HowUsed

**AROUSAL by Management Reality**

*A REAL ORGANISATION UNIT SIMULATED AS LIFE*
How AROUSAL is Typically Used
Executive Development Programmes in Strategic Management and Business Management & Executive Masters Programmes in Construction Management and Project Management
For executive programmes the focus is almost always the strategic management of a business and inter-personal relationships. Quite often two trainers, a business specialist and a behavioural scientist, will work with up to six teams, each with typically four participants. During a two or three day course a wide range of business and behavioural issues will be explored, for example, the links between business strategy and operations; the subtle differences in response to specific strategies by different functional areas of the business, such as finance, marketing, human resources, production; assessing performance; the role of leadership, teamwork, advocacy, and decision making in formulating and pursuing achievable strategies; methods for enhancing leadership, teamwork, involvement and individual reward; achieving high-performance teams and high-performance businesses. Whilst strategy is the prime focus, many operational issues are addressed, thus broadening and supplementing a participant's understanding of the foundations of business and providing basic skills in analysis, synthesis, strategy development, managing relationships and advocacy. Typically each team will complete the case study and then run their firm for 18 months to two years. There are four common modes of usage of AROUSAL: As a stand alone course As one in a series of modules As part of a larger programme where AROUSAL is used to integrate previous learning and to generate further learning agendas As a vehicle for training needs analysis and the design of further modules.
Undergraduate Programmes in Building, Surveying, Engineering, Architecture, Project Management and Construction Management *& some Masters Programmes*
AROUSAL is ideally suited to the final year of study in BSc, BEng and MEng courses and for masters level students who have relatively limited experience of business management. The focus is usually on exploring the way in which a contracting firm is organised and managed, and identifying the ingredients of a successful firm. As students work in teams there is a good opportunity to explore issues such as teamwork, sharing knowledge and information, decision making, and presentation skills. Whilst developing an understanding of many facets of businesses and how they are managed, AROUSAL-based courses also provide an opportunity for students to enhance career-related skills, to assess their capabilities, and to identify areas of strength and where they may benefit from further support and development. There is no single best way of using the AROUSAL system. It has been designed for flexibility, to provide tutors with materials which can be modified to suit particular needs and circumstances. Courses based on AROUSAL can: reinforce and anticipate the content of conventional lectures, and introduce completely new issues; be integrated into a larger course, or stand-alone as an important awareness facilitating exercise; be a vehicle for considering management and business issues required by professional bodies, and enhance career-related and transferable skills; include significant team and individual assignments and assessed work, and have other outcomes which are not-assessed; be an intensive exercise over, say, a week, or be prolonged over a term or semester with decision making periods linked to formal inputs; include both the case study and the simulation, or handle the case study separately from the simulation, or exclude the case study.
*Many thousands of managers and students have benefited from the AROUSAL approach to learning and development*