BE889-7-SP-CO:
Professional and Ethical Speech in Management
2025/26
Essex Business School
Colchester Campus
Spring
Postgraduate: Level 7
Current
Monday 12 January 2026
Friday 20 March 2026
10
14 March 2025
Requisites for this module
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This module provides students with skills to build their rhetorical capacities as professional communicators. In particular, the module will focus on understanding and reflecting on the ethics of communication designed to persuade people to specific actions.
Students will be introduced to intermediate approaches to persuasion, such as writing speeches for skeptical audiences, strategies for facilitating equitable discussion, and analysing the construction of a speaker's authentic voice. This module complements students’ learning on the MBA, equipping them with skills for effectively communicating new knowledge and insights gained throughout their course. Effective communciation significantly improves their employability in interviews and the value that MBAs can bring to their organisations as leaders and managers.
The aims of this module are to:
- Provide students with intermediate skills in public speaking, including facilitating equitable discussion in meetings which draws on the talents of all present.
- Enable students to articulate, understand, and resolve complex and/or ethical issues via persuasive speaking.
- Enable students to understand and reflect critically on the relationship between speakers and their audiences, using this insight to help them plan their content to fit their audience.
- Enable students to understand how speaking practices are affected by the political, social, and cultural contexts in which they occur, and adjust their content and manner of delivery accordingly.
By the end of the module, students will be expected to:
- Draft and analyse both their own and other people's speeches.
- Recognise and make informed, ethical decisions about how they speak as well as how they respond to other people's speech.
- Demonstrate critical insight into audience responses and reactions to their speeches.
Indicative syllabus
- Approaches to the ethics of persuasion
- Which public? Audiences and speaking practices
- Speaking in an age of dissensus: contemporary issues in public speech
- 'Giving an account of oneself': authenticity, performativity, and the speaker
- From persuasion to invitation: an alternative ethics of communication
There will be a mixture of lectures, practical exercises, and workshops constituting 24 contact hours.
- Lectures; Workshops and Group discussions of articles and cases
- Practical Simulation-based exercises: Team-based engagement and problem solving with an elaborate realistic online business simulation
- Presentations and effective communication (verbal and written) to formulate clear strategies and logical argumentation.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
No
No
No
No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
No lecture recording information available for this module.
* Please note: due to differing publication schedules, items marked with an asterisk (*) base their information upon the previous academic year.
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