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21909 Theorising Organisations and Management

UTS: Business: Management
Credit points: 6 cp

Subject level: Undergraduate

Result Type: Grade and marks

Handbook description

This subject provides the critical skills, methodological judgment, and theoretical sophistication for students to be able to design a competent research project. It provides a forum each semester for students to present an update on their research efforts and review the work of others.

Subject objectives/outcomes

On successful completion of this subject students should be able to:

  1. learn and explore different theoretical approaches to organisation and management theory
  2. critically evaluate contemporary issues in theorising organisation and management
  3. introduce them to processes of theory constructions
  4. become familiar with the types of arguments and evidence used to justify and elaborate different types of theorising, research, and writing practices.

Contribution to graduate profile

Theorising Organisations and Management is designed to prepare students to engage critically with research papers drawn from leading journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Studies, Organization Science, Organization, and various Academy of Management Journals – these and similar journals are widely recognised to be the apex of publishing in management and organisations areas. By taking this subject students will be equipped to engage in the appreciation of different styles of theorising necessary for the successful completion of their theses.

Teaching and learning strategies

This subject is delivered through a variety of face-to-face teaching strategies. Lectures involve face-to-face content delivery, employing highly interactive approaches to enhance the theoretical delivery of the subject tailored to specific student needs and interest. The subject is delivered though a seminar program utilising intensive modes of teaching, based on case studies of exemplary research that link the theory and practice of doing research. Throughout the subject students are required to present papers and be involved in peer learning activities.

Content

  • Meta-theoretical approaches to management and organisation theory — positivist, interpretive, critical and post-modern approaches
  • Anthology
  • Epistemology
  • Historical perspectives
  • De-constructing rationalities
  • Practice and language in management and organisation theory
  • Strategies, structures and stories
  • Consulting approaches to organisation change.

Assessment

Assessment item 1: First Assignment (Individual)

Objective(s): 1 and 2
Weighting: 30%
Task: The assignment requires that students write a seminar paper accompanied by a slide presentation, both of which they must submit for assessment.

Assessment item 2: Second Assignment (Individual)

Objective(s): 1, 2 and 3
Weighting: 40%
Task: The students are required to write an extended assay on a central debate that they have read during the semester.

Assessment item 3: Third Assignment (Individual)

Objective(s): 1, 2, 3 and 4
Weighting: 30%
Task: The students will keep a learning journal in which they will record what they have read and learnt, as well as the issues and questions that it has raised for them.

Recommended text(s)

The references listed below are recommended introductory readings. This should be regarded as 'start-up' list — it is expected that students will bring many more references to bear as a result of their own investigations.

The Plurality of Organisation Theory

  • Czarniawska, B (2003) Forbidden knowledge: Organization theory in times of transition, Management Learning, 34: pp 353-365.
  • Kelemen, M and Hassard, J (2003) Paradigm plurality: Exploring past, present, and future trends, in R Westwood and SR Clegg (eds) Debating organization: point-counterpoint in organization studies, pp 73-82, London: Blackwell.
  • Czarniawska, B (1998) Who's afraid of incommensurability?, Organization, 5(2): pp 273-275.
  • Burrell, G (1996) Normal science, paradigms, metaphors, discourses and genealogies of analysis, in SR Clegg, C Hardy, and WR Nord (eds) The Handbook of Organization Studies, pp 642-658, London: Sage.

Positive Science

  • Wicks, AC and Freeman, RE (1998) Organization studies and the new pragmatism: Positivism, anti-positivism, and the search for ethics. Organization Science, 9: 123-140
  • Marsden, R (1993) The politics of organizational analysis, Organization Studies, 14 (1): 93-124.
  • Pfeffer, J (1993) Barriers to the advance of organizational science: Paradigm development as a dependant variable, Academy of Management Review, 18: 599-620.
  • Donaldson, L (1988) In successful defence of organizational theory: A routing of the critics, Organization Studies, 9(1): 28-32.

Critical Management Perspectives

  • Clegg, SR, Kornberger, M, Carter, C and Rhodes, C (2006) For management?, Management Learning, 37(1): 7-27.
  • Barrett, E (2003) Foucault, HRM and the ethos of the critical management scholar, Journal of Management Studies, 40(5): 1069-1087.
  • Fournier, V and Grey, C (2000) At the critical moment: Conditions and prospects for critical management studies, Human Relations, 53(1): 7-32.
  • Parker, M (1995) Critique in the name of what? Postmodernism and critical approaches to organization, Organization Studies, 16(4): 553-564.

Social Constructivism and Interpretivism

  • Allar-Poesi, F (2005) The paradox of sense making on organizational analysis, Organization, 12(2): 169-196.
  • Humphreys, M, Brown, A and Hatch, M-J (2003) Is ethnography jazz?, Organization, 10(1): 5-31.
  • Meckler, M and Baillie, J (2003) The truth about social construction in administrative science, Journal of Management Inquiry, 12(3): 273-284.
  • Tsoukas, H (2000) False dilemmas in organization theory: Realism or social constructivism, Organization, 7(3): 531-535

Postmodernism

  • Weiss, RM (2000) Taking science out of organization science: How would postmodernism reconstruct the analysis of organizations? Organization Science, 11(6): 709-731
  • Calás, M and Smircich, L (1999) Past postmodernism? Reflections and tentative directions', Academy of Management Review, 24(4): 649-671
  • Feldman, S (1998) Playing with the pieces: deconstruction and the loss of moral cultures, Journal of Management Studies 35(1): 59-79
  • Kilduff, M and Mehra, A (1997) Postmodernism and organizational research, Academy of Management Review, 22(2): 453-481
  • Burrell, G and Cooper, R (1988) 'Modernism, postmodernism and organizational analysis: an introduction', Organization Studies 9(1): 91-112
  • Clegg, SR and Kornberger, M (2003) 'Modernism, postmodernism management and organization theory', pp 57-89 in Ed Locke (ed.) Postmodernism in Organizational Thought: Pros, Cons and the Alternative, Amsterdam: Elsevier. (Also consult other chapters in this volume.)

Organization as Discourse

  • Grant, D and Iedema, R (2005) Discourse Analysis and the Study of Organizations. Text: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 25(1): 37-66.
  • Rhodes, C (2005) Review of D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick and L. Putnam (Eds.) (2004) 'Handbook of Organizational Discourse', Organization Studies, 26(5): 787-793.
  • Reed, M (2000) The limits of discourse analysis in organization analysis, Organization, 7(3): 524-530.
  • Keenoy, T, Oswick, C, Grant, D (1997) Organizational discourses: Text and context, Organization, 4: 147-158.

Organization as Narrative

  • Rhodes, C and Brown, A (2005), Narrative, organizations and research', International Journal of Management Reviews, 7(3): pp 167-188.
  • Boje, DM (1995) Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as 'Tamara-Land', Academy of Management Journal, 38(4): pp 997-1035.
  • Czarniawska-Joerges, B (1995) Narration or science? Collapsing the division in organization studies, Organization 2 (1): pp 11-33.
  • Gabriel, Y (1995) The unmanaged organization: Stories, fantasy and subjectivity, Organization Studies, 16(3): pp 477-511.

The Ethics of Writing Organization

  • Pullen, A (2006) Gendering the Research Self: social practice and corporeal multiplicity in the writing of organizational research, Gender, Work and Organization, 13 (3): 277-298
  • Rhodes, C and Brown, AD (2005) 'Writing responsibly: Narrative fiction and organization studies', Organization, 12(4): 505-529.
  • Wray-Bliss, E. (2003) 'Research Subjects/Research Subjections: Exploring the Ethics and Politics of Critical Research', Organization 10(2): 307-325
  • Pitsis, TS and Clegg, SR (2007) 'Interpersonal Metaphysics — We live in a Political World': The Paradox of Managerial Wisdom, pp. 377-398 in E. H. Kessler and J. R. Bailey (eds) Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Wisdom, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • Clegg, SR and Hardy, C (2006) 'Representation and reflexivity', pp 423-444 in Clegg, SR, Hardy, C, Nord, W, and Lawrence, T (2006) Handbook of Organization Studies (new, completely revised second edition), London: Sage.

Power, Management and Organizations

  • Fleming, P and Sewell, G (2002) Looking for the good soldier Svejk, Sociology, 36(4): 857-873.
  • Clegg, SR (2001) Changing concepts of power, changing concepts of politics,
  • Administrative Theory and Praxis, 23(2): 126-150.
  • Hardy, C and Clegg, SR (2006) Some dare call in power, in SR Clegg, C Hardy and WR Nord (eds) The Handbook of Organization Studies, pp. 622–641, London: Sage.
  • Clegg, SR, Courpasson, D, and Phillips, N (2006) Power and Organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • Knights, D and McCabe, D (1999) Are there no limits to authority? TQM and organizational power, Organization Studies, 20(2): 197–224
  • Clegg, SR and Courpasson, D (2007) 'The end of history and the futures of power', 21st Century Society: Journal of the Academy of the Social Sciences 2(2): 131–154

Gender, Management and Organizations

  • Linstead, A and Thomas, R (2002) 'What do you want from me?': A poststructuralist feminist reading of middle managers' identities. Culture and Organization. 8(1): 1-21.
  • Knights, D and Kerfoot, D (1998) Managing masculinity in contemporary organizational life: A 'managerial project, Organization, 5(1): 7-26.
  • Wilson, F (1996) Organization theory: Blind and deaf to gender?, Organization Studies, 17(5): 825-842.
  • Gherardi, S (1994) The gender we think, the gender we do in everyday organizational life, Human Relations, 47(6): 591-609.
  • Acker, J (1990) 'Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organizations', Gender and Society, 4(2): 139-158

Identity, Management and Organizations

  • Iedema, R, Rhodes, C and Scheeres, H (2006) Surveillance, Resistance, Observance: Exploring the teleo-affective volatility of workplace interaction, Organization Studies, 27(8): 1111–1130.
  • Collinson, D (2003) Identities and insecurities: Selves at work, Organization, 10(3): 527-547.
  • Bos, R and Rhodes, C (2003) 'The game of exemplarity: Subjectivity, work and the impossible politics of purity', Scandinavian Journal of Management, 19(4): 403-423.
  • Alvesson, M and Willmott, H (2002) Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual, Journal of Management Studies, 39(5): 619-44.

Ethics

  • Clegg, SR, Kornberger, M and Rhodes, C (2007) Business ethics as practice, British Journal of Management
  • Clegg, SR and Rhodes, C, eds, (2006) Management Ethics – Contemporary Contexts, London: RoutledgeFalmer
  • Watson, TJ (2003) Ethical choice in managerial work: The scope for moral choices in an ethically irrational world, Human Relations, 56: 167-185.
  • Jones, C (2003) As if Business Ethics Were Possible, 'Within Such Limits', Organization, 10(2): 223-248.
  • Parker, M (1999) Capitalism, subjectivity and ethics: Debating labour process analysis, Organization Studies, 20(1): 25-45.
  • Bos, R (1997) Business ethics and Bauman ethics, Organization Studies, 18: 997–1014
  • Kornberger, M, Rhodes, C, and Clegg, SR (2007) 'Deconstructive Decision Making: Undecidability and the Organizational Ego', The Sociological Review, 55:2 (2007)
  • Ibarra-Colado, E, Clegg, SR, Rhodes, C and Kornberger, M (2006) 'The ethics of managerial subjectivity', The Journal of Business Ethics, 64: 45-55

Indicative references

Clegg, SR (2002) 'Central Currents in Organization Studies I: Frameworks and Applications', Volumes One to Four, London: Sage

Clegg, SR (2002) 'Central Currents in Organization Studies II: Contemporary Trends', Volumes Five to Eight, London: Sage

Clegg, SR, Hardy, C, Lawrence, TB and Nord WR (2006) The Sage Handbook of Organization Studies, London: Sage

Clegg, SR and Bailey, JR (eds) The Sage International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies, Thousand Oaks, CAL: Sage

Tsoukas, H and Knudsen, C (2004) The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Grant, D, Hardy, C, Oswick, C and Putnam, L (2004) The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse, London: Sage

Westwood, R and Clegg, SR (2003) Debating Organizations, Oxford: Blackwell.

Journals

  • Academy of Management Journal
  • Academy of Management Learning and Education
  • Academy of Management Review
  • Administrative Science Quarterly
  • Culture and Organization
  • Gender, Work and Organization
  • Human Relations
  • Journal of Management Inquiry
  • Journal of Management Studies
  • Management Learning
  • Organization
  • Organization Science
  • Organization Studies
  • Scandinavian Journal of Management