Management in the 21st Century
MNGT 321
Value: 0.5
ECTS: 8 Credits
Overview
This course explores the main challenges for management in the 21st Century. We will investigate some of the key themes on the current management agenda in order to equip you with a wider understanding of the complex problems you will face in your careers. First, we will examine together how cultures of employability and performativity are shaped today, how the cultural game of the labour market is played – these matters will, of course, have immediate and direct impact on your professional prospects. We will then investigate the Knowledge Economy and examine the global reach of management. The idea of a new kind of global economy in which personal, organisational and social success is divided by the ability to access, mobilise and produce knowledge sets up a complicated, tense context for managerial work and asks new kinds of questions about the object of management. Following on from this theme, we will discuss the unprecedented pressures generated by the current economic crisis, we will ask what are its major ethical and cultural dimensions, as well as examining some of management’s reactions to equally unprecedented environmental challenges.
Terms Taught: Michaelmas
Teaching Methods
Lectures
Held weekly during Michaelmas Term commencing in week 1. Lectures will last two hours and will be delivered by a team of specialised staff from the department of Organisation, Work and Technology.
Seminars
They will also be held weekly during Michaelmas and will commence in Week 1. Seminars will combine a variety of methods needed to link some of the conceptual themes with illustrations and cases; moreover, in the first three weeks, seminars will be dedicated to the practical exploration of issues related to your own ability to understand, and participate in, the employment process.
Assessment
The final mark is made up of two elements:
(i) Coursework will account for 50%.
(ii) An examination in May/June which will be based on the lecture material and associated reading will be responsible for 50% of the final mark.
Requirements
This module is only available to Business Studies Students.
Texts
This course does not rely on any single text. It is important to understand that this course will combine a variety of approaches to analysing the challenges to management in the 21st Century. Hence you will be required to read various sources and various authors. Here are a few examples:
Alvesson, M. (1995) Management of Knowledge-Intensive Companies. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter
Barley, S and Kunda, G. (1992) ‘Design and devotion: surges of rational and normative ideologies of control in managerial discourse’, in Administrative Science Quarterly 37:363–399.
Cooke, B. (2004) ‘The Managing of the (Third) World’, Organization, Vol. 11, No. 5, 603-629 (2004)
Costea, B., Crump, N., Amiridis, K. (2008) ‘Managerialism, the therapeutic habitus and the self in contemporary organising’, Human Relations 61(5): 661-685
Goffman, E. (1956) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday
Heelas, Paul (2002) ‘Work Ethics, Soft Capitalism and the “Turn to Life”’, in Du Gay, P. and Pryke, M. (eds.) Cultural Economy. Sage: London
Townley, Barbara (1996) Reframing HRM: Power, Ethics and the Subject at Work. London: Sage
Waters, Malcolm (1995) Globalization. Routledge (Key ideas)
