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Paul du Gay, Martin Kornberger, Kristian Kreiner, Anne Reff Pedersen, Majken Schultz, Morten Thanning Vendelø, Signe Vikkelsø and Susanne Boch Waldorff; all from Department of Organization, CBS

The PhD students must present a five-pages (maximum) written presentation, in which they relate the curriculum literature in the course to their project. The presentation must include specific references to the literature applied. Deadline for submission of presentations is Friday 20 November 2015.
The student presentations provide material for discussion during the course, and the students must be willing to participate in discussions of other presentations.

It is a precondition for receiving the course diploma that the student attends the whole course.

This course introduces PhD students to a set of classical themes constituting the scientific grounding of ‘organizational theory’, such as decision-making, sense-making, new institutionalism, and organizational structure and design.

The core idea of the course is to give the PhD-students an opportunity to work with the classical constitutive dimensions in organizational theory, as well as engage in more recent discussions within this research field.

Our ambition is to enable PhD students to mobilize classical dimensions in organizational theory and inspire them to ‘see’ something different and new in their own empirical work. Thus, the course seeks to increase participant’s reflexivity on the role of theories in ‘making objects for research’.
The course will enable PhD students to work with theories as ‘tools’ for making research and empirical inquiries. Yet, methodological tool and theories are not innocent or neutral. They form and frame the phenomena being studied. Theories frame phenomena because they depict certain properties of entities as central (actors, decisions, meanings, and organizations), certain relations, certain developmental processes, and certain causalities (linear or non-linear). It is critical to understand how the choice of theory for organizational studies highlights certain entities and processes, while others fade.
The observer and the object are not separate but co-produced in the research process, and the empirical data are not just ‘given out there’, as the researchers’ empirical data are constructed through selection and edited based on the theoretical tools mobilized. Theories are not considered as something that has to be ‘proven’, but more as resources for ‘seeing, discussing, imagining’ interesting properties of the phenomena studied. We, however, do not claim a ‘relativist position’, and will discuss situations where reality resists certain claims, while at the same time multiple claims can be made.
Theories are devices for making sense of phenomena – and at the same time the empirical field is a not a passive thing, because how researchers engage in an empirical field also shapes how they come to ‘see and understand’ phenomena.
The course will be explicit about how this new understanding can be linked to your own projects.

This course covers six constituting dimensions in making organizational analysis:

1.    DECISIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS
2.    NEO-INSTITUTIONEL THEORY
3.    ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY AND CULTURE
4.    SENSE-MAKING, MEANING AND NARRATIVE PROCESSES
5.    ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN AND ARRANGEMENT PROCESSES
6.    STRATEGY AS PRACTICE

Dialogue lectures and group discussions.

Monday 30 November 2015 - Introduction, Bureaucracy and Organizational Decision Making
9.00 - 9.15 Coffee/tea

9.15 - 10.00 Welcome, introduction to the course and presentation of participants (Associate Professors Morten Thanning Vendelø and Susanne Boch Waldorff)

10.00 - 12.30 Bureaucracy as Organizational Structure (Professor Paul du Gay)

12.30 - 13.00 Lunch

13.00 - 15.30 Organizational Decision Making (Professor Kristian Kreiner)

15.30 - 16.30 Individual reflection and group discussion:
•What is the relevance of the theories about bureaucracy and organizational decision making for your PhD project?
•How may theories about bureaucracy and organizational decision making shape your research project?
 
Tuesday 1 December 2015 - New Institutional Theory and the Sense-Making Perspective
9.00 - 9.15 Coffee/tea

9.15 - 12.00 New Institutional Theory (Associate Professor Susanne Boch Waldorff)

12.00 - 12.45 Lunch

12.45 - 15.30 The Sense-Making Perspective (Associate Professor Morten Thanning Vendelø)

15.30 - 16.30 Individual reflection and group discussion:
•How may new institutional theory & sense-making be relevant in your PhD project?
•What aspects of the new institutional theory & sense-making perspective are already present in your research desigh?
 
18.00 - Dinner 

Wednesday 2 December 2015 - Socio-Technical Arrangements and the Narrative Perspective
9.00 - 9.15 Coffee/tea

9.15 - 12.00 Socio-Technical Arrangements (Professor Signe Vikkelsø)

12.00 - 12.45 Lunch

12.45 - 15.30 The Narrative Perspective (Associate Professor Anne Reff Pedersen)

15.30 - 16.30 Individual reflection and group discussion:
•What is the relevance of the theory on socio-technical arrangements or the narrative perspective for your PhD project?
•How may the inclusion of either of the two perspectives change your PhD project?
 
Thursday 3 December 2015 - Organizational Identity & Culture and the Strategy as Practice
9.00 - 9.15 Coffee/tea

9.15 - 12.00 Organizational Identity & Culture (Professor Majken Schultz)

12.00 - 12.45 Lunch

12.45 -15.30 Strategy as Practice (Professor Martin Kornberger)

15.30 - 16.30 Individual reflection and group discussion:
•What aspects of the theories of organizational identity & culture or the strategy as practice perspective may serve as additional inspiration in your PhD project?
•what may cause you to include either of them in your research design?
 
Friday 4 December 2015 - How theories define and privilege certain ways to understand and study organizations
9.00 - 9.15 Coffee/tea

9.15 - 12.00 Reflections on:
•What makes organizational theory 'organizational' and how may it contribute to your PhD project?
•How do organization theories make certain properties of the object 'organization' visible and analyzable - how may this influence the research design?
•How has your participation in the course changed how you think about your PhD project?
•How may that change influence your research design?
•What kind of challenges do you face in your PhD project after participation in the course?
 
12.00 - 13.00 Lunch

• Learn how the choice of theory for organizational studies brings certain entities and processes into the foreground while others recede into the background
   
• Learn that the observer and the object are not separate but co-produced in the research process, and the empirical data are not just ‘given out there’
   
• The course will increase participant’s reflexivity on the role of theories in ‘making objects for research’.

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Copenhagen Business School
Kilevej 14 A
DK-2000 Frederiksberg
Room:
Monday - Thursday: K4.74 (4th floor)
Friday: K3.41 (3rd floor)

Katja Høeg Tingleff
kht.research@cbs.dk
Tel.: +45 38 15 28 39

In case we receive more registrations for the course than we have places, priority will be given to PhD students from Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies (OMS), and then to students who are 1,5 year or less into the PhD-study.

Therefore, if you are not a PhD student from OMS then please indicate the start date of your PhD study on the registration form below.

Please note that your registration is binding after the registration deadline.