BUS 374
Organization Theory
Instructor: Rajiv Krishnan Kozhikode
Agenda for today
• Syllabus Overview
– What is this course about?
– How is it delivered?
– How are you examined?
– Course management
• Team Formation and Assignment
Allocation
• A brief discussion of “What is an
organization?”
What is this course about?
• It is about macro-organizational theory.
• We will seek to answer the following questions
about organizations
1) What are organizations?
2) Why do organizations exist?
3) Why are there so many different types of
organizations?
4) Do organizations act similarly?
5) What are the consequences of acting differently?
6) How do organizations evolve?
7) How do organizations interact with each other?
How is the content delivered?
• Critical evaluate academic articles.
– Through traditional lectures
– Team activities involving weekly reports
– In class discussion of reports
There are NO designated textbooks for this course.
Evaluation criteria
1. Class participation (10%): Bases on contributions in
class rather than on attendance, so come well
prepared.
2. weekly team assignments (30%): 14 teams, each
team will submit one research application memo
based on assigned articles.
3. First mid-term exam (30%): After four theory
sessions an open book exam comprising of scenariobased and theory-based short answer type questions
will be administered on the 10th July 2013.
4. Second mid-term exam (30%): After first eight
sessions, a closed-book, multiple choice cumulative
exam will be administered on the 22nd July 2013.
Course management
• Course blog
– http://blogs.sfu.ca/courses/summer2013/bus374
• Article retrieval
– Search Google Scholar first
– If you are in the university network, you will be
able to easily download the article from there.
– If you are in an outside network, look for JSTOR
links or SSRN links or other direct links
– Else, search for it at university library databases
Team Formation
• We need 14 teams of 5 to 6 team members.
• Random team assignments.
• Random article assignments to teams.
• “No free riding” policy
Session 1
What are Organizations?
Selznick’s view of organizations
• Some examples of organizations
– Business corporations
– Trade unions
– Governments
– Political parties
– Student associations
• All of these represent rationally ordered
arrangements to achieve particular ends
Individuals and organizations
• Individuals are supposed to play roles that help
achieve these ends
• But they bring more that just “roles” to the
organizations limiting the efficiency of the
system .
• Authority is aimed at reducing inefficiency
• But control and consent go hand in hand.
• Therefore an organization takes a cooperative
function comprising of formal and informal
interactions that shape actions aimed at
achieving various ends.
Imperatives for a structuralfunctional analysis of organizations
• The security of the organization from
external threats
• Stability of lines of authority
• Stability of informal relationships
• Continuity of policy and its source of
determination
• Homogeneity of outlook about the
organization’s role
Chandler’s survey of theories of
the firm
– A Neo classical view of the firm as a economically
efficient system
– An organization as a nexus of contracts between
various principals and agents aimed at generating
economic efficiency in production
– Transaction cost theory’s view of the firm as an
alternative to the market to minimize opportunism
and manage bounded rationality
– Evolutionary theory’s view of the firm as an
organization of evolving capabilities
• Dynamics of capabilities, strategy and structure comprise
the firm.
That’s it for today
• For the next session each team should prepare a
research application memo based on one of these
two articles that
– Critically evaluates the key assumptions and
theoretical argument(s) of the assigned article
– Identifies a recent real world organizational
phenomenon that either challenges or extends
received wisdom (assumptions, arguments and
findings) from the assigned article and
– Discusses how this real world organizational
phenomenon can be used to develop novel theoretical
insights relevant to the assigned article.