizational components can foster or undermine organizational commitments to sustainability, as well as how one firm’s leadership can spark the revolution in core organizational practices needed to sustain the lasting health of natural, social and economic systems. The course provides students an opportunity to craft a professional response to the world's monumental environmental challenges.