• define and demonstrate an understanding of key issues and perspectives on cultural difference and be able to discuss these in relation to organisations and organisational theory, and
• apply appropriate readings and concepts taught during the course to reflect on, and analyse, the assumptions and observations presented in student logs and reports of fieldwork ‘at home’.

Today’s BLC graduates are likely to be employed in multicultural organisations both in Denmark and abroad. The ability to work effectively with people from a wide range of backgrounds is therefore increasingly crucial. Collaborative abilities, a professional attitude, and awareness of one’s own cultural situatedness, and that of one’s organisation, are important elements in enabling this.

“Culture, Economy, Organisation” is designed to foster and train these abilities. The aim of the course is to encourage critical reflexivity concerning students’ awareness of their own cultural situatedness, and the ways in which they apprehend and negotiate difference both in a foreign context and at ‘home’. This is achieved in two ways in this course. First, we will follow up on students’ experiences from their semester abroad in workshops using exercises, presentations and opponent sessions where students, organised in groups across their language classes, will draw on and exchange experiences based on logs written during their exchange using a media platform accessible only to the class group. Second, students will be introduced to different approaches to culture, self and identity (e.g. essentialist, constructivist, symbolist, structural-functionalist, post-modern, organisational culture, multiculturalism), both in and of themselves, and as they present themselves in major organisational theory paradigms. In connection with this, they will also be taught to use a range of ethnographic and organisational inquiry techniques, which are intended to be of further use in their 3rd Year Project

Guidelines for the logs will be distributed at the end of the 3rd semester before the students leave for their semester abroad. Students will also be required to carry out a short fieldwork at a Danish organisation (CBS or another organisation of their choice) as part of the course where they are to apply the ethnographic and organisational research techniques taught during the course with a view to ‘making the familiar strange’. Students will be expected to draw on the perspectives and concepts taught during the course in explaining and reflecting on their experiences both abroad and at home.