• Formulate problems within an organizational context
• Relate problems to the concepts that are discussed in the course
• Describe, classify, structure, and combine the concepts, theories, methods, and models of the course
• Relate the texts of the course to their theoretical context
• Exemplify problems through the use of case-material

Organizational Philosophy introduces to the student a specific philosophical practice in regards to the analysis of organizations, and maps out what differentiates this from both classical philosophy, on the one hand, and classical organizational analysis, on the other hand.

The goal is to introduce the basic concepts and analytical tools that may become the student’s later professional profile. The predominantly contemporary curriculum mirrors the ambition of enabling the student to identify problems, conflicts, challenges and potentials within organizations of various kinds. This happens as the organization construes its images of itself in a culturally predicated context and delimits itself from its environment.

It is also and at the same time the intention of the course to enable the student to give a philosophical answer to the question which practices and social activities such problematic self-images and delimitations give rise to, and how these may be transgressed.

The course is constructed so that it first introduces to the specific methods and concepts of organizational philosophy, and later offers cases, through which these methods are applied.

Aim of the course:

The course will give an introduction to organizational philosophy and demonstrate how philosophy provides fundamentally new and different ways of conceptualizing and analyzing organizations and organizational phenomena. The course will consist of lectures and cases, but the active participation of the students is a prerequisite for its success.

The course’s development of personal competences:

Students that have participated in this course will be able to understand and analyze organizations and management phenomena as matter of concern and problems in relation to philosophical concepts that are suited in a time of change and flux. Students will also become acquainted with what a critical approach to organizations entails, and how that strengthens one’s analysis of contemporary conditions of work.

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