Educating European corporate communication professionals for senior management positions: a collaboration between UCLA's Anderson School of Management and the University of Lugano.(University of California at Los Angeles)

UCLA's program in strategic management for European corporate communication professionals provides participants with a concentrated, yet selective, immersion in those management disciplines taught at U.S. business schools, topics that are essential to their work as senior advisors to CEOs and as leaders in the field. The choice of topics represents the close collaboration between the directors of the UCLA and Lugano programs. The UCLA program also encourages the active participation of the professionals by offering an exposure to teaching and classroom communication practices of U.S. business schools that adhere to the case approach to business education and by providing numerous opportunities for participants to present their analyses and application of management topics to their professional roles and responsibilities. Working with European professionals also enables U.S. faculty to reconsider some of their own assumptions about teaching as they train U.S.-based MBA students.

Keywords: active learning; case analysis; corporate communication; management education

**********

IN 2003, UCLA's Anderson School of Management launched a 2-week program in strategic management for European corporate communication professionals, typically midcareer managers seeking training in the field, greater knowledge of management disciplines, and a master's degree. In this instance, strategic management refers to those management disciplines that prepare corporate communication professionals for leadership roles in organizations.

The program at UCLA is an intensive course that serves as part of a master's degree awarded by the University of Lugano. The full master's program also includes coursework at the home institution in Lugano in other management disciplines (e.g., organizational behavior and financial management) and in aspects of corporate communication (e.g., media management, new media, corporate identity, and reputation management). The participants, all European by background and business experience, take classes for 2 weeks at UCLA conducted exclusively for this group by the Anderson School of Management's faculty.

This article begins by outlining the goals of the program. It then provides a profile of the European participants and goes on to consider the rationale for the subject matter and the major innovative elements of the teaching approach. It concludes by highlighting the key elements of such a program and discussing how the challenges of training European professionals in the United States may prompt us to reevaluate our teaching practices and assumptions about MBA instruction offered to U.S.-born and U.S.-educated MBAs.

GOALS OF THE PROGRAM

The program, which was offered in both 2003 and 2004 and will be offered again in 2005, has two primary goals:

Subject matter: To provide participants with a concentrated, selective immersion in those management disciplines considered to be essential to the work of corporate communication professionals as advisors to CEOs and as participants in discussions and decisions about strategy and its implementation. The choice of subject matter represents my close collaboration with Professor Francesco Lurati, the director of the Executive Master of Science in Communications Management at the University of Lugano, and reflects our shared belief in the importance of strategic business education to the preparation of corporate communication professionals for senior leadership positions.

Teaching approach: To offer a highly participative style of teaching that, in some instances, calls for student-run discussion of issues and, in other instances, employs a case approach to instruction and related classroom communication practices that characterize this U.S.-based approach to business education.

Taken together, the subject matter and teaching approach assume that corporate communication professionals are interested in providing counsel to CEOs and in taking a leadership role themselves. The subject matter is intended, then, to provide some of the key organizational and strategic issues that CEOs address as they shape an organization's future, as well as numerous opportunities to relate the topics studied to their own roles and responsibilities as corporate communication professionals. In addition, the program attempts to offer participants an appreciation for those values and styles of communication fostered by the business case method of pedagogy, a set of teaching practices that influences the attitudes of U.S.-trained, MBA-educated managers who work for organizations in Europe and with whom these …