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Managing
organizational change:
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| Examination form |
Oral exam based on written product
In order to participate in the oral exam, the written product
must be handed in before the oral exam; by the set deadline. The
grade is based on an overall assessment of the written product and
the individual oral performance. |
| Individual or group exam |
Group exam, max. 5 students in the
group |
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The oral exam is individual and based on the
group project.
Ordinary exam takes place in March/April. |
| Size of written product |
Max. 15 pages |
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For a single student max. 10 pages |
| Assignment type |
Project |
| Duration |
Written product to be submitted on specified date and
time.
20 min. per student, including examiners' discussion of grade,
and informing plus explaining the grade |
| Preparation time |
No preparation |
| Grading scale |
7-step scale |
| Examiner(s) |
Internal examiner and external examiner |
| Exam period |
Spring Term and April |
| Make-up exam/re-exam |
Same examination form as the ordinary exam
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, the examiner decides whether a new or revised
project, must be handed in to a new deadline specified by the line
secretariat. Reexam takes place in
May.
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The aim of this course is to develop students’ competencies to
analyze real-life management challenges of implementing
organizational change and innovation processes. Focus is on
micro-level processes and how relations are managed to achieve and
sustain change and innovation in organizations. Organizational
change is seen as taking place in different forms and levels in the
organisation, including, for example, setting up or re-structuring
organizational units, introducing new technologies or moving into
new markets. Similarly, innovation may take different forms,
including new products, technologies, services or ways of
organizing. Students will analyse specific processes of change or
innovation and prepare plans or strategies of how change could be
implemented in an organizational setting when considering the
various political, technological, cultural and individual factors
at play. Their analyses will be rooted in the theoretical
literature of the course and the methodologies will be based
stories and narratives as tools for analyzing and
sustaining the processes they study.
Rather than take a hierarchical view of management it works from
management as a relational phenomenon emerging from social practice
through processes whereby certain actors are ascribed the right to
redefine reality. Whereas management is often associated with the
concept of hierarchy ascribing management to a number of
people or groups to whom it is left to define reality, the course
explores how organizational change and innovation processes emerge
from collective redefinitions of a shared reality. The course helps
students develop understanding of how political, cultural,
technological and individual factors combine in processes of
innovation and change and in particular how change and innovation
are triggered and maintained through micro level processes.
The course analyzes managerial strategy making as a staged
activity from different perspectives and looks at how managers
emerge as ‘strategic actors’ in processes of change and innovation.
Additionally the development of ‘self-management’ is analyzed and
focuses directed toward what is happening to organizing when work
becomes temporary and distributed, thereby rendering managerial and
organizational boundaries too ambiguous.
The course draws upon notions such as socio-technical translation,
learning, power, sense-making, staging and narratives as
theoretical concepts. The main methodological concept used is
narratives and stories. In the methods part the course introduces
students to core elements of qualitative analysis: research
objectives, research design, data collection, data analysis and
reporting. The course covers a variety of techniques and helps
students make choices about which techniques to use in different
situations. Students are guided through the process of conducting
qualitative research step by step and get to experiment with
application in class.
The course is designed to combine lectures, dialogue, student
presentations, games, supervision of mini-projects based on
empirical data as well as workshops where the projects are
discussed. In the early phase of the course the students will be
invited to choose subject and the empirical field of the
mini-project. Mini-projects will be conducted by groups of 4-5
students.
Overlapping with Leadership
The course has a natural complementarity with the other courses on
the SOL programme, by being a more practical extension of the other
courses while connecting to similar theories. Whereas the main aims
of the other courses are to provide analytical tools for analysing
organizations, this course follows the tools in action. The
methodology of the course will also enable more interactive group
work than what is the case with most of the other courses. In some
respects it has a natural overlap with the course “Leadership”, but
emphasizes less the actual leadership and leader dimension.
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Andrew H. Van de Ven & D.E. Polley-& Raghu Garud &
Sankaran Venkataraman (2008): “The innovation Journey”, Oxford
University Press,
B. Csarniawska-Joerges (2008): “Narratives in Social Sciences
Research”, Sage
Thomas W Lee (1998): “Using Qualitative Methods in Organizational
Research, Sage
Supplementary literature will be announced
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