Organisation and organising is an advanced course in organization theory (OT). Rather than focus on individual organization theories per se, the course addresses the diversity of the world of organisations. In the real world, organisations assume many forms beyond private corporations or public offices. In the world of theory, OT is practiced according to different scientific paradigms. The course discusses this heterogeneity via addressing several key themes in managerial and organizational thought and theory. Topics included in the course include those of the legacy of classical OT thinkers, the societal role of organisations, forms of coordination, culture and identity, power and control in organizations, organisational change, and the future of organising. Furthermore, the course tracks the evolution of organisational thinking in theory and managerial practice. The course explains how the various OT paradigms (i.e. functionalist, symbolic, interpretive, and critical) address the questions of organising from different premises and produce varying scholarly understanding of the course topics. The course ultimately enables an understanding of the world of management and work organization through an approach that situates those practices and imaginaries in their specific cultural-historical contexts.
- Teacher: Sören Kock
- Teacher: Fredrik Weibull
Strategic thinking involves the ability to identify relevant information, to formulate and develop rigorous reports, and to judge the outcome of the analysis. The analytical skills are essential when managing organisations in different situations and changing contexts. This course addresses strategic issues (scale, scope, advantage, growth, communication) through cases and provides analytical tools as well as an in depth understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of different analytical methods in strategic management.
This is an advanced level course and participating students are expected to have basic insights into the field of strategy. This course is the first in the Strategy-track in Management and Organization, which consists of the following courses: 1) Strategic Thinking, 2) Strategy work, and 3) Strategic foresight.
The course is joint of both locations and can be taken by students from both Helsinki and Vaasa.
The course introduction takes place on Friday 3.9 at 8:30 online via Teams. Welcome! Eva-Lena Lundgren-Henriksson & Thach Huynh Bao
- Teacher: Thach Huynh
- Teacher: Eva-Lena Lundgren-Henriksson
- Teacher: Anna Maaranen
Kursens övergripande mål är att fördjupa den vetenskapliga förmågan och förhållningssättet för att förbereda studerandena för kandidat-examensarbetet och vetenskapliga projekt i yrkeslivet. Vägledning och viktiga verktyg (begrepp, metoder och värderingar) för utförandet av vetenskaplig forskning inom företagsekonomisk forskning ges. Kursen behandlar bland annat vetenskapsteori, forskningsdesign, litteraturbehandling, forskningsetik, samt analysmetoder. All från hur man formulerar forskningsfrågor, söker litteratur samt samlar in och analyserar data gås igenom. De vanligaste kvalitativa och kvantitativa datainsamlingsmetoderna samt data-analysmetoderna behandlas. Kursen består av föreläsningar och praktiska metodövningar.
- Teacher: Emma Nordbäck
This course focuses on the organizational aspects of sustainable change, encouraging students to create alternative scenarios of future business worlds. The focus lies on how businesses, states and other societal actors respond to the most urgent ecological and climate challenges of our time. During the course, we will address different definitions of sustainability and different organizational forms of the sustainability work, addressing the following questions: How do businesses and key societal actors organize to respond to complex and multi-scalar problems associated with the ecological and climate crises? How do different societal actors organize to build more sustainable lifeforms in different parts of the world?
The course includes perspectives on different forms of organising sustainable change through for example global governance, sustainable innovations, grassroots movements, social mobilizations, and regenerative designs. During the course, we assess the effects of different forms of organising sustainable change at the local, regional and global level.
The course can be taken as part of the study module in Corporate Responsibility.
- Teacher: Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes
- Teacher: Anna Maaranen
The course aims to support the writing of the master's thesis in the major subject. During the course you receive support and individual counseling from your thesis supervisor for producing a thesis. You also get feedback from your co-students when presenting your own master thesis project in your seminar group. The course contains individual counselling and group discussions. During the course you will partly work on your own thesis, partly review and comment your co-student’s thesis projects.
Read more about the master’s thesis on the web.
- Teacher: Sören Kock
Introduction to Management is a bachelor-level course, which introduces students to the fascinating world of management in the context of modern organizing. The course aims to develop capabilities for independent thinking about management as a phenomenon ultimately concerned with a particular relationship to the human subject at work. This is achieved through a course structure that recognizes the cultural-historical specificity of management in modern Anglo-Saxon and European cultures. The course content is organized along three sets of themes. The first theme locates the emergence of management within the historical context of modern and industrial capitalism. Students will be introduced to three lines of critique of early industrial society and its particular modes of organization. This includes the analytical categories of anomie, alienation, rationalization and the objects of division of labour, the labour process, work ethic and bureaucratic organization. A second theme allows students to engage in managerial ideas and practices in terms of their origins, intentionalities, development and effects in the course of the 20th century. This includes scientific management, human relations and organizational psychology, systems theory, the management of culture and Human Resources. A third and final theme considers the technological horizon of possibility and discusses the self and subjectivity in contemporary organization as well as imaginations of future modes of managing. The latter includes themes of self-management, aspects of the ‘automata’ in the form of AI and Machine learning and issues about privacy and surveillance.
The course is guided by the conviction of a learning experience where students are treated as ‘young adults’ whose independent thinking in the world of management and organization studies can be cultivated through a collaborative mode of learning, akin to that in other parts of the social sciences and humanities, where problematizing of the object of study is considered germane. As such the course aims at sophistication rather than simplification (or ‘dumbing down’) and problematizing rather than prescribing thinking and analysis of the thought-world of management.
- Teacher: Martin Fougère
- Teacher: Sören Kock
- Teacher: Fredrik Weibull
- Teacher: Tanja Dahlgren-Broman
- Teacher: Veronica Hasselström
- Teacher: Mikaela Krohn
- Teacher: Kira Nyman
- Teacher: Hanna Sipiläinen
- Teacher: Sofia Stolt
- Teacher: Tanja Dahlgren-Broman
- Teacher: Mikaela Krohn
- Teacher: Kaie Veiler