Organisational Change (Autumn 2019)

Abstract

The goal of the course is to enable students to understand the interplay between IT and organizational change, and understand strategies for managing organizational change processes.

Description

The aim of this course is to give the student an overview of organizational theory and different approaches to organizational change. Organizational theory cover organizational structure, decision-making, institutional and systems theory, as well as organizational culture and the role of leadership and management. Organizational change cover approaches such as business process reengineering, commanding, metrics-driven and production-focused change as well as more critical and reflective approaches such as employee-driven change, learning-driven change, exploration, transformational change, change as emergent, and socialization as change. Furthermore, optional or voluntary change and the mechanisms influencing diffusion and adoption of IT will be covered. Students will learn to use the “organisational change nexus” to choose a good organizational change strategy or combination of strategies based on an understanding of the contingencies. Students will also learn how to apply an appropriate organizational change approach within the context and situation in an organization. In the concrete the student will learn to analyse and synthesize concrete organizational change problems related to IT by applying the concepts, theories, and methods in the course. The course can be based on cases from public and private organizations, global and local. Students are required to identify suitable it-related cases for trying the organisational change nexus themselves.

Formal prerequisites

Intended learning outcomes

After the course, the student should be able to:

• Account for different organizational theory; on structure, decision-making, institutional and systems theory, as well as organizational culture and the role of leadership and management
• Explain how different organizational theoretical perspectives are related to organizational change
• Account for different strategic change perspectives; when to use?; how to use?; and the underlying theory?
• Explain what characterizes digital change management and be able to contrast and discuss core models thereof
• Apply the design theory nexus in a specific organizational setting and account for the change management planning derived from using the nexus.

Learning activities

lectures and excercises

Course literature

The course literature is published in the course page in LearnIT.

Ordinary exam

Exam type:
D: Submission of written work with following oral, external (7-trinsskala)
Exam variation:
D2G: Submission of written work for groups with following oral exam supplemented by the work submitted.
Exam description:

TBA

Time and date