Organisation Theory

Aims

The goal of this course is to provide students with a working knowledge of the most important theoretical frameworks in organization theory. This is a precious gift, as insights from organization theory are at the heart of many sub-disciplines in management, including strategic management, corporate governance, innovation studies, stakeholder management, international business, and entrepreneurship. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to trace and understand the intellectual history of these theoretical frameworks, and recognize how their own work relates and may contribute to these overarching theoretical frameworks. As an additional ‘bonus’, the instructors will engage in a non-technical discussion of the major research designs used by organizational scholars–such as event history analysis, meta-analysis, fs/QCA, matching-based regressions, and ethnography–to arrive at a deeper understanding of how the ‘affordances’ of these designs are shaping the research questions organization theorists pursue. In particular, upon taking the course students should be ready to answer questions such as: Why do firms exist? Why are firms structured as they are? What is the role of myth and ceremony in organizational life? Why and how do organizations ally with other organizations and how does that matter? How can organizations manage their external dependencies? How does our perspective change when we switch from the organizational to the population level of analysis? How do coalitions, power, and reference points matter to organizational decision-making? In every class, we start with a discussion of these broad theoretical frameworks, followed by a discussion of how the methods employed by organizational scholars are pushing our theoretical frontiers.