1. Organisations- og Virksomhedsteori
1. undervisningsgang – 28. januar 2013

2. Lectures, Spring 2013 Week Date Subject Literature 5 Jan
Introduction to the course 6
Feb
Multiple Perspectives
MJH, Chap 1+2 7
Winter holiday 8
Organizations and Environment
MJH, Chap 3 9
Organizational Social Structure
MJH, Chap 4 + Comp 10
Mar
Organizational Culture
MJH, Chap 6 11
Technology
MJH, Chap 5 12
Organizational Power, Control & Conflict
MJH, Chap 8 13
Case Work kick off 14
Apr
Easter holiday 15
Case work – supervision at ITU 16
Theory in Practice / New directions in Organization Theory
MJH, Chap 9+10 17
Strategizing; Intro + Decision Theory
Nygaard, Chap 1+2 18
Strategizing; Agent- and Transactional cost analysis
Nygaard, Chap 4+5 19
May
Strategizing; Institutional- Networks theory
Nygaard, Chap 8+9 20
Strategizing; Corporate Systems Theory
Nygaard, Chap 10 21
Whit Monday 22
Spare week

3. Introduction of lecturer
Name: 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

4. Course structure and content
Strategizing
Organizational Power, Control & Conflict
Organizational Culture
Technology
Organizational Social Structure
Organizations and Environment
Theory in Practice / New directions in Organization Theory
Other articles, such as Prahalad and Hamel

5. 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’.

6. 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.

7. The three perspectives.....
Modernism
Symbolic Interpretivism
Postmodernism
Ontology
Objectivism – belief is an objective, external reality whose existence is independant of our knowledge of it.
Subjectivism – 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-
Postmodernism – 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
Epistemology
Positivism – 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
Interprevism – 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
Postmodernism – 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 are
Objectively 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
Continually 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
Sites 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 theory
Finding universal laws, methods and tech-niques of organisation and control; favors rational structures, rules, standardized procedures and routine practices.
Describing how people give meaning and order to their experience within specific contexts through interpretive and symbolic acts, forms and processes
Deconstructing 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

8. Introduction of Concepts and Abstractions
Bike
Dog
Mass
Computer
Abstraction level
Mental categories for sorting, organizing and storing experience in human memory
... The formation of an idea by mental separation from particular instances

9. Concepts and Abstractions
Environment
Culture
Social Structure
Technology
Abstraction level
Mental categories for sorting, organizing and storing experience in human memory
... The formation of an idea by mental separation from particular instances
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.

10. About theories
Explanatory concepts relation to the phenomenon of interest
Phenomenon of interest
Concept: Mass
E=MC2
Concept: Speed of light2
Græsk ”phaiómenon” – ´det der viser sig´
Theory is a set of concepts and the relationships between them proposed to explain the phenomenon of interest

11. About theories
Since human behavior is unpredictable, mathematical equations are unsuited for explaining such.
Alternatives:
Statistical probabilities
Chaos theories
CAS theories
Metaphors or analogues

12. Sources of inspiration for organization theory
Symbolic Interpretive
Prehistory
Modern
Postmodern
1900 – 1950s
1960s – 1970s
1980s
1990s
Smith Marx Durkheim Taylor Follet
Fayol
Weber
Gulick
Barnard
Von Bertalanffy
Trist & Bamforth
Boulding
March & Simon
Emery
Burns & Stalker
Woodward
Lawrence & Lorsch
Thompson
Schütz
Whyte
Selznick
Goffman
Gadamer
Berger & Luckman
Weick
Geertz
Clifford & Marcus
Saussure
Foucault
Bell
Jencks
Derrida
Lyotard
Rorty
Lash & Urry
Baudrillard
Economics
Political Science
Cultural Anthropology
Linguistics
Liteary Theory
Engineering
Folklore Studies
Postmodern Architecture
Biology-Ecology
Sociology
Social Semiotics and Hermeneutics
Poststructural Philosophy
Cultural Studies
Social Psychology

13. 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

14. Ontology and Epistemology
Ontology is concerned with our assumptions about reality. Is there an objective reality out there or is it subjective, existing only in our minds??
Depending on the perspective, one will some things status of being real, while you will disregard others
Subjectivists
Objectivists
Things only exists when you experience and give it meaning
Reality exists independently of those who live in it
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

15. Ontology and Epistemology
Epistemology 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..

16. Symbol-interpretivists
General influences...
Modernist
Symbol-interpretivists
Postmodernists
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

17. 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.

18. Comparing the three perspectives.....
Modernism
Symbolic Interpretivism
Postmodernism
Ontology
Objectivism – belief is an objective, external reality whose existence is independant of our knowledge of it.
Subjectivism – 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-
Postmodernism – 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
Epistemology
Positivism – 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
Interprevism – 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
Postmodernism – 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 are
Objectively 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
Continually 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
Sites 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 theory
Finding universal laws, methods and tech-niques of organisation and control; favors rational structures, rules, standardized procedures and routine practices.
Describing how people give meaning and order to their experience within specific contexts through interpretive and symbolic acts, forms and processes
Deconstructing 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

19. Case Methodology Generic Case Methodology 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Problem identification and analysis
of problem(s)
Statement
and evaluation of solutions
Generation
Recommen-dations and implementation
Introduction
Conslusion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
An example on a specific methodology: