Today, managerial careers cross functions, organizations, and industries, as well as cultural and political boundaries. Yale SOM teaches management fundamentals in an integrated way — the way successful managers must function every day.

The heart of the first-year curriculum is a series of multidisciplinary team-taught courses, called Organizational Perspectives, that teach students to draw on a broad range of information, tools, and skills to develop creative solutions and make strategic decisions. The Organizational Perspectives are both internal to the organization — the Innovator, the Operations Engine, the Employee, and Sourcing and Managing Funds (or CFO) — and external to the organization — the Investor, the Customer, the Competitor, the Global Macroeconomy, and State and Society.

This focus on organizational role, instead of disciplinary topic, creates a richer, more relevant context for students to learn the concepts they need to succeed as leaders.

The core starts with a seven-week Orientation to Management that prepares students for these integrated courses. The Yale SOM core culminates in the Integrated Leadership Perspective class, which gives students practical experience in synthesizing the lessons of the core through a series of case studies and group projects involving organizations of varying scale and purpose.