893762

Course

Perspectives in Organizational Analysis (runs annually)

Faculty

Paul du Gay, Jan Mouritsen, Sara Muhr, Anne-Marie Søderberg, Majken Schultz, Morten Thanning Vendelø, Signe Vikkelsø and Susanne Boch Waldorff; all primarily from the Department of Organization, CBS

Course Coordinator

Susanne Boch Waldorff and Morten Thanning Vendelø

Prerequisites

The PhD students must submit a five-pages paper, in which they choose and relate two perspectives from the course literature to their research project. The paper must include specific references to the literature applied. Deadline for submission of presentations is 17 November 2017.

The student papers serve as input to discussions during the course, and the students must prepare for and participate in group work.

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

Aim

This course introduces PhD students to a set of analytical perspectives, which are well-alive in contemporary organizational analysis, such as; Actor-Network Theory, New Institutional Theory, the Sense-Making Perspective, the Narrative Perspective and Organizational Identity.

The core idea of the course is to give the PhD-students an opportunity to work with a variety of perspectives in organizational analysis, and engage in discussions of contemporary research and concepts within this field.

Course content

Our ambition is to enable PhD students to mobilize different analytical perspectives 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. However, 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, 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.

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.

Teaching style

Dialogue lectures and group work.

Lecture plan

Monday 27 November – Introduction, Bureaucracy and Organizational Design
8.45 – 9.00	Coffee/ tea
9.00 – 10.00	Welcome, introduction to the course and presentation of participants, Morten Thanning Vendelø and Susanne Boch Waldorff
10.00 – 12.00	Bureaucracy as Organizational Structure, Professor Paul du Gay
12.00 – 12.45	Group work
12.45 – 13.30	Lunch
13.30 – 15.30	Organizational design, structure and coordination, Professor Signe Vikkelsø
15:30 – 16:15	Group work
Tuesday 28 November – The Institutional Perspective and Organizational Identity
8.45 – 9.00	Coffee/tea
9.00 – 11.15	The Institutional Perspective, Associate Professor Susanne Boch Waldorff
11.15 – 12.00	Group work
12.00 – 12.45	Lunch
12.45 – 15.00	Organizational Identity, Professor Majken Schultz
15.00 – 16.00	Group work
18.00 –	Dinner
Wednesday 29 November – The Sense-Making Perspective and the Critical Management Perspective
8.45 – 9.00	Coffee/tea
9.00 – 11.15	The Sense-Making Perspective, Professor Morten Thanning Vendelø
11.15 – 12.00	Group work
12.00 – 12.45	Lunch
12.45 – 15.00	The Critical Management Perspective, Associate Professor Sara Muhr
15.00 – 16.00	Group work
Thursday 30 November – The Narrative Perspective and Actor-Network theory
8.45– 9.00	Coffee/tea
9.00 – 11.15	The Narrative perspective, Professor Anne-Marie Søderberg
11.15 – 12.00	Group work
12.00 – 12.45	Lunch
12.45 – 15.00	Actor-Network Theory, Professor Jan Mouritsen
15.00 – 16.00	Group work
Friday 1 December – How theories define and privilege certain ways to understand and study organizations
8.45 – 9.00	Coffee/tea
9.00 – 12.00	Course wrap up. Reflections on: What kind of research questions are relevant and possible to ask in each perspective? 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 Ph.D.-project?
12.00 – 13.00	Lunch

Learning objectives

• Learn how the choice of theory for organizational analysis 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’

Exam

N/A

Other

Start date

27/11/2017

End date

01/12/2017

Level

PhD

ECTS

Language

English

Course Literature

• Perrow, C. (1986) Why Bureaucracy? Chapter 1 in Complex Organizations• Brown, W. (1965) Informal Organization? In: W. Brown & E. Jaques Glacier Project Papers London: Heinemann Educational Books 144-62 • du Gay, P. (2015) Organization (Theory) As a Way of Life. Journal of Cultural Economy, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 399-417• Mintzberg, H. (1979) The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of Research. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, chapter 1,2,4:• du Gay, P., & Vikkelsø, S. (2017) Core Task as a (Continuing) Concern. In: P. du Gay & S. Vikkelsø (eds.) For Formal Organization: The Past and Present in the future of organization theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press• Sahlin. K., & Wedlin. L. (2008) Circulating Ideas: Imitation, Translation and Editing. In: R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, K. Sahlin & R. Suddaby (eds.). Organizational Institutionalism. Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp 218-242• Johansen, C. B., & Waldorff, S. B. (Forthcoming 2017) What are Institutional Logics - and Where is the Perspective Taking Us? In: C. Mazza, R. Meyer, G. Krucken & P. Walgenbach (eds.), New Themes in Institutional Analysis: Topics and Issues from European Research. Chelterham: Edward Elgar.• Waldorff, S. B. (2013) Accounting for Organizational Innovations: Mobilizing Institutional Logics in Translation. Scandinavian Journal of Management, vol. 29, no. 3, pp 219-234• Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005) Organizing in the Process of Sensemaking. Organization Science, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 409-421• Maitlis, S., & Sonenshein, S. (2010) Sensemaking in Crisis and Change: Inspiration and Insights from Weick (1988). Journal of Management Studies, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 551-580• Gioia, D. & Hamilton, A. (2016) Great Debates in Organizational Identity Study. In: M. Pratt, M. Schultz, B. Ashforth & D. Ravasi (eds.) Handbook of Organizational Identity. Oxford. Oxford University Press, pp. 21-38• Weber, K. & Dacin, T. (2011) The Cultural Construction Organizational Life: Introduction to the Special Issue. Organization Science, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 287–298• Hernes, T., & Schultz, M. (Forthcoming 2017) A Temporal Understanding of the Connections between Organizational Culture and Identity. In: A. Langley & H. Tsoukas (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Process Organization Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage• Just, S. N., Muhr, S. L. & Burø, T. Queer Matters – Reflections on the Critical Potential of Affective Organizing• Spicer, A., Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. (2009) Critical Performativity: The Unfinished Business of Critical Management Studies. Human Relations, vol. 62, no. 4, pp. 537-560• Cabantous, L., Gond, J. P., Harding, N., & Learmonth, M. (2016) Critical Essay: Reconsidering Critical Performativity. Human Relations, vol. 69, no. 2, pp. 197-213• Gabriel, Y. (2004) Narratives, Stories and Texts. In: D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick & L. L. Putnam (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse,. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 61-77• Czarniawska, B. (2000) The Uses of Narrative in Organization Research. rapport nr.: 2000-5. GRI reports• Fenton, C., & Langley, A. (2011) Strategy as Practice and the Narrative Turn. Organization studies, vol. 32, no. 9, pp. 1171-1196• Latour, B. (1984) The Powers of Association. The Sociological Review 32(51): 264-280• Whittle, A., & Spicer, A. (2008) Is Actor Network Theory Critique? Organization Studies, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 611-629• Harris, J. (2005) The Ordering of Things: Organization in Bruno Latour. The Sociological Review, vol. 53, no. s1, pp. 163-177

Fee

DKK 6,500 (covers the course, coffee/tea, lunch and one dinner)

Minimum number of participants

Maximum number of participants

Location

Copenhagen Business School
Kilevej 14 A
2000 Frederiksberg
Room: K4.74 (4th floor)

Contact information

The PhD Support
Katja Høeg Tingleff
Tel.: +45 38 15 28 39
E-mail. kht.research@cbs.dk

Registration deadline

16/10/2017

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