Introduction

In this course, Management: perspective and practice, you will be studying different ways to think about understanding organizations and approaches to managing the people who work within them. The theories and models in this course look at the organizational context (the ‘organization’, the ‘context’ and the ‘wider environment’ of) and help you to begin to answer the question: How does my organization context and environment affect my management practice? This course is comprised of:

• Exploring ideas, Understanding organizations, and Organisational culture
  • Discussing ways that organizational theorists have characterized organizational structures and cultures, and the impact of different national cultures on organizational practice and ways in which managers might make sense of these
  • A short pre-reading activity asking you to think about a problem/opportunity situation in your own context, to see how these theories and models are both relevant and irrelevant to your own management practice.
• Creative problem solving
  • Developing your skills in creative problem solving by learning some techniques based on systems theory
  • Learning how to use case studies and their analysis to better understand and apply the ideas you are studying.
• Making connections
  • Thinking more closely about your organization’s culture and how you can use metaphors to better understand the way organizations work.