Instructors:
Iris Seidemann
Event type:
Lecture + practical course
Displayed in timetable as:
Int. Org.
Language of instruction:
English
Min. | Max. participants:
- | -
Comments/contents:
The worldwide spread of the Covid19 virus poses a grand social challenge. Seriously threatening the health of the world’s population and accompanied by huge social and economic disruption, it is one of the largest immediate crises for Western societies since World War II and a humanitarian disaster for humankind around the world. Drawing on classic and contemporary organization theory, this course aims to illuminate many pressing questions surrounding the pandemic, such as how supply chains can be organized to ensure adequate supplies of health material, the strengths and difficulties of open science approaches to the development of a vaccine or capabilities of different forms of organization and coordination to quickly and adequately respond in times of crisis.
The course comprises 12 classes, each dealing with a particular aspect of the Covid19 crisis in relation to different theories of organization and organizing. It is a collaborative effort of organizational scholars from different Austrian and German universities that have expertise in researching grand challenges, different forms of organizing and crisis management. Given the current need for distance learning, the course can be completed online and to a large extent asynchronously. Each class comprises a short recorded lecture and a set of core and background readings in addition to links to contemporary newspaper articles.
Learning objectives:
Students of this course should learn to:
- Analyze the current Covid19 crisis through the lens of organization theory
- Understand the role of different organizational forms such as bureaucracies, high-reliability organizations or inter-organizational networks in coordinating responses to crisis.
- Understand alternative and open forms of organizing and their advantages and difficulties.
- Understand the role of leadership in crisis situations and reflect on different types of sensemaking with regard to open communication and transparency on the one side and uncertainty and an unknown future on the other side.
- Understand the challenges of organizations to communicate in times of crisis, and the role of social media for and in crisis communication.
- Reflect on how organizations can be designed to respond to unexpected events and be responsive and resilient.
- Understand how crisis can be a trigger for entrepreneurship, innovation and change.
- Understand the ways in which grand challenges relate to inequalities, including gender inequality.
- Critically engage with both theoretical concepts and practical contemporary phenomena.
- Reflect on what organization theory and practising managers can contribute to addressing grand societal challenges.
Additional examination information:
Take Home Exam:
Time to process the exam: 120 min
Time frame in which the exam can be completed:
1. Exam: 05.03.2021, 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
2. Exam: 19.03.2021, 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm
The examiner of your course will provide information about the hand out of examination tasks / assignments and their submission during the course of this semester, at the earliest after the STiNE Changes and Corrections Period.
