Philosophy of Management and Organisations

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• the existence of multiple dimensions affecting organisational entities (especially ones that typically tend to go undetected in conventional managerial thinking);
• the value of transparent thinking in gaining charge of our beliefs and decision making processes;
• the indecisive nature of managerial knowledge;
• the immense complexity of organisational worlds;
• the salience of using alternative philosophical lenses in evaluating managerial problems and developing balanced and undogmatic understandings.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• identify different schools of thought;
• recognise the intellectual foundations of core management theories and practices;
• explain basic philosophical concepts;
• evaluate the appropriateness of different thinking tools for tackling diverse problems.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• conduct independent bibliographical research.
• write well-crafted essays and present them in a well-structured manner;
• use a wide range of tools in order to refine your thinking processes and write more compelling arguments;
• use a wide range of intellectual ideas in order to enrich your arguments;

Basic philosophical concepts, problems and ideas:

• Problems of administration and social organisation since Ancient Greece;
• The problems of knowledge, existence and virtue: Dominant perspectives.

Modern answers to core philosophical questions:

• The philosophers of economics: Marx, Smith, Veblen, Keynes and Schumpeter;
• Contemporary schools of thought and unresolved problems;
• Views on the nature (and possibility) of (social) scientific knowledge;
• Eastern critiques of Western philosophical traditions: The rise of mindfulness.

Philosophies of organisations through philosophical lenses:

• Towering figures in organisational thought: Max Weber et al;
• Economic systems, varieties of capitalism and organisational forms;
• The neoclassical paradigm and the realist critique;
• The Darwinian legacy: Evolutionary approaches in the study of organisations;
• The psyche of organisations: Psychoanalytical and existentialist perspectives;
• Economic and organisational utopias.

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods and learning activities:

Lectures will set out the background in familiarising students with topics in intellectual history. The second hour of each session will typically involve the drawing of links between various (typically abstract) approaches with more down-to-earth problems at the heart of contemporary management. Towards the end of each lecture students will be given an assignment for the class of the upcoming week. All assignments will converge in encouraging students to utilise philosophical perspectives and modes of thought in order to address quite concrete problems. Students will often have to take sides on a debate of a well-rehearsed dilemma. All lectures will have suggested reading material, which will typically be a combination of journal papers and book chapters. In addition, there will be visiting lectures (from Dr Gatenby and Dr Wainwright), whereas students will be strongly encouraged to attend related departmental seminars to be delivered by invited academics.

Learning activities include:

Individual/group assignments

In class debate and discussion

Private study

Use of online material

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

Philosophy of Management. Journal

Academy of Management Review. Journal

Organization. Journal

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

Organization Studies. Journal

Textbooks

Perrow, C. (1986). Complex organisations: A critical essay. McGraw-Hill.

Fleetwood, S., & Ackroyd, S. (Eds.) (2004). Critical realist applications in organisation and management studies. Psychology Press.

Heilbroner, R. L. (2011). The worldly philosophers: The lives, times and ideas of the great economic thinkers. Simon and Schuster.

Tsoukas, H., & Knudsen, C. (Eds.) (2005). The Oxford handbook of organization theory. Oxford University Press.

Aldrich, H. (1999). Organisations evolving. Sage.

Blackburn, S (2001). Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fuller, S. (2012). Knowledge management foundations. Routledge.

Griseri, P. (2001). Management Knowledge: A critical view. Palgrave.

Alvesson, M., Bridgman, T., & Willmott, H. (Eds.) (2009). The Oxford handbook of critical management studies. Oxford University Press.

Okasha, S. (2002). Philosophy of science: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Morgan, G (1997). Images of Organization. Sage.

Lipton, P. (2004). Inference to the best explanation. Psychology Press.

Tsoukas, H. (2005). Complex knowledge. Oxford University Press.

Hatch, M. J. (2012). Organization theory: Modern, symbolic and postmodern perspectives. Oxford University Press.

Griseri, P. (2013). An Introduction to the Philosophy of Management. Sage.

Pugh, D. S., & Hickson, D. J. (2007). Writers on organisations. Penguin.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External