Objectives

This course seeks to enable students to understand and address challenges in managing people in organizations on the basis of academic literature. Students learn about how to manage people through organizational design, performance management, and organizational change. In doing so, the course allows students to apply academic theories about managing people to real-world cases. These cases, supplemented by scholarly readings, serve as the primary vehicle for learning.

Specifically, students (1) learn declarative knowledge about organizational design, organizational change, and managing people, (2) develop procedural knowledge and skills for solving managerial problems, and (3) develop skills for presenting and arguing managerial decisions.

Contents

Module 1: Organizational Design

1. Course Introduction: Meier Manufacturing
2. Organizational design: Keeping Google “Googley”
3. Organizational structure: Procter & Gamble: Organization 2005
4. Organizational culture: Four Seasons goes to Paris
5. Organization design in an NGO: Street Child Europe
6. Holacracy as modern organizational design: Liip Switzerland

Module 2: People Management

1. Managing employee performance: Elise Smart
2. Managing difficult employees: What a star, what a jerk
3. Managing diversity: The case of the unequal opportunity
4. Dealing with unresolvable tensions: TBD

Module 3: Change Management

1. Managing top-down and bottom-up change: Firmenich
2. Managing change in an NGO: Red Cross Children’s Home Guyana /Course Review

Pre-requisites

N/A

Evaluation

First attempt

Exam:

Without exam (cf. terms)  

Evaluation:

SUMMER 2020, due to coronavirus

, class contribution will not be evaluated

Weekly assignment papers (individual): 70%

Take-home assignment (individual): 30%

Due on June 8, 2020

Retake

Exam:

Without exam (cf. terms)  

Evaluation:

Students who have a final grade of below 4.0 have to redo all assignments in which their grade was below 4.0.