Purpose Representation of content Syllabus Morgan Presentation Power Discourse

Purpose

The purpose of this course is to provide you with the analytical tools to offer a theory for the organization that was the site of the issue you want to change. That is, although the analytical tools we will be developing come from general theories, the theory you will develop will be specific to your organization and will be the result of a dialectical process between concepts and preliminary theories and the encounter of those abstract ideas with the concreteness of the organization you want to change.  It may be the case that the elements of your specific theory could be useful generally in the construal of organizations, but the purpose of this course is not to construct a theory that is generally true.

I should point out that the purpose of this class is to articulate a theory of organizations that one could apply to any organziation as though it were some hermenutic device. The development of your theory will take place in a site of educational practice, and while

Representation of content

The final project for this course is to articulate a theory to explain the organization that served as the site of your change course. To provide the scaffolding for your theory, we will focus on the structure of organizations and the processes by which they function. We will examine in groups organizations as structures using conceptual elements from Charles Handy to read Images of Organization and then present what you have learned to the rest of the class.  The purpose of this exercise is not to hone your presentation skills but to share what you have learned so that your colleagues have more tools at their disposal. For power and organizational discourse, you will write what you have learned from articles you have read, share that writing with all of us, and receive feedback on that writing.  This writing is intended to be informal. More formal will be two papers, one on power and the second on discourse, in which you offer a preliminary analysis of your organization. Those two papers together with your beliefs about organizational structure will be the elements you use in your final paper.

Syllabus

Morgan Presentation

Power

Discourse