HA.E42 - Organizational Behaviour*

Faculty
Christian Poulsen, PhD

Course Coordinator
Morten Thanning Vendelø

Prerequisite/progression of the course

None

Course content, structure and teaching

The course aims to provide students with a basic framework to better understand, analyze and handle dilemmas, contradictions and paradoxes faced by organizational members, whether being managers or employees. In doing so, the course revolves around everyday practice of organizing, that is the focus is on processes and activities going on in different organizational settings and situations. How are people controlled? How does leadership matter? How does ethics and culture influence the everyday workings of an organization? Are some of the many questions addressed in the course.

Starting out with establishing a common platform for understanding organizing, the course moves into more specific themes and issues of relevance. Among these themes are: Group behaviour, leadership and decision making, ethics, control, power and politics, gender and organizational culture and change.

The course compromises of lectures and structured class discussions based on lectures and case preparations prepared by intercultural groups of students. The lectures are intended to further develop theoretical underpinnings of the themes in the literature as well as preparing space for class discussions. Case presentations are intended to provide for opportunities of application of theoretical knowledge and should lead into a class discussion. It is mandatory to participate in such a case presentation.

The course's development of personal competences

The student will be able to assess the situational needs of an organization. The course will give the students necessary tools for starting a learning curve on themes related to organization theory.

Learning Objectives

The student should at the end of the course be able to:

Show understanding of organizational theory and its application in organizations
Demonstrate ability to relate different organization theories to each other
Show familiarity with a wide range of organizational concepts and ideas
Furthermore she should also be able to link theories from the literature with real world cases and critically assess whether one theory fits a given case better or not.
The student should show a notion of how each organizational theory fits into a meta-theoretical approach and in the history of organizational theory.

Type of examination, exam aids and assessment

Oral exam on the basis of a synopsis, max. 5 pages. The synopsis is prepared in groups of 3-5 students. Open book exam

Recommended literature

Management and Organisational Behaviour, by Wendy Bloisi, Curtis W.Cook and Philllip L. Hunsacker, McGraw Hill, 2nd edition, 2007, Spain, Chapters 1-3, 8-18.

Sidst opdateret af The Electives office 31.01.2010