Management and Organisations
OWT.100 & OWT.101
Value: 0.40 & 0.60
Thinking about Management and Organisation (OWT.100)
Module Convenor: Dr Kostas Amiridis
University Weighting: 0.40
Overview:
This course provides an introductory study of the complex and fascinating world of management and organisations. Over a period of ten weeks, we will explore the main themes that make management both an academic discipline and a practical endeavour and we will attempt to familiarise ourselves with its peculiar language, logic and problematic. The overall aim will be to build the necessary foundations upon which each participant can then embark upon a more detailed and nuanced study of specific managerial phenomena during his or her academic studies.
The course is comprised of two interrelated parts. It begins by providing an in-depth discussion of the historical, political and cultural context within which management has developed to be an indispensable part not only of our working lives but of our lives in general. The goal here is to achieve a deeper and far-sighted understanding of management that extends beyond a simple enumeration and summarisation of techniques. Then, it proceeds to a concrete and rigorous historical analysis of the development of managerial thought and practise from its very beginnings – at the turn of the last century, i.e. the 20th – to its present-day form. The objective is to explore and comprehend the complex and challenging domain that is modern management.
The delivery of the content is based upon traditional lectures and seminars. A series of reading groups that run parallel with the lectures and seminars are also available to the participants and are designed as an invaluable tool to help them with the demands of academic reading and writing.
The course’s syllabus:
Week 1: Introduction to the course and a brief overview of its main aims.
Week 2: Capitalism and the meaning of work in our time (Karl Marx).
Week 3: The ghost of bureaucracy and the ‘hidden’ army of bureaucrats (Max Weber).
Week 4: The modern division of labour and its pathologies (Emile Durkheim).
Week 5: The birth of scientific management and the assembly line (F.W. Taylor and Henry Ford).
Week 6: Discovering the ‘human’ in management; The Human Relations Movement (Elton Mayo).
Week 7: “I love my organisation!” or the cult of corporate culture (the management guru).
Week 8: To conform or not to conform: the (un)happy marriage of psychology and management.
Week 9: “Managing oneself”: The ‘self’ as management’s new faith.
Week 10: Recapitulating and concluding remarks.
Selected reading:
Grey, Chris, A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about studying organisations, London, Sage, 2005.
Term(s) in which the module will be taught: Michaelmas term
What are the contact hours, type and frequency?
Lectures: 20 hours: 2 x 1 hour lecture per week
Seminars: 10 hours: 1 x 1 hour per week
How will this module be assessed?
50% Coursework and 50% unseen 3 hour examination
What is the timing of formal assessment?
Coursework: Michaelmas Term
Examination : Summer Term
Management and Organisation II (OWT.101)
Module Convenor: Dr Kostas Amiridis
University Weighting: 0.60
Overview:
This is a Part One course provided by the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology. It runs throughout the Lent and Summer terms. Many of you will have continued from OWT.100. Those that have, you will notice a number of similarities from last term, but also some differences, notably the course is taught by three members of staff and is thematically organised around three segments:
i-) Organisation Theory and Analysis (with Mr Kostas Amiridis)
In this first part of the course, we will study the complex and interesting world of organisations. Organisations (private or public) are the most important and 'taken for granted' institutions that provide the very foundations of our society and of our sense of belonging to a community. They transgress national boundaries, they affect, unite and separate different people coming from the most disconnected parts of the globe. They are associated with the powerful ideas of progress, economic development and global equality, as well as with all the maladies of our times: alienation, mechanisation, enslavement and global inequality.
But what are organisations and how can we study them? So in this part of the course we will attempt to understand the workings, consequences and effects of organisational life. We will discuss some of the main themes that inform the theory of organisations: power and control, different forms and metaphors of organising, as well as the wider political and cultural dimensions of organisational life for us in the 21st century.
ii) Contemporary Work and Human Resource Management (with Dr Kay Greasley)
Contemporary work and HRM aims to introduce students to key processes and practices of managing people at work. It seeks to develop knowledge and understanding of conceptual, theoretical and practical issues involved. Different approaches towards managing people are explored and evaluated and various aspects of people management are considered. Initially the course introduces the development and roles of HRM and the ways in which different management styles can be adopted in organisations. The lectures then present selected contemporary HRM issues including, Equal Opportunities, Work-Life Balance, Absence and wellbeing and Discipline, dismissal and redundancy.
iii) Technology and Organisations (with Dr Daniel Neyland)
Organisations are saturated with an ever increasing array of technologies for producing, compiling, sifting, moving and managing information on just about every aspect of business. Furthermore, public and private sector organisations alike can choose between thousands of technologies for assisting, augmenting or replacing people at work. We now find firms dependent on technology platforms, organisations developing huge scale systems, and traditional organisations aiming to automate a few tasks. Yet how do we get to grips with the multitude of questions posed by technologies in organisations? This series of lectures takes students through a different perspective each week, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of distinct ways of engaging with technology and organisation.
The course’s syllabus:
Week 1, 2 & 3: Organisation Theory and Analysis.
Week 4, 5 & 6: Contemporary Work and HRM.
Week 7, 8 & 9: Technology and Organisation.
Week 10: Concluding OWT 101.
Selected reading:
Thompson, P. (2009) Work Organisations: A Critical Approach. Palgrave Macmillan,
Basingstoke.
Torrington, D., Hall, J. and Taylor, S. (2008) Human Resource Management,
7th Edition. FT Prentice Hall.
K. Grint and S. Woolgar (1997) The Machine at Work. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Term(s) in which the module will be taught: Lent term
What are the contact hours, type and frequency?
Lectures: 20 hours: 2 x 1 hour lecture per week
Seminars: 10 hours: 1 x 1 hour per week
How will this module be assessed?
25% Coursework, 25% Presentation and 50% unseen 3 hour examination
What is the timing of formal assessment?
Coursework: Lent Term
Presentation: Summer term
Examination : Summer Term
