ORGANIZATION THEORY:



ORGANIZATION THEORY:

STRUCTURE, DESIGN & APPLICATIONS

Executive-PGP II

Indranil Chakrabarti

Phone: 712, 918

indranil@ximb.ac.in.

"Effective executives do not make a great many decisions. They concentrate on what is important. They try to make the few important decisions on the highest level of conceptual understanding"

- Peter Drucker

COURSE OVERVIEW & OBJECTIVE

This course aims to help the participants acquire a keener appreciation of organizations, and in particular, of the firm, the pivotal institution in a market economy. Findings from complexity science, a growing inter-disciplinary area, indicate that organizations are among the most complex entities. Which is perhaps why managerial recommendations in the domain of OT are always at the level of heuristics. This is largely based upon patterns and regularities in organization design and performance. The domain of OT is usually more strategic than operational; to that extent the course also seeks to contribute to the participants’ strategic competence, across functional areas. The course also helps sharpen the participants’ skills in qualitative and non-linear reasoning useful for varied decision-making contexts in organizational settings.

Why would an Exec-PGP student need a keener appreciation of organizations? There are many reasons:

1. The student, irrespective of his/her evolving specializations and interests, is almost certain to express and develop a professional identity by working in an organization, perhaps several; besides, all through one’s career, the student would have to be interacting with very many more organizations.

2. Organization is a crucial intermediary between the micro individual and the macro environment. Organizational analyses often throw more light on phenomena which otherwise tend to get inappropriately attributed to either the micro individual, or the macro environment, or both.

3. Analysis based on a rich appreciation of the organization as a complex (adaptive) system, is now commonly regarded as an important input for a variety of managerial situations.

4. Design and redesign of organizations are not as routine activities as, say, dealing with the distributors, balancing the accounts, making production schedules, or administering wage and salary. But such exercises (design and redesign) are increasingly becoming more frequent, and when they do happen, they have a profound impact on every sphere of the organization, and beyond.

5. With globalization, organizations have come to be deemed as among the most important social systems, in some ways rivaling even the nation-state.

COURSE PEDAGOGY

The readings are intended as preparatory material to facilitate effective participation. Students are required to be fully prepared with the prescribed material, before the class. Discussions in the class are likely to go significantly beyond the readings. Inputs from students' corporate and related experiences have often enriched the class discussion. The readings and the class discussions would be supplemented by the analyses of corporate case studies. The project would allow a glimpse into significant contemporary events in the corporate world.

TEXT AND REFERENCES

The main text for the course is: Stephen P Robbins Organization Theory: Structure, Design and Applications Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Supplementary material would be provided periodically. A number of books of interest to the course are there in the Library; these would be referred, for more detailed or alternative treatment of specific topics. Additional references to journal articles would be offered time to time, for further culture. Regular reading of business newspapers would of course be of help.

COURSE EVALUATION

Mid-term Examination 25%

Class Participation 15%

Project 20%

End Term Examination 40%

Of all forms of mental activity, the most difficult to induce even in the minds of the young, who may be presumed not to have lost their flexibility, is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework, all of which virtually means putting on a different kind of thinking-cap for the moment. It is easy to teach anybody a new fact . . . but it needs light from heaven to enable a teacher to break the old framework in which the student has been accustomed to seeing.

- Arthur Koestler

ORGANIZATION THEORY: TENTATIVE SESSION PLAN

Introduction Outline; course overview. (1)

Case Analysis Also, Drucker’s ‘Defining the problem’ for effective decision. (1)

Organizations: What and Why The Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) view; the systems view; towards an ‘incipient science’ of organization. (3)

Case Analysis (1)

Structure and Design Dimensions of structure; design configurations. (3)

Case Analysis (1)

Determinant Macro Variables Size, technology, evolution, culture, environment, strategy and power. (3)

Case Analysis (1)

Contemporary Challenges (1)

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