New Business Course Teaches Lessons from the Movies
Wall Street, starring Michael Douglas.
COBE is going Hollywood.
For Maymester 2012, the RU College of Business and Economics' Department of Management will premiere a course drawing on cinema to illustrate management and leadership concepts.
Shu Wang, assistant professor of management, will teach MGNT 471: Special Topics in Management: Management and Leadership in the Movies. The three-credit course will focus on scenes from selected films to demonstrate theories and issues in business ethics, motivation, teamwork, problem solving, leadership and cross-cultural phenomena.
"Movies exaggerate, dramatize and sometimes oversimplify, but they can still be compelling case studies with great lessons that can be learned," Wang said. Among the titles to be screened in class are the 1987 classic "Wall Street" and the 2004 release "Mean Girls." Wang said students will also volunteer with a local organization for a minimum of six hours to gain practical insights on leadership and management topics.
Business schools are increasingly incorporating movies into their management curricula, Wang said, because Hollywood's morality tales, conspiracy theories and David-and-Goliath fables often show the best and worst of human nature.
Registration is now under way for the class, which is open to all majors