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2014/2015  KAN-CSOLU1005U  Organizing Processes

English Title
Organizing Processes

Course information

Language English
Course ECTS 7.5 ECTS
Type Mandatory
Level Full Degree Master
Duration One Quarter
Course period Autumn, Second Quarter
Timetable Course schedule will be posted at calendar.cbs.dk
Study board
Study Board for MSc in Economics and Business Administration
Course coordinator
  • Tor Hernes - Department of Organization (IOA)
Course responsible: Tor Hernes (th.ioa@cbs.dk)
Course secretary: Mette Ellekrog (mbe.ioa@cbs.dk)
Main academic disciplines
  • Organization
Last updated on 10-07-2014
Learning objectives
At the exam the students must be able to:
  • Critically reflect on implications of the theories of organizing processes and technologies for managing in organizations
  • Demonstrate thorough understanding of theories of sensemaking and framing, and how they relate to each other
  • Account for how the theories in the course may be used to understand the dynamics of organizing processes
  • Account for various perspectives on technology and organizing
  • Identify and analyze how different types of technologies are constitutive elements of Strategy-making, Organizational practices, and Leadership/management
Course prerequisites
Organizing Processses must be taken together with the course Organizing Technologies as they have a common exam
Examination
The course shares exams with
KAN-CSOLU3000U
Course content and structure

The course views organizing as the process of applying various means to create social commitment among people towards organizational aims. Commitment evolves through what is called sensemaking processes, which connect actions and interpretations around the “plot” of the organizing process. The management of organizing process takes place as attempts by management to “frame” the sensemaking processes that take place among organizational members to foster commitment to the plot. Management may resort to three different types of framing, referred to as material framing (including technologies and artefacts), leadership behaviour (including how managers act to foster commitment) and narratives (including the stories and explanations that aim to foster commitment).
The course explains how each of these framing types impacts differently on sensemaking processes in the organization, how some may sometimes lead to “overflows”, which are effects that were not intended and which may lead to new framing attempts. The main goal of the course is to provide students with knowledge of the theories behind organizing processes and to use those theories to understand the actual challenges of organizing in organizations

Overlap with Organizing Technologies (OT)
Both Organizing Processes (OP) and OrganizingTechnologies (OT) focus on the role of various of mechanisms in maintaining and transforming organizations. OT concentrates on the role of technologies, and draws extensively on Actor-network Theory. OP includes technologies in a narrower sense, by focusing on material framing of organizing processes while relating technologies to leadership behaviour and narratives. The theories used in OP are analytically consistent with those used at OT. The OP and OT courses are integrated in a shared workshop.

Teaching methods
Dialogue-based lectures and case discussions. A workshop will be held with Organizing Technologies.
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 10-07-2014