Expanding on the model of first semester Management Communication, this course emphasizes how general managers can, through communicating with a consideration of changing contexts, further an organization's strategy and remove obstacles to implementing that strategy. Students will explore how in today's rapid pace of change in communication technology, the corporate communication function must communicate authentically to and align messages with all stakeholders while managers at every level will be increasingly expected to clearly articulate corporate strategy and goals. Many internships end with a presentation or report and seek three capabilities: mastery of key MBA concepts, solving an enterprise level problem, and superior communication skills. By moving from analysis to articulation and implementation, the communication perspective is especially suited to integrating key concepts in order to solve larger analytical problems. This class will use cases as a basis for such daily exercises as media training, financial conference calls, and action plan pitches and will conclude with a substantive presentation driven by student interests.

This course prepares first-year students for their summer internships. Using full-length feature films, the course shows students how to get the most out of their summer internships and, in the process, teaches them career-management skills that will help them become more effective leaders in their careers after Darden. The course addresses critical well-researched joining-up phenomena such as letting go of the current engagement, establishing credibility, learning organizational norms, socialization, self-management, the locus of control, the effects of compromise, joining work groups and teams, adult-learning theory, orientation to hierarchy and power distance, managing upward, abrasive personalities, and consolidating experience-based learning. It is designed to capitalize on the literature and research bases provided by neurolinguistic programming, habitual behavior, and rational-emotive-behavior constructs in order to ensure that students will fit in quickly, gain influence rapidly, learn consistently, and outperform their competition. The provocative films encourage student engagement and, perhaps, life-changing debate.

This course addresses topics and subjects likely to be experienced by MBAs seeking positions or internships in general-management career-development programs or consulting firms with a strong interest in good operations-analysis/management skills. The topics covered in this course are likely to be encountered by rising MBA students in their summer internships or by recent graduates in their first few years out of school. Topics will include, but will not be limited to, such areas as competitive cost analysis, lean thinking in services and manufacturing, and six-sigma project design and implementation. Prerequisites: Restricted to Darden students.

This course is about learning to think and act entrepreneurially in order to create new value in the world through new products, new solutions, new ventures, new business units, new distribution channels, new firms, new business models, new technologies, and business transformation. The emphasis will be on the art and science of 'creating something new from little.' The orientation in the course will be to challenge students to think about how they can create, finance, and build or change a productive business organization with commonly available resources (e.g., intelligence, insight, energy, initiative, and personal relationships). Students will learn to use this orientation wherever new-venture creation may occur, namely, through the actions of an independent entrepreneur or in a large, established firm.

This course is intended to introduce students to the consulting process and to help them identify and refine the skill sets necessary for successful consultation. The course is designed specifically for students interested in pursuing consulting internships and careers but who do not have significant consulting experience prior to Darden. Approximately half of the course will focus on the cognitive processes involved in framing and designing the engagement specifically, hypothesis generating and testing, using a set of video cases that track the work of actual consulting teams as they move through the processes of initiating and completing client projects. The other half will address a more tactical set of issues around engagement work-planning, data-gathering, field-interviewing, and communicating with clients. The course will include the use of cases and exercises and the completion of a final project presentation. Students will be assigned to a consulting team to work with throughout the course.

By exploring in more depth the strategies of communication framed in the First-Year Management Communication course, this course offers students the opportunity to obtain the polished presentation skills, particularly oral, so necessary for a successful career.

This elective course brings to life the American Civil War through readings and sessions with Gary Gallagher, world-renowned American Civil War historian, and an intensive two-day visit to the site of the Battle of Gettysburg. While visiting the battlefield, students will examine how Union army and Confederate army commanders faced their moments of decision.

Through a combination of cases and experiential exercises this course brings to students what expert entrepreneurs have learned the hard way. Expert entrepreneurs are people who have built multiple ventures including successes and failures and taken at least one company public.

Power, status, and influence are topics that make many people somewhat uncomfortable. However, they are fundamental realities in much of organizational life and are the mechanisms by which things get done. Being an effective leader and change agent requires both understanding power and acting on that knowledge. This class is about power: how things get done, how to build and wield influence, and the multiple ways to accomplish these objectives.

This course looks at the barriers that limit individual and institutional networks and explores the ways in which networks can be expanded and strengthened resulting in more effective interpersonal communications. Students will learn that managers who understand and identify such networks are better informed, more effective, and more influential in their positions. Also included in the course will be the study of interpersonal, social, and organizational networks, how they can be created, and why they are valuable. Although the course will build on a number of the concepts presented in First-Year Management Communication, including audience analysis and persuasion, it will focus most closely on the role that storytelling plays in network creation and expansion. Instructional methodologies are a balance of cases and presentations, along with technical readings where appropriate. Leveraging our diverse community, role playing, impromptu speeches, narratives, more formal presentations, and some short written work will be used to build the skills necessary for effective networks. Students may choose a final presentation and paper to complete the course.