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That the PhD student has started his or her PhD project and made reflections on its empirical theme, theory and level of analysis

Preparation:

Each student reads the material for each day typically 3 journal articles + book chapters

Each student prepares a brief paper (3-5 pages) about his or her own research problem related to central themes developed in the course. In addition each student writes review comments on two of these papers.

• Enable the student to critically relate to the field with a view to reflect on and transgress established frames of understanding
  
  
• Debate issues where the field’s issues collide particularly in relations between performance management, operations management, innovation management and management of inter-organisational relations
  
  
• Focus on systematic reflection of the premises of the field, its empirical propositions, theoretical hypotheses and methodology.

The course starts with the question how to study ’systems’ when it is unclear when one systems stops and another starts. The course thus is concerned with how systems are made manageable. Typically this concerns how systems’ resources and activities can be made part of the production of effects and be attached to accountability.

On this basis the course has four main themes:

A. Management Technology

B. Managing inter-organisational relations and performance

C. Valuation

D. Critical appraisal

STRUCTURE: WORKSHOPS, REFLECTION AND PERSPECTIVE

This is an advanced course. It builds on knowledge at level with introducing texts in organisational theory, operations management, and management control

The following description of the course is indicative to provide a ‘feel’ for it.

A. Systems and networks

1. Czarniawska, B. (2004) On Time, Space and Action Nets, Organization 11(6) pp. 773-791

2. Pidd, M. (2003) Soft systems methodology in Tools for Thinking. Modelling in Management Science (chapter 5)

3. Ackoff, R. L. (1994). Systems thinking and thinking systems. System Dynamics Review, 10(2-3), 175-188.

B. Management technology and representation

4. Czarniawska, B., & Mouritsen, J. (2009). What is the object of management? How management technologies help to create manageable objects. In C. Chapman, D.J. Cooper, & P. Miller (Eds.), Accounting, Organisations and Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

5. Godin, B. (2015). Models of innovation: Why models of innovation are models, or what work is being done in calling them models? Social Studies of Science, 45(4), 570–596.

6. Christiansen, J.K. and Varnes, C.J. (2009) Formal Rules in Product Development: Sensemaking of Structured Approaches, Journal of Product Innovation Management 26: 502-519

7. Callon, M. (2002). Writing and (Re)writing Devices as Tools for Managing Complexity. In J. Law & A. Mol (Eds.), Complexities. Social Studies of Knowledge Practices (Durham and, pp. 191–217). Durham and London: Duke University Press.

8. Giraudeau, M. (2008). The drafts of strategy: Opening up plans and their uses. Long Range Planning, 41(3), 291–308.

9. Grabner, I., & Moers, F. (2013). Management control as a system or a package? Conceptual and empirical issues. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 38(6–7), 407–419.

C. Boundary and inter-organisational relations

10. Stabell, C.B. & Fjeldstad, Ø.D. (1998) Configuring value for competitive advantage: on chains, shops and networks, Strategic Management Journal (pp. 413-437)

11. Miller, P. and O'Leary, T. (2007) 'Mediating instruments and making markets: Capital budgeting, science and the economy', Accounting, Organizations and Society, 32 (7/8), 701-734.
 
12. Lambert, D.M. and Cooper, M.C, Issues in Supply Chain Management, Industrial Marketing Management 29, 65–83 (2000)

13. Thrane, S., & Hald, K.S. (2006). The emergence of boundaries and accounting in supply fields: The dynamics of integration and fragmentation. Management Accounting Research, 17(3), 288-314.

D. Performance, Valuation and performativity

14. Corvellec, H. (2003) Narratives of organizational performance, i Czarniawska, B. & Gagliardi, P. (ed)  Narratives We Organize By John Benjamin Publishing Company pp. 115-133

15. Espeland, W. N. and Sauder, M. (2007) Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds, American Journal of Sociology, 113 (1), 1-40.

16. Mouritsen, J., Hansen, A. and Hansen, C. Ø. (2009) 'Short and Long Translations. Management accounting calculations and innovation management', Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34 (6/7), 738-754.

17. Heuts, Frank, and Annemarie Mol. 2013. “What Is a Good Tomato? A Case of Valuing in Practice.” Valuation Studies 1 (2): 125–46. doi:10.3384/vs.2001-5992.1312125.

18. Vatin, Francois. 2013. “Valuation as Evaluating and Valorizing.” Valuation Studies 1 (1): 31–50.

The main idea of the course

The course emphasises finding dilemmas and problematisation which make a theme researchable. Not all questions are research questions; some are merely empirical questions. Research questions require theorisation which is input, process and output of a research process.

The course requires reflexivity generally in the area of business and management studies but it nevertheless focuses on two dimensions in the business of business firms namely performance management and inter-organisational relations. These are the central empirical elements in the course which then are used to illustrate how reflexivity and researchable questions can develop.

Integrated with this, the course has a particular focus on what characterises a management technology. There are many management tools but their power and consequences are rarely given by their logical or aesthetical constitution. Looking at management tools as technology the central question is how a set of procedures which reduce a 3-dimensial empirical space to a 2-dimensional informational space make intervention more possible? This discussion concerns both generally what is a representation and also how does a representation hold the entities that it is supposed to represent? Management technology and research methodology have much in common and this is explored in this course.

Each student prepares a brief paper (3-5 pages) about his or her own research problem related to central themes developed in the course. In addition each student writes review comments on two of these papers.