Advanced Management Communication

 

Professor Barry Eckhouse

 

 

 

 

Course Schedule

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Course Information: Requirements & Evaluation

Description:

This elective offers you an opportunity to extend both your understanding and practice of principles covered in your first-quarter course in management communication. You will find this elective worth considering if you found your first course valuable but too brief to develop the kind of proficiency you believe you should have as a professional manager. You will also find this elective attractive if you appreciated the kind of emphasis your first course placed on practical application. This elective also assumes that your successful learning depends on frequent application and informed critical comment.

However, unlike the first course, this elective develops your ability to communicate by placing you in a variety of roles that managers and communicators have in common. Thus you will notice that the course schedule is designed around the following seminar topics: The Manager as Editor, The Manager as Reporter, The Manager as Advocate, The Manager as Defendant, The Manager as Speaker, and The Manager as Facilitator. You can expect reading and lecture to offer insight into each of these roles, and you can expect to spend some time performing in each. In addition to this dramatic feature, this elective offers the following substantive topics: advanced editing, advanced argumentation, interaction and the conduct of meetings, and interpersonal communication and question-and-answer technique.

Assignments:

Expect many short assignments: two editorial revisions, an informative solicitation (written or voice mail) and an informative written response, one longer argumentative paper, a revision of that paper, one impromptu talk, one persuasive oral presentation, and participation in a question and answer session. Please note that while this course requires roughly eight assignments, every assignment draws on material from your work place. Unlike the first-quarter course, this elective has no canned-textbook assignments, but this means you must determine the topical content.

If you want help with the assignments or any other area of this course, please give me a call (510-254-4876) or send e-mail (barry@rhetor.com). This class is small enough for everyone to receive individual attention and instruction, but only if you want it. Thus, you will have to make some of the effort here.

to top

 

 

 

Barry Eckhouse

Barry Eckhouse has taught communication in management for over fifteen years. Before coming to Saint Mary's, Barry taught in the U.C. Berkeley Haas School Business, where he created and directed their programs in management communications for over ten years. During that time, he also managed Eckhouse and Associates, his Berkeley-based management consulting firm.

Barry received his doctorate from Berkeley in 1977, when he was awarded a doctoral Phi Beta Kappa for his graduate research on theories and techniques of persuasion as they apply to argument in philosophy. He has remained active in the academic research community and has been invited to speak at academic research institutions such as Berkeley, Harvard, and Stanford.

While at Berkeley, Barry created and established a complete program in management communication for graduates and undergraduates, and developed programs in the schools of Architecture and Chemical Engineering. He also created the Haas Competition, a partnership between Levi-Strauss and Berkeley's Graduate School of Business. A mock congressional hearing, this competition requires MBA students to present written and oral arguments to CEOs from leading corporations.

Barry joined Saint Mary's College and Graduate Business Programs in 1979, and now teaches both core courses and advanced electives in the MBA and Executive MBA Programs. In 1989, he received the appointment of Associate Professor, and with it the responsibilities of teaching and designing curricula within the School of Economics and Business Administration. He was promoted to full professor in 1994.

Prior to his full-time appointment at Saint Mary's, Barry served as a trainer, writer, speaker, and advisor in professional development. He has provided professional service to hundreds of clients, and organizations such as Advanced Micro Devices, Amdahl, Bank of America, Bank of Canton, Clorox, Bechtel Power, Bechtel Inc., Citicorp, Electric Power Research Institute, Hitachi Data Systems, Lockheed, Pacific Bell, Pacific Telecom, Rolm, Signetics, SRI International, Utah International, and Xerox.

Barry is the author of Competitive Writing (McGraw-Hill, 1993), Competitive Communication: Classical Rhetoric for Modern Business (McGraw-Hill, 1995), and the forthcoming Uses of Argument in Management (Oxford University Press, 1998).

For details, please see my full curriculum vitae.

to top

 

 

 

The Importance of Managerial Communication

Here is annotated bibliography of references that: (1) argue for offering management communication courses in business programs, and (2) show the importance of communication skills in business. This is a modified version of material prepared by John D. Stegman, The Ohio State University.

Belohov, James A., Popp, Paul O., and Porte, Michael S. "Communication: A View from the Inside of Business," The Journal of Business Communication, 11 (1979): 53-59.

A survey of the attitudes of personnel officers of 250 large organizations concerning the need for communication courses at the graduate level. The survey found that communication skills were rated of "extreme importance" by executives of large organizations, some believing it to be the single most important function of management personnel.

Bowman, Garda W. "What Helps or Harms Promotability?" Harvard Business Review, 42 (January February 1964): 626.

In this survey of Harvard Business Review readers and other executives, the "ability to communicate" is the top-ranked criterion for managers, mentioned by 98.7 percent of respondents.

Connelly, Francis J., ed. "Accreditation Research Project Report of Phase 1," AACSB Bulletin, 14 (Winter 1980): 215.

Survey of over 1000 academic, corporate, nonprofit and societal respondents gave the "manager" (as contrasted with "leader," "administrator," and "trustee") a #1 importance ranking to all interpersonal skills, including "oral communication" and "written communication."

Edge, Alfred G. and Greenwood, Ronald. "How Managers Rank Knowledge, Skills and Attributes Possessed by Business Administration Graduates," AACSB Bulletin, 11 (October 1974): 30-34.

Survey of 430 marketing and personnel managers showed communication as the top skill desired of business administration graduates. Evangelauf, Jean. "Business Schools Urged to Alter Curricula," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 May 1985.

The article reported the findings of the Business Higher Education Forum, an affiliate of the American Council on Education. The forum's report stated that: "Business schools should seek to insure that their graduates are competent in oral and written communication, even if the students entered business programs with poor communications skills."

Fielden, John. "Educating Tomorrow's Executives," Harvard Business Review, 38 (November December,1960): 618-23.

Heisler, W. J. "Promotion: What Does it Take to Get Ahead?" Business Horizons, 21 (April 1979): 57- 63.

Survey of 200 MBA students at "two nationally renowned universities" placed "ability to communicate clearly and concisely" first in the list of "Value of Promotion Factors."

Hildebrandt, J. W., Bond, F. A., Miller, E. L., and Swinyard, W. W. "An Executive Appraisal of Courses which Best Prepare One for General Management," The Journal of Business Communication, 19 (Winter,1982): 515.

This ongoing study summarizes 1980-81 data from 1158 newly promoted executives in the United States who answered this question: "Assuming the study of business administration best prepares a young person for a career in general management, how important are the following courses as part of that preparation...." Business Communication, oral and written, was the course selected as "very important" more often than any of the other thirteen courses.

Hunger, David J., and Wheelen, Thomas L. "A Performance Appraisal of Undergraduate Business Education," Human Resource Management, 19 (Spring,1980): 24-31.

This is a survey on undergraduate business education of Business School Deans and Personnel Executives. "Both deans and personnel executives feel that undergraduate business education needs to focus primarily on the 'basics,' e.g., developing logical thinking and communication skills."

Kiechel, W. "Harvard Business School Restudies Itself," Fortune, 18 June 1979: 4858.

"FORTUNE recently interviewed recruiters from a crosssection of businesses that routinely hire high-priced MBAs . . . the most frequent observation was a simple wish that business schools do a better job teaching their students to write and speak effectively."

Stolzenberg, Ross M., Abowd, John, and Giarruso, Roseann. "Abandoning the Myth of the Modern MBA Student," Selections, The Magazine of the Graduate Management Admissions Council. Autumn 1986:921.

This article presents the preliminary summary report of GMACs New Matriculants Survey obtained from more than 2,000 students at 91 graduate schools. Respondents rated "communication skills" as the top "personal attribute to becoming a successful manager." Communication skills were rated as "very important" by 89 percent of the respondents. The study "suggests that students are more likely to choose a business school to become better communicators than to become better analysts."

to top