MBA Students Win National Case Writing Competition

Notre Dame MBA students Joshua Berlo (MBA '04) and Joseph Worrell (MBA '02) won the Grand Prize in the Arthur W. Page Society's national case writing competition in corporate communications. The Grand Prize comes with a cash award of $5,000; a $1,500 award will go to their faculty advisor, ND Management Professor Jim O'Rourke. O'Rourke is the director of ND's Fanning Center for Business Communication.

The competition called for business school students to submit original case studies on corporate communications. Berlo and Worrell's case study dealt with the Emulex Corporation's response to a fictitious press release that was posted on the Internet in August 2000 and caused the value of Emulex stock to plummet. The case study tracked not only how Emulex executives reacted but also how the hoax tarnished the newswire industry.

The Page Society is an association of senior public relations experts. To read the students' winning case, please visit www.nd.edu/~fanning/