MAIS 610

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3 - Organizational Perspectives: images, issues, practices
Delivery Mode: Grouped-Study

This course brings together the three traditional fields in organizational studies: organizational theory, organizational behavior, and organizational psychology. The course is planned around building actionable knowledge of these practical sciences for students, so each of these traditional fields will be explored in various ways using different lenses. The goal is to for students to be able to apply and intregrate what we learn in the course to their own experience and their relations with, and place in, organizations.

The course's central concept is that of metaphor, and of using metaphors to holistically understand organizational life. After an orientation to the origins and foundations of the three traditional fields of organizational studies, their foci, and their preferred modes of explanation, students will move through four overarching ways to consider organizational life:

• Positivistic Science: grounded in modernist ontology and epistemology, and focusing on organizations' factual side; organizations as machines and brains
• Interpretive Science: the sociocultural side of organizational life, including symbolism and processes
• Critical Science: leadership, motivation and stress; the different ways in which power plays out in organizations in relation to differences such as race and gender
• Postmodern Science: grounded in postmodern ontology and epistemology, and having a two pronged focus�the individual's psyche, perception, and values; also, new forms of discussing organizational life, such as organizations as organisms, or the influence of chaos and complexity theory

The course will end with a consideration of the future of the field of organizational studies.

The main assignment is one of application, where students will have the opportunity to analyze an issue in which they are interested, using the tools and knowledge that they have gained in the course.

Through continuous practice in applying new understandings, students will emerge with a detailed appreciation for the ways in which the formal field of organizational studies can impact their understanding of their organizational life, and their actions there.