|
The aim of the course is to provide students with knowledge
about how dynamics of power, culture and politics influence the
behavior and decision-making in contemporary organizations and make
the students capable of analyzing organizational phenomena in light
of such theories.
Contemporary work-life is much more flexible and individual than it
was just 20 years ago. Today, a work-day is not only limited by
work-hours (e.g. 9-5), but is to a larger and larger degree also
regulated by complex structures defined by demands of clients,
projects and personal life situations. This means that traditional
control and management mechanisms resting on notions of
authoritative power and bureaucratic hierarchical structures are
being replaced – or at least appended by – more subtle power
structures and ephemeral organizational cultures. Understanding
such power structures and cultural dynamics are of paramount
importance in order to manage people – and optimize organizational
performance.
The students will in this course both be presented with primary
texts from the fields of for example philosophy and sociology,
management texts and be expected to apply these concepts and
perspectives to an organizational context. The aim of the course is
therefore two-fold. 1) For the students to get a better conceptual
understanding of power, culture and political theory and 2) to be
able to apply these to an organizational context in order to
analyze a concrete organizational problem. To emphasize this double
purpose, the students will both be given conceptual lectures, but
will also be working on a number of empirical assignments, in which
the students will be solving cases as well as send out to do
field-work (to for example collect interview and observation
material), which will be analyzed and discussed in class.
By combining empirical material, management texts and philosophical
concepts, the students will get a concrete and practical insight
into the managerial challenges of power, culture and politics and a
philosophical understanding of the more principal nature of these
challenges. The students will learn to analyze and understand
ethnography-inspired empirical material such as interviews and
observations in light of managerial and philosophical concepts such
as leadership, structure, performance, autonomy, identity,
diversity, passion, desire and obligation. Besides equipping the
students theoretically in the field of organizational power,
culture and politics, this course will also have direct relevance
for students who wish to apply qualitative ethnographic inspired
studies in their master dissertations such as conducting various
forms of (critical) analysis.
|
- Arnaud, G. & Vanheule, S. (2005) The division of the
subject and the organization: a Lacanian approach to subjectivity
at work, Journal of Organizational Change Management,
20(3): 359-369.
- Banerjee, B. & Linstead, S. (2001) Globalization,
Multiculturalism and Other Fictions: Colonialism for the New
Millennium, Organization, 8(4): 683-722.
- Bhabha (1986) Foreword, in Fanon (1986) Black Skin, White
Masks. Pluto Press.
- Contu, A. (2008) Decaf Resistance: On Misbehavior, Cynicism,
and Desire in Liberal Workplaces, Management Communication
Quarterly, 21(3): 364-379.
- Fanon (1986) Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto
Press.
- Fleming, P. (2005) Metaphors of resistance, Management
Communication Quarterly, 19(1): 45-66.
- Fleming, P. and Spicer, A. (2014) ‘Power in management and
organization science’, The Academy of Management Annals,
Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 237-298.
- Fleming, P. & Sturdy, F. (2009): “Just be yourself!”:
Towards neo-normative control in organizations? Employee
Relations. Vol. 31. No.6 569-583.
- Foucault, M (1997): The ethics of the concern of the self as a
practice of freedom. In Rabinow. P. (ed.) Michel Foucault essential
works of Foucault 1954-1984 ethics volume 1. Penguin Books,
281-291
- Eagleton, T. (1991) Ideology: An Introduction. London:
Verso, pp. xi-31. [Introduction and Chapter 1]
- Easthope, Antony (1998): Bhabha, hybridity and identity,
Textual Practice, 12:2, 341-348
- Hoedemaekers, C. (2010) 'Not even semblance': exploring
the interruption of identification with Lacan.
Organization. 17(3): 379–393.
- Kosmala, K. & Herbach, O. (2006) The ambivalence of
professional identity: On cynicism and jouissance in audit firms.
Human Relations, 59(10): 1393–1428.
- Kunda, G. and Van Maanen, J. (1999) Changing Scripts at Work:
Managers and Professionals, The Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science, 561: 64-80.
- Maravelias, C. (2007): Freedom at Work in the Age of
Post-Bureaucratic Organization. Ephemera 7(4),
555-574.
- Mohanty, C.T. (1988) Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship
and Colonial Discourses, Feminist Review, 30: 61-88.
- May, T. (2006) Genealogical histories of who we are, in The
Philosophy of Foucault McGill-Queens University Press, 61-96
- Muhr, S.L. & Kirkegaard, L. (2013) The dream consultant:
Productive fantasies at work, Culture and Organization,
19(2): 105-123.
- Muhr, S.L. & Salem, A. (2013) Specters of colonialism –
illusionary equality and the forgetting of history in a Swedish
organization, Management & Organizational History,
8(1): 62-76.
- Ozkazank-Pan, B. (2008) International management research meets
the rest of the world, Academy of Management Review,
33(4): 964–974.
- Robeets, J. (2005). The Power of the ‘Imaginary’ in
Disciplinary Processes. Organization, 12(5): 619-642
- Willmott, H. (1993) Strenght is ignorance, slavery is freedom:
Managing culture in modern organizations, Journal of Management
Studies 3(4): 515-552.
- Zizek, S. (2008) The Sublime Object of Ideology, part
one, pp ix-57. London: Verso.
|
Permalink