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SOC VMTE - Management technologies* "NOT ESTABLISHED"

Faculty
Ester Barinaga, Christian Borch, Anders LaCour, Niels Thyge, Niels Åkerstrøm
Course Coordinator
Ester Barinaga
Prerequisite/progression of the course
Students with a BA or BSc (or equivalent) degree can attend. The course will focus on a variety of management technologies. Thus, diverse backgrounds are welcome.
Course content, structure and teaching
Traditional management literature assumed a view of organizations as harmonious social, cultural and economic systems, in which order and functionality were the natural state of affairs. The advance of critical management studies, however, demonstrated that conflict and deviance are inherent to all organizations. Gender inequalities as well as the management/labor divide (to take only two structuring boundaries) shape organizations, bringing noise, resistance and contradictions to everyday organizational life. To keep a functional and more or less stable status quo, however, various forms of power and coercion have become important, yet subtle. These take the form of steering or management technologies.
Management technologies have thus become central to organizations. Traditional management technologies blend with new management concepts – such as “play”, “trust”, and “architecture” – for the conduct of managers’ as well as employees’ conduct, co-opting the employee and transforming potential employee resistance to fit the interests of the organization. Given the pervasiveness of these technologies, the course aims at understanding them by mobilizing a variety of sociological perspectives.
More particularly, the course is divided into three blocks:
  • The inherent rationality of management technologies for the conduct of conduct.
  • The organizational and individual dimensions of management technologies.
  • The material and special aspects of management technologies.
The course will focus on particular management technologies: management by objectives, play, accounting and architecture.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, course participants should be able to:
  • Demonstrate an ability to identify and describe management technologies for the conduct of conduct.
  • Use sociological theories to analyse management conduct technologies.
  • Persuasively explain and defend a position on issues concerning management conduct technologies.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the theoretical perspectives discussed in the course as a means of deciding questions concerning management conduct technologies.
Type of examination, exam aids and assessment
Oral exam on the basis of a synopsis (individual or group)
Recommended literature
  • March, James. 1976: The technology of foolishness, I James March og Johan Olsen (red) Ambiguity and choice in organizations, Bergen, Oslo og Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget
  • Karsten, Luchien. 2006. Management concepts: Their transfer and implementation. Critical Perspectives on International Business 2, (3): 195-207.
  • Luhmann, Niklas (1990): “Technology, environment and social risk: a systems perspective” i Industrial Crisis Quarterly, no. 4:223-231
  • la Cour, Anders (forthcoming): Information and other Bodily Functions: Stool records in Danish residential homes
  • Foucault, M., 1997: ”Technologies of the self”, in The essential works of Michel Foucault, vol. One, The New York Press.
  • Latour, B. (1987), kapitel 3 i Science in Action. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, pp. 103-144.
  • Miller, P. (1990). On the interrelations between accounting and the state. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 15(4), pp. 315-338.
  • Power, M. (1999). “Making Audits work: Auditees and the Auditable Performance”, kap. 5 i The Audit Society. Oxford University Press, pp. 91-121
  • Vikkelsø, S. (2007) In between curing and counting: Performative effects of experiments with healthcare information infrastructure. Financial Accountability & Management, 23(3), pp. 269-288.
  • Karen Dale & Gibson Burrel (2008) ‘Building people: identities and spaces’, pp. 99-133 i The spaces of organization and the organization of space: power, identity and materiality at work. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Karen Dale & Gibson Burrel (2008) ‘Building a social materiality: spatial and embodied politics in organisation’, pp. 203-230 i The spaces of organization and the organization of space: power, identity and materiality at work. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Peter Sloterdijk (2008) ’Foam City’, Distinktion 16: 47-59.
  • Ash Amin & Nigel Thrift (2002) ’Powerful Cities’, pp. 105-130 i Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge: Polity.
  • Bülent Diken & Carsten Bagge Laustsen (2002) ‘Indistinktion’, Distinktion 4: 93-111.
  • Baumann, Zygmunt. 2000: ”Modernity and the Holocaust”, ch. 1 (introduction). Cornell University Press.

Last updated by ´The Electives Office 22/06/2010