Cul­tur­al Ana­lys­is for Busi­ness

Course content

The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the discipline of cultural analysis to the key theoretical frameworks that are commonly used in the practice and to illustrate their applicability to a variety of business contexts. These frames will include, semiotics, identity and collective history, Foucauldian discourse analysis, and cultural studies. These theories and perspectives have been introduced in the lectures they will then be applied to business cases in three workshop groups.

This course explores business as a cultural practice that influences and is influenced by many others. The course focues on how meaning is produced as both an intended and unintended consequence of the signifying practices engaged in business. From the legacies of colonialism, continuing sexism, financial inequality and the ongoing climate crisis, this course offers innovative ways to think about and address these problems. Every lecture and workshop class poses ethical dilemmas to students and requires them to work out how to make decisions to address them. In workshops, students are required to critically consider data, theory, cases and problems, and work together to come to a fuller understanding of them. The course shows the cultural concerns of business within a relatively long historical context. This helps students to understand their role and responsibilites in shaping how this context will develop for themselves and generations to come. A major theme of the course is the unstable, subjective and processual nature of culture. This often presents many students with the need to challenge their basic assumptions and help each other in learning to do the same.

Themes explored

• The methods and interests for the sociological study of culture (Explaining the difference between Quantitative and Qualitative data)
• The methods and interests of the cultural studies approach to culture (Describing methods of examining and interpreting cultural artefacts, and practices, institutions)
• National Cultures and Stereotypes (Intercultural and cross-cultural competencies)
• Semiotics (Explaining mechanisms and theory of signification for communication)
• Identity and History (Introduction to questions of identity, collective history, difference and diversity)
• Representation (Explaining the cultural context as an inherent part of communication)
• Discourse analysis (Describing methodology for studying cultural paradigms and institutions)
• The applications of these theories and tools to business contexts  (Workshop cases)

The course is structured so as to maximise the contact time between students and teachers and to produce forums conducive to continuous feedback through the small tasks (presentation, was analysis, group discussions) in the workshops. It also designed to inculcate the students with the skills required for self-directed learning at university level through the modelling of workshop, seminar and reading groups study forms.

This goal is also balanced with the need to provide clear instruction to students as they engage with this introduction to theoretical material. To that end, this often dense theory is introduced to the students in manageable pairs of one-hour lectures. They then work with these theories and frameworks on business cases (such as the semiotics of Mærsk’s diversity marketing, the discourse of tech startups e.g. We Work, Brexit and national cultures) in their language groups during 10, two-hour workshops with guidance from one of the course teachers.

This process should give students the basis to formulate their assessment. That being an individual essay—no longer than ten pages—in which they will explain how a theory describes or explains cultural phenomena and apply this understanding to a business case to identify problems and suggest a practical course of action to address them.