MSc Business Analysis and Strategic Management / Course details

This course will provide an overview of organization design theory. Our aim is to illuminate how traditional and emergent forms of organizing work co-exist, and how value is defined, created and captured across different forms of organizing. The first part of the course will focus on traditional forms of organizing including hierarchies, markets, managed supply chains, and self-governing collective action structures (aka commons organizations). We will also discuss how traditional forms of organizing differ in their approach to value creation and appropriation according to whether they are public, private, or result from a public-private partnership. The second part of the course will discuss how technological advances are enabling new inter-organizational forms of organizing with extreme levels of decomposability. We will thus discuss the  limited coordination costs and reduced needs for inter-organizational cooperation that are central to new forms of organizing such as business ecosystems/platforms, self-organizing communities of production, and flash organizations. Further, we will discuss the impact of non-market strategies on organizational design, and thus the emergence of polycentric governance structures as those observed in megaprojects, standard-setting organizations, and self-regulation consortia. In addition, we will discuss how progress in robotics and AI, the last phase of the so-called second machine age, is allowing for new organizational designs to emerge and how these new forms of organizing are seeking to create and distribute value. We will also discuss how organizational design choice is context sensitive, and thus how choice needs to adapt to variation in the robustness of the institutions in the surrounding environment.

 

BMAN73932 Programme Req: BMAN73932 is only available as an elective to students on MSc Business Analysis & Strategic Management, MSc Management and Implementation of Development Projects, and MSc Data Science (Bus&Man)

This course introduces students to basic concepts in the design of organizations, and sheds light on fundamental relationships between organizational design, value creation and distribution, and organizational purpose. The course focuses on organizational design as a strategic choice through which managers exercise agency to create value, capture value, and distribute value, and ultimately define the purpose of their organisations. The primary outcome of the course will be a familiarity with key organizational design ideas and their practical application as a set of tools and frameworks that aim to equip managers to design organizations that are capable to achieve their desirable goals. We will define value in a broad way to go beyond the economic value to be captured by the organization to include social and environmental value to be appropriated by stakeholders that traditionally lay outside the organization´s value chain (e.g., local communities, interest groups, local authorities, activists, regulators). In other words, we will look into the extent organizations choose or not through their designs to internalise positive and negative externalities. Specifically, students will learn alternative ways to resolve the three fundamental problems that face any form of organizing: i) division of labour (who does what); ii) integration of effort (problems of coordination and cooperation); and iii) exception management. Students will learn to compare alternative forms of organizing ranging from authority hierarchies (firms, public bureaucracies) and managed supply chains (simulated hierarchies) to markets, commons, clubs, participation architectures (eg social movements), and strategic alliances. Empirically , students will gain confidence to analyse not only traditional forms of organising, but also novel forms of organizing that are being enabled by rapid progress in modular digital technologies such as online communities of production, business ecosystems, digital platforms, ‘bossless’ firms, and flash organizations, as well as the impact of the emergence of agentic AI in organization design.  

The course will focus on organizational design choices as essential for the creation and appropriation of value in the private, public, and third sectors. The primary outcome will be a familiarity with organization design choice and its practical application as an instrument to create and appropriate value in the modern age. Accordingly, students will learn , first, how alternative organizational designs resolve the fundamental problems of integration of effort (coordination, cooperation) and division of labour; second, students will learn to differentiate between traditional forms of organizing (markets, hierarchies, relational & formal contracts), traditional meta-organizational systems (e.g., managed supply chains, megaprojects, professional associations); and emergent inter-organizational forms of organizing enabled by progress in digital technologies, AI, and robotics (e.g., virtual communities of production, business ecosystems, flash organizations). Third, students will learn how some organizational designs are evolving towards polycentric architectures in order to respond to increasing demand in the environment for organizations to act more collaborative; and fourth, students will learn how organization design needs to adapt to navigate fundamentally different institutional environments and the corresponding role of institutional intermediaries . On completing the course, students will have sharpened their intuition for organization design choice as an instrument to enable processes of value creation and appropriation in the modern age, and how value definitions vary from strict user-willingness-to-pay to inclusive conceptualizations to account for social value.

 

 

The course will seek to create as much hands-on interaction as possible with different realities to develop students´ skills to tackle complex problems through case discussions, lectures, and guest speakers’ talks. The students will have to prepare an individual essay (in blog format) and participate in a group project, which also includes three essays. Through the emphasis on essay writing, students will learn to develop an essay: present an analytical question or problem and offer a thesis that addresses the issue. Specifically, students will learn to provide enough information so the reader can understand the context and understand what is at stake in the argument. Further, students will learn that the introduction should explain what students add to the discussion and why it is worth reading the rest of the essay. Students will also learn to avoid writing very general opening sentences or “funnel” introductions where they begin with a broad topic and gradually narrow it down. Finally, students will  learn to move the reader through the argument and ensure the reader can see the connections between ideas. Through the case discussions in class, we will ‘dive’ into different real-world cases and sharpen students’ intuition for the organizational design choices. The focus will be on the relationships between organization design, value creation, value distribution and organizational purpose. Working in groups, the students will be asked to think and do as leaders: articulate complex problems in simple ways; develop a logic analysis of alternatives; and make arguable claims considering facts and counterarguments. As in the real-world, students won’t have all the information and evidence which they would like to have at hand to build their claims. Rather, students will have to make assumptions and argue for their plausibility.

 

CLASS PREPARATION

Students are advised to form study groups and meet with their group each week to prepare for class discussion. This approach increases learning, develops a sense of teamwork, and encourages good preparation for class discussion. In a typical session, one or more students will be asked to begin discussion of a selected topic. If students have prepared thoroughly the case and/or readings, students should have no difficulty in handling such a lead-off request. Students want to use the study questions for each case that are provided at the end of this document to guide your thinking. During case discussions, students will analyse the case situation and address the problems and issues that it presents. We will ask students to make recommendations and discuss their implementation. A portion of the class will be a lecture/discussion of concepts and methods that are brought out in the case or reading, but that are useful to a broader range of interorganizational contexts.

 

Development of argumentative, verbal skills is a priority in this course. The classroom will be an opportunity where students can develop their ability to present their analyses and claims clearly, to convince peers of the correctness of their approach, and persuade them about the merits of implementing their ideas. Students must display a nameplate on their desks in each session. Class participation is not graded, but the criteria I would use to judge effective class participation are:

•    Is the participant a good listener? is there willingness to participate?

•    Are points made relevant to discussion and linked to comments of other?

•    Is there willingness to test new ideas, or are all comments “safe”?

•    Do comments show clear evidence of appropriate and insightful analysis of the case data?

•    Do comments clarify and highlight the important aspects of earlier comments? 

Group project (main report) – 30%
Group project (3 case study essays) – 30%
Individual assignment (essay) – 40%

 

Informal advice and discussion during a lecture, seminar, workshop or lab.
Responses to student emails and questions by the unit coordinator and face-to-face feedback in office hours.
Specific coursework related feedback sessions.
Written and/or verbal comments on assessed or non-assessed coursework.
Written and/or verbal comments after students have given a group or individual presentation.