Teaching

• Core courses for PGP, PGPX and ePGP programme at IIMA, covering basics of managerial communication, difficult communicaiton, team communication, analytical writing and persuasive presentations.

• Sessions for executive education programmes covering topics such as effective persuasive communication, use of business stories and narratives for communicating with impact, managing difficult conversations, and use of rhetorical devices during critical presentations.   

Areas of Research:

• Persuasion, Change and Framing: Framing and communicating change within and across institutions; technology-enabled change within organizational and societal settings 
• Communication in entrepreneurial settings: Persuasive and rhetorical devices used to create a successful pitch; identity and image communication in new entrepreneurial ventures
• Gender and society: Understand the dynamics of gender and culture within workplace and society at large
• Health communication: Effective physician patient interaction for positive health outcomes

Journal Publications

• Kulkarni, V. (2019). Is it the message or the medium? Relational management during crisis through blogs, Facebook and corporate websites. Global Business Review, 20(3), 743-756.

• Kulkarni, V., Vohra, N., Sharma, S., & Nair, N. (2018). Walking the tightrope: gender inclusion as organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management.

• Kulkarni, V. (2016). Employee interpretations of change: exploring the other side of the resistance story. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 246-263.

• Chandwani, R., & Kulkarni, V. (2016, May). Who's the Doctor? Physicians' Perception of Internet Informed Patients in India. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3091-3102).

• Lewis, L.K., Laster, N., & Kulkarni, V. (2013). Telling ‘em how it will be: Previewing pain of risky change in initial announcements. Journal of Business Communication.

• Kaul, A., Kulkarni, V. (2011). ‘Gender and Politeness in Indian Emails' in Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction, IGI Global

• Book Review: Leading Lessons from Literature by Sampat P Singh. Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers; Vol. 29 Issue 3, p 153; July 2004.

Cases

Attention Passengers: Your Flight has been Delayed!

The case describes a customer service situation when a flight gets delayed. The case demonstrates how difficult situations involving bad news delivery warrant that organizations engage in constant and timely communication. It also emphasizes the significance of persuasive message framing to avoid loss of credibility and trust. 

That's Sexual Harassment... Isnt it?

The case centres around a senior executive who becomes aware of a potential sexual harassment (SH) case within his team. The purpose of the case is to explore how such incidents can play out in the Indian corporate sector, where sociocultural factors and gender role expectations influence the way organizational members perceive and respond to the complaints.

Employee Resistence to Change: Is it the Message or the Messenger?

The case revolves around a change initiative introduced in the Indian division of a US-based organization. It case draws attention to the salience of communication practices surrounding change, and highlights the need to attend to employee perspective during change. More specifically, it outlines the need to create change readiness within the team and use audience-specific frames to communicate change.

Cummins India: Creating an Inclusive Workplace for Women (co-authored with Prof Biju Varkkey)

The case describes Cummins India's journey of implementing a large scale change to bring about gender diversity and inclusion (D&I) in their organization. It highlights the ways in which a manufacturing organization can roll out systems and processes to bring in gender diversity at workplace, role of senior management in implementing the change, and significance of communication initiatives to create awareness and gain support from its employees.