37443 - Organisational Change and Design of Business Processes M

Academic Year 2019/2020

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Engineering Management (cod. 0936)

Learning outcomes


This course is an integrative course that challenges students to combine, integrate and apply knowledge from different perspectives, with a specific focus on Business Processes. Students will learn methodologies and techniques to describe, analyze and improve business processes by using the appropriate performance measures. During the course students will work
intensively in teams on real-life cases, challenging them to combine and apply knowledge and practical skills to redesign a business process.

Course contents

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

A prior knowledge and understanding of organization theory is required to attend with profit this course. Then, as recommended background knowledge, students should have passed the final exam of Organizzazione Aziendale.

Fluent spoken and written Italian is a necessary pre-requisite: all lectures and tutorials, and all study material will be in Italian. Some additional study material will be in English and requires a basic understanding of written English (level B1).

COURSE CONTENTS

By taking Business Processes and Organizational Chance as a point of departure, the course: 1. bring together several disciplinary perspectives and analyze real-life business cases from an integrative perspective; 2. stimulate to think about organizations in a process perspective, bringing together knowledge from different fields and realizing that this creates challenges and conflicts that managers need to deal with.

Students will learn to systematically analyze business processes, to visualize them, and identify problems that emerge in these processes, considering both the front- (customer) as well as the back-side (management). Moreover, the course introduce a number of tools to assess the consequences of suggested improvements.

Readings/Bibliography

M. Hammer, J.Champy, Ripensare l’azienda, Sperling &Kupfer Editori, Milano, 1999

T.H. Davenport, Innovazione dei processi, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1997

E. Bartezzaghi, L’organizzazione dell’impresa, ETAS Libri, Milano, 2010 (Parte II)

J. Kotter, Al cuore del cambiamento, ETAS Libri, Milano, 2003

G. Rebora, E. Minelli, Change management, ETAS Libri, Milano, 2007

For exercises, case studies, slides and other teaching material please check course's website on: https://iol.unibo.it

Teaching methods

Lectures, class and individual exercises related to the techniques presented, individual work and class discussion of case studies related to theories and methodologies. In addition during the course students will be asked to work in team on a project

 

Assessment methods

Achievements will be assessed by the means of a practical project and a final oral exam. This is based on an analytical assessment of the "expected learning outcomes" described above.

In order to properly assess such achievement the examination is composed of two parts:

1. A project activity requiring the application of businss process reengineering methodologies and techniques. Students, working in small team, are asked to produce two project deliverable.

2. An oral individual exam.

Higher grades will be awarded to students who demonstrate an organic understanding of the subject, a high ability for critical application, and a clear and concise presentation of the contents.

To obtain a passing grade, students are required to at least demonstrate a knowledge of the key concepts of the subject, some ability for critical application, and a comprehensible use of technical language.

A failing grade will be awarded if the student shows knowledge gaps in key-concepts of the subject, inappropriate use of language, and/or logic failures in the analysis of the subject.

The dates of the final oral exam will be set according to the faculty calendar and they will be posted on Almaesami (https://almaesami.unibo.it/almaesami/welcome.htm [https://uniwex.unibo.it/] ).

Teaching tools


In addition to the text indicated in the above section, students will be provided with: exercises with solutions regarding process modelling and visualization techniques, practical business cases, slide used by the instructor. Additional course teaching material and general information are available at University of Bologna website.

Office hours

See the website of Alessandro Grandi