90530 - Organizational and Institutional Processes

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course the students:

- know the main properties of the organizational and institutional processes - knows and knows how to use the most relevant sociological tools to analyze the processes of social organization, in the disparate spheres of social life

- know the main problems characterizing the environments and complex organizational processes, both in the public and private sphere

- are able to prepare and participate in investigative actions and understand the problems of organizational phenomena - have the skills to promote interventions and to (re) design in complex organizations

- master the problems of the relationships between actors and organizational processes in the life cycle of development projects and interventions in the socio-economic context.

Course contents

The course aims at:
a) providing an analytical instrumentation for the exploration and investigation of the logics of the social organization and of the processes of institutionalization;
b) providing an opportunity to learn and practice methods of investigation, intervention and design on the ground of those logical and those processes.

Readings/Bibliography

Attending students:

O. de Leonardis, Le istituzioni, Carocci, 2011

Karl E. Weick, Senso e significato nell'organizzazione, Raffaello Cortina, 1997.

Per i non frequentanti, due percorsi alternativi a scelta (gli articoli sono tutti accessibili attraverso il Catalogo dei periodici online [https://acnpsearch.unibo.it/] o, laddove possibile, direttamente scaricabili):

A. Infrastrutture del capitalismo

Borghi, V., Leonardi, E. (a cura di), Il sociale messo in forma. Le infrastrutture come cose, processi e logiche della vita collettiva, Napoli-Salerno, Orthotes Editore, 2024 open access [https://www.orthotes.com/infrastrutture/?srsltid=AfmBOor26CFApmXjIeIShyfYpxwJsd-grF7LoZB-mzKt4UZflr_yk25h]

Larkin, B. (2013). The politics and poetics of infrastructure [https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522] . Annual review of anthropology, 42(2013), 327-343.

Hansen, J., & Schulze, F. (2021). Toward a material history of infrastructure [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27082029] . Icon, 26(1), 67-89.

Howe, C., Lockrem, J., Appel, H., Hackett, E., Boyer, D., Hall, R., ... & Mody, C. (2016). Paradoxical infrastructures: Ruins, retrofit, and risk [https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243915620017] . Science, Technology, & Human Values, 41(3), 547-565.

Plantin, J. C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook [https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553] . New media & society, 20(1), 293-310.

Pun, N., & Chen, P. (2023). Confronting global infrastructural capitalism: the triple logic of the'vanguard'and its inevitable spatial and class contradictions in China's high-speed rail program [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09502386.2022.2056219?casa_token=vZFohsr2X4oAAAAA:WLhyXbAvJAImyfuHh_htDauYilHqyvTuXVGQe0PsEhKYoRmcGVJbNPx8kCIhjg6V8GXzzfHPd6jZUyI] . Cultural Studies, 37(6), 872-893.

Borghi V. (2025). Capitalismo delle infrastrutture e politica delle rovine [https://www.leparoleelecose.it/capitalismo-delle-infrastrutture-e-politica-delle-rovine/] . Le parole e le cose

B. Istituzioni dell'incertezza

Scoones I., Stirling A., eds., 2015, The Politics of Uncertainty. Challenges of Transformation [https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003023845/politics-uncertainty-ian-scoones-andy-stirling], Routledge (open access)

Alama A. Houston D., Rethinking care as alternate infrastructure [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275119313484], Cities, Vol. 100.

Bartolini, N., & DeSilvey, C. (2021). Landscape futures: Decision-making in uncertain times, a literature review [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01426397.2020.1861228?casa_token=7cC72W3TMskAAAAA:v00_UCJqAsSJKx1iF1eKGuCrPy1itZZ_W40uaXnwptvIkm9DrG4Wf7QB5rjYdeoahwHoTqgP1tjt828] . Landscape Research, 46(1), 8-24

Grint, K. (2022). Critical essay: Wicked problems in the age of uncertainty [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00187267211070770] . human relations, 75(8), 1518-1532.

Paprocki, K. (2022). On viability: Climate change and the science of possible futures [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378022000255] . Global Environmental Change, 73, 102487.

Senanayake N., King B., 2021, Geographies of uncertainty [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718520302104], Geoforum, Volume 123, pp. 129-135

White, J. (2024). Technocratic myopia: On the pitfalls of depoliticising the future [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/13684310241226613] . European Journal of Social Theory, 27(2), 260-278

Teaching methods

- conventional frontal lessons;
- workshop activities: group research exercise; presentation and discussion in the classroom of the outcomes.

Assessment methods

Students have to submit a paper based on:

[for attending students:] the exercise on the ground, reread and deepened through the study of the exam texts;

[for non-attending students:] the analysis and discussion of the in-depth topics in the texts of one of the chosen paths. The paper will try to give an account of the main topics covered in the exam texts, build its own line of argument that crosses them, draw its own considerations.

The paper must be about 45 thousand signs (all included), with a 12 character and interline 1.5. All students are required to follow the editorial instructions accessible on Virtual, folder "Il paper finale (frequentanti e non frequentanti".


Evaluation method:

• attendong students: ability to argue and define a solid and plausible research design; not attending students: ability to master the topics addressed in the examination bibliography and their argumentation through one's own line of reasoning (70%)
• correct spelling, syntax and, in general, formal organisation of the paper (15%)
• construction of one's own focused bibliographical repertoire in addition to the examination texts (15%).
  
  WARNINGS:

• the paper ha to be be delivered both in hard copy (gatehouse first flor of Dept. of Sociology and business Law) and in pdf by email to the Professor;
• papers will not be accepted for delivery in July, February and (except for students in the current year) December; in all other periods, the paper must be delivered by the first week of the month
• there is no need to register for the examination: for the delivery of final papers, please follow the information given here
• the evaluation will take from approximately 10 to 20 days (depending on the time of year, number of papers to be evaluated, etc.) after submission of the paper; at that moment, students can ask the professor, always via email, to know the assessment
• this timing can not be changed, even in the period preceding the end of the academic year
• all those who have deadlines (scholarships, contests, etc.) must deliver the paper by the 15th of the month before the deadline.

Teaching tools

slides and other stuff available on IOL

Office hours

See the website of Vando Borghi