Organisations- og Virksomhedsteori

1. undervisningsgang – 28. januar 2013

Lectures, Spring 2013Wee

kDate Subject Literature

5 28. Jan Introduction to the course

6 4. Feb Multiple Perspectives MJH, Chap 1+2

7 11. Feb Winter holiday

8 18. Feb Organizations and Environment MJH, Chap 3

9 25. Feb Organizational Social Structure MJH, Chap 4 + Comp

10 4. Mar Organizational Culture MJH, Chap 6

11 11. Mar Technology MJH, Chap 5

12 18. Mar Organizational Power, Control & Conflict MJH, Chap 8

13 25. Mar Case Work kick off

14 1. Apr Easter holiday

15 8. Apr Case work – supervision at ITU

16 15. Apr Theory in Practice / New directions in Organization Theory

MJH, Chap 9+10

17 22. AprStrategizing; Intro + Decision Theory

Nygaard, Chap 1+2

18 29. AprStrategizing; Agent- and Transactional cost analysis

Nygaard, Chap 4+5

19 6. May Strategizing; Institutional- Networks theory Nygaard, Chap 8+9

20 13. May Strategizing; Corporate Systems Theory Nygaard, Chap 10

21 20. May Whit Monday

22 27. May Spare week

Introduction of lecturerName: John Tronborg

Age: 43

Background: Cand. it, e-Business

ITU

HD(O) Strategic Management & Business

Development CBS

Datanom, IT Project Management Professional moves;

• Solution Manager, CSC

• External lecturer at ITU; Advanced Organization Theory

(MVOT)

• Management Consultant Self Employed • Senior Manager, ERP Advisory Ernst & Young• Principal SAP Business Consulting• Head of Business IT Carlsberg Denmark• Head of SAP Competency centre H. Lundbeck

Course structure and content

Organizations and Environment

Organizational Social Structure

Organizational Culture

Organizational Power, Control & Conflict

Tech

nolo

gy

Theory in Practice / New directions in Organization Theory

Strategizing

Other articles, such as Prahalad and Hamel

Introduction of Concepts and Abstractions

Concepts provide mental categories for sorting, organizing and storing experience in memory. They are ideas formed by the process of abstraction, who may be defined as the ’formation of an idea by mental separation from particular instances’.

Introduction of Ontology and Epistemology

Ontology is concerned about reality. It deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences Parmenides was among the

first to propose an ontological characterization of the fundamental nature of reality.

Epistemology is concerned with knowing how you can know. It is focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims.

The three perspectives.....Modernism Symbolic Interpretivism PostmodernismOntologyObjectivism – belief is an objective, external reality whose existence is independant of our knowledge of it.

OntologySubjectivism – the belief that we cannot know an external or objective existance apart from our subjective awareness of it; that which exists is that which we agree exists-

OntologyPostmodernism – the belief that the world appears through language and is situated in discourse; what is spoken of exists, therefore everything that exists is a text to be read or performed

EpistemologyPositivism – we discover truth through valid conceptualization and reliable measurement that allows us to test knowledge against an objective world; knowledge accumulates allowing humans to progress and evolve

EpistemologyInterprevism – all knowledge is relative to the knower and can only be understood from the point of view of the individuals who are directly involved; truth is socially constructed via multiple interpretations of the objects of knowledge thereby constructed and therefore shifts and changes through time

EpistemologyPostmodernism – knowledge cannot be an accurate account of truth because meanings cannot be fixed; there is no independent reality; there are no facts, only interpretations; knowledge is a power play

Organizations areObjectively real entities operating in a real world. When well designed and managed they are systems of decision and action driven by norms of rationality, efficiency and effectiveness for stated purposes

Organizations areContinually constructed and reconstructed by their members through symbolically meditated interaction. Organizations are socially constructed where meanings promote and are promoted by understanding of the self and others that occurs within the organizational context

Organizations areSites for enacting power relations, opression, irrationality, communicative distortion – or areans of fun and playful irony. Organizations are texts produced by and in language; we can rewrite them so as to emancipate ourselves from human folly and degradation

Focus on organization theoryFinding universal laws, methods and tech-niques of organisation and control; favors rational structures, rules, standardized procedures and routine practices.

Focus on organization theoryDescribing how people give meaning and order to their experience within specific contexts through interpretive and symbolic acts, forms and processes

Focus on organization theoryDeconstructing organizational texts; destabilizing managerial ideologies and modernist modes of organizing and theorizing; revealing marginalized and oppressed viewpoints; encouraging reflexive and inclusive forms of theorizing and organizing

Introduction of Concepts and Abstractions

Mental categories for sorting, organizing and storing experience in human memory

Bike Dog Mass Computer Abstraction level

... The formation of an idea by mental separation from particular instances

Concepts and AbstractionsEnvironment Culture Social Structure Technology A

bstraction level

Advantages of building concepts

Communication Information Processing

Associations

By communicating with concepts instead of particular instances, the message gets simpler and let the receiver learn by enhancing own concepts by experience.

By chunking information, the human brain can process loads of information despite the limitation of thinking about 7 pieces (+/- 2) of information simountaneously.

By using concepts, large amounts of information can be combined and associated, but there is a risk of leaving out too many details.

Mental categories for sorting, organizing and storing experience in human memory... The formation of an idea by mental separation from particular instances

About theories

E=MC2

Græsk ”phaiómenon” – ´det der viser sig´

Phenomenon of interest Concept: Mass

Concept: Speed of light2

Explanatory concepts relation to the phenomenon of interest

Theory is a set of concepts and the relationships between them proposed to explain the phenomenon of interest

About theories

Alternatives:- Statistical probabilities- Chaos theories- CAS theories- Metaphors or analogues

E=MC2

Græsk ”phaiómenon” – det der viser sig

Phenomenon of interest Concept: Mass

Concept: Speed of light2

Since human behavior is unpredictable, mathematical equations are unsuited for explaining such.

Sources of inspiration for organization theory

1900 – 1950s

Prehistory ModernSymbolic Interpretive Postmodern

1960s – 1970s

1980s 1990s

SmithMarxDurkheimTaylorFolletFayolWeberGulickBarnard

Von BertalanffyTrist & BamforthBouldingMarch & SimonEmeryBurns & StalkerWoodwardLawrence & LorschThompson

SchützWhyteSelznickGoffmanGadamerBerger & LuckmanWeickGeertzClifford & Marcus

SaussureFoucaultBellJencksDerridaLyotardRortyLash & UrryBaudrillard

Economics

Engineering

Sociology

Political Science

Biology-Ecology

Social Psychology

Cultural Anthropology

Folklore Studies

Social Semiotics and Hermeneutics

Linguistics Liteary Theory

Postmodern Architecture

Poststructural Philosophy

CulturalStudies

Multiple perspectives

Different ways of looking at the world produce different knowledge and thus different perspectives come to be associated with their own concepts and

theories

A particular way of making beliefs, assumptions and knowledge of the world is called a paradigm

In order to compare modernism, symbolic-interpretivism and postmodernism, you will need to examine the assumptions underlying each of the three

perspectives

Ontology and EpistemologyOntology is concerned with our assumptions about reality. Is there an

objective reality out there or is it subjective, existing only in our minds??

ObjectivistsSubjectivists

Things only exists when you experience and give it

meaning

Reality exists independently of those

who live in it

Depending on the perspective, one will some things status of being real, while you will disregard others

Paradigm

Subjectivist Objectivist

People create and experience realities in different ways because individuals and groups have their own assumptions, beliefs and perceptions that lead them to do so

People react to what is happening around them in predictable ways, because their behaviour is a part of thye material world in which thwt live and is determined by causes, just as the behavior of matter

Ontology and EpistemologyEpistemology is concerned with knowing how you can know

How do humans generate knowledge, what are the criteria by which they discriminate good knowledge from bad and how should reality be represented or

described?

Paradigm

Positivist Interpretive

Assumes you can discover what truly happens in organizations through the categorization and scientific measurement of the behavior of people and systems

Assumes that knowledge can only be created and understood from the point of view of the individuals who live and work in a particular culture or organization

Exercise: Who has the best chances of describing reality of an organization. A employee/manager with 20 years of experience or an external consultant just entered the organization??

Please discuss in groups and argue why..

General influences...Modernist Symbol-

interpretivistsPostmodernists

Systems theory. A system is comprised of subsystems, which again can be divided in subsystems, specializing further. A hierarchy of systems display 9 levels of analysis which also respects the hole and interrelated levels. Social Technical Systems Theory introduces the idea that humans work more effectively in self managed groups

Contingency Theory is dealing with adapting the organization to the environment

First real challenge to the modernist perspective. To observe and be observed. Special sensitivity to language because we construct, modify, make sense of and communicate reality by our language and context.

Social Constructivism proposes that our social world is negotiated, organized and constructed by interpretations about what is happening based in our intersubjectivity.

Enactment makes sense of the present/past and then act on that understanding

…. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same…. No objectively definable social reality, everything you and I know I is relative to the moment of experience….

Signifier / Signified; no connection between words and meanings.

No thoughts without language and community sepcific Discourse Analysis

Deconstruction; reading and rereading texts using different context to show instability

Comparing the three perspectives.....

Modernist Symbol-interpretivists

Postmodernists

Commit to limiting what you count as knowledge to what you can know through your five senses.

What counts as data is what is collected by our five senses. Modernists claim that I saw, heard, smelled, tasted or touched my data and you can confirm them for yourself by replicating my procedures.

Subjectivity undermines scientific rigor and introduces bias.

Shows willingness to extend the definition of empirical reality to include forms of experience that lie outside the reach of the five senses, as do emotion and intuition. As a result of this subjectivity, their findings cannot easily be replicated by others.

Understandings should not be generalized beyond the context in which they were produced.

Subjectivity is a prerequisite for studying meaning.

Unwillingness to seek Truth or to make permanent ontological or epistemological commitments.

Ever changing philosophical standpoints to avoid some forms of knowledge over others.

Knowledge is power and the development and use of knowledge is always power plays that must be resisted for the sake of the powerless.

Comparing the three perspectives.....Modernism Symbolic Interpretivism PostmodernismOntologyObjectivism – belief is an objective, external reality whose existence is independant of our knowledge of it.

OntologySubjectivism – the belief that we cannot know an external or objective existance apart from our subjective awareness of it; that which exists is that which we agree exists-

OntologyPostmodernism – the belief that the world appears through language and is situated in discourse; what is spoken of exists, therefore everything that exists is a text to be read or performed

EpistemologyPositivism – we discover truth through valid conceptualization and reliable measurement that allows us to test knowledge against an objective world; knowledge accumulates allowing humans to progress and evolve

EpistemologyInterprevism – all knowledge is relative to the knower and can only be understood from the point of view of the individuals who are directly involved; truth is socially constructed via multiple interpretations of the objects of knowledge thereby constructed and therefore shifts and changes through time

EpistemologyPostmodernism – knowledge cannot be an accurate account of truth because meanings cannot be fixed; there is no independent reality; there are no facts, only interpretations; knowledge is a power play

Organizations areObjectively real entities operating in a real world. When well designed and managed they are systems of decision and action driven by norms of rationality, efficiency and effectiveness for stated purposes

Organizations areContinually constructed and reconstructed by their members through symbolically meditated interaction. Organizations are socially constructed where meanings promote and are promoted by understanding of the self and others that occurs within the organizational context

Organizations areSites for enacting power relations, opression, irrationality, communicative distortion – or areans of fun and playful irony. Organizations are texts produced by and in language; we can rewrite them so as to emancipate ourselves from human folly and degradation

Focus on organization theoryFinding universal laws, methods and tech-niques of organisation and control; favors rational structures, rules, standardized procedures and routine practices.

Focus on organization theoryDescribing how people give meaning and order to their experience within specific contexts through interpretive and symbolic acts, forms and processes

Focus on organization theoryDeconstructing organizational texts; destabilizing managerial ideologies and modernist modes of organizing and theorizing; revealing marginalized and oppressed viewpoints; encouraging reflexive and inclusive forms of theorizing and organizing

Case Methodology

http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/publications/qmanual/ch-08.html

Generic Case Methodology

Introduction

Problem

identification

and analysis

Statement

of problem(s)

Generation

and evaluation

of solutions

Recomm

en-

dations and

implem

entation

Conslusion

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

An example on a specific methodology: