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2012/2013  KAN-SOL_OS49  Organizing Processes

English Title
Organizing Processes

Course information

Language English
Exam ECTS 7.5 ECTS
Type Mandatory
Level Full Degree Master
Duration One Quarter
Course period Autumn
Time Table Please see course schedule at e-Campus
Study board
Study Board for MSc in Economics and Business Administration
Course coordinator
  • Tor Hernes - Department of Organization
Main Category of the Course
  • Organization
Last updated on 11-07-2012
Learning objectives
At the exam the students must be able to:
  • articulate the dynamics of framing and overflows as a way to understand organizing processes in organizations
  • demonstrate understanding of sensemaking processes, and principles of sensemaking theory
  • describe and analyse how framing and sensemaking form dynamics of organizing processes
  • analyze how such theories pose challenges to leadership and management
Examination
Organizing Processes:
Type of test Oral with Written Assignment
Marking scale 7-step scale
Second examiner External examiner
Exam period December/January
Aids Please, see the detailed regulations below
Duration 20 Minutes
Individual oral exam based on a group project (4-5 students, max. 15 standard pages). The duration of the individual oral exam is 20 minutes (including assessment). The assessment is a total evaluation of the project and the individual oral exam. Submission of the project to the line secretariat is regarded as examination registration and must take place in December. The regular exam will take place in January. The make-up/re-exam takes place in March. If a student is ill during the oral exam, he/she will be able to re-use the project at the make-up exam. If the student was ill during the writing of the project and did not contribute to the project, the make-up/re-exam project can be written individually or in groups (provided the other students are taking the make-up/re-exam). If the student did not pass the regular exam a new or revised project, confer advice from the examiner at the regular exam, must be handed in to a new deadline specified by the line secretariat.
Examination
The exam will be an oral exam based on a group project – preferably related to the concrete analytical projects performed during the course.
Examination takes place in conjunction with the course in Accounting and Performance Measurement and is based on a group project (group project with individual oral examination).
Course content

Aim of the course and Contents
Organizing is understood as the composite outcome of framing attempts by management and the evolving sensemaking processes in organizations. The course views organizing as an ongoing process of applying various means in order create organizational commitment, which involves multiple actors from all organizational levels. For example, traditional approaches to organizational change have focused almost exclusively on human actors as the central organizational change agents. In contrast to this view, the course introduces theories, which view organizational processes as arising from material, social and cognitive mechanisms. What emerges is therefore a perspective on organizational design as an ongoing and partly uncontrollable process, in which organizational actors, interpretations and technologies become mutually adapted to one another in attempts at organizational continuity and change.

Overlap with Accounting and Performance Measurement (APM)
Both Organizing Processes (OP) and APM focus on the role of a variety of technologies in maintaining and transforming organizations. APM concentrates specifically on the multiple roles played by technologies in relation to accounting procedures and performance measurement. This instantiates and illustrates the general situation elucidated in OP, in which human actors and technologies together shape organizational designs and outcomes The OP and APM courses are integrated in shared workshops, which focus on the role of accounting and performance technologies in stabilizing or transforming organizational designs.

Teaching methods
Dialogue-based lectures and case discussions. A workshop will be held with Accounting and Performance Measurement.
Further Information

The Course can only be followed together with the course Accounting and Performance Measurement
Expected literature

Orlikowski (1996) Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective.Information Systems research 7(1):63-92.
 
Weick, Karl E. (2001) Sensemaking in Organizations: Small Structures with Large Consequenses in Making sense of the organization.  Ch 1 (pp 5-31)
 
Callon, M., (1998), 'An essay on framing and overflowing: economic externalities revisited by sociology', in Callon, M., (Ed.), The Laws of the Markets, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 244-269.
 
Hernes, Tor (2004) Studying composite boundaries  : A framework of analysis. Human Relations 57(1):9-29.
 
Trist, Eric, and Ken Bamforth (1951) Some Social and Psychological  Consequencesof the Longwall Method of Coal Getting. Human Relations 4:3.
 
Rothschild-Whitt, Joyce (1979)  The collectivist organization: An alternative to rational-bureaucraticmodels. American Sociological Review 44:509–27.
 
Chen, Cathrine K. (2009) Enabling creative chaos. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (240 pages)
 
 

Last updated on 11-07-2012