98567 - Organization and Leadership

Learning outcomes

The goal of this course is to learn the basics of organisations' design and leadership and how to build, manage and motivate work teams, both in person and online. During the course students make use of conceptual and computational models to manage and understand distributed intelligence, as well as information, communication and identity, the ecologies of organisations and their leadership dynamics.

Course contents

The course examines the main classical and modern organizational theories and discusses the determinants and criteria for defining the organizational structure and strategies to enable managers to meet the sustainability and digitalization challenges.

Furthermore, the course will present different organizational models that can be implemented, emphasizing the advantages and disadvantages of the different options.

Then, aspects related to the management of innovation and organizational change, the impact of technology on the organization, systems and processes, culture and organizational relationships will be analyzed.

Finally, the course will carry out an examination of the organization of work and the design of the organizational micro-structure.

The course will be divided into two modules of 30 hours each. Of these 30 hours, 20 will be in presence (equal to 10 lessons of 2 hours each) and the remaining 10 hours will be delivered online (equal to 5 lessons of 2 hours each). The teaching method will be hybrid: 4 hours per week in person + 2 hours online, starting from the first week of lessons.

Module 1 will be managed by Prof. Francesco Montani, and Module 2 will be managed by Prof. Francesco Barbini.

CONTENTS MODULE 1

• Organizations and organizational planning
• Strategy, organization design, and effectiveness
• Fundamentals of organization structure
• Team
• Design thinking methods for sustainability
  

CONTENTS MODULE 2

• Technology and digitalization
• Job design
• Decision-making processes
• Culture, power, authority, and leadership
• Environment, organizational change, and internationalization

Readings/Bibliography

For attending students: lecture notes and other course material made available by the professors during the course.

For non-attending students: Daft, R. L. (2020). Organization theory & design (13th edition). Cengage learning.

 

 

Teaching methods

The teaching includes both in-class and online lectures.

During online sessions, students will attend pre-recorded/live lectures in which organizational theory and design contents will be delivered together with case study analyses and online tests to verify students' learning.

During in-class sessions, students will participate in practical teamwork sessions in which they will be asked to apply design thinking and other project management methods to develop in a coordinated, collaborative and creative way the team projects (i.e., Design-My-Business Project) that underlie the assignments for the final exams of each module. These sessions are useful for evaluating the student's ability to put into practice the organizational design and analysis methodologies acquired during the lessons.

Assessment methods

For attending students: The first exam session is divided into two group presentations of the Desing-My-Business Project assignment that team students are required to deliver in the last session of each Module. The final grade is made up of the arithmetic average of the marks obtained in the two presentations. Passing the first test (relating to Module 1) with a minimum grade of 18 is a necessary requirement to be able to access the second test (relating to Module 2).

For non-attending students: The exam is made up of a written test with multiple choice questions.

 

Graduation of the vote:

Preparation on a very limited number of topics covered in the course, very limited ability to analyze, expression in overall correct language → 18-19;

Preparation on a limited number of topics covered in the course, moderate analytical skills, expression in correct language → 20-24;

Preparation on a large number of topics covered in the course, good analytical skills, mastery of specific terminology → 25-29;

Basically exhaustive preparation on the topics covered in the course, excellent ability in critical analysis, full mastery of specific terminology and ability to argue and self-reflection → 30-30L.

Office hours

See the website of Francesco Montani

See the website of Francesco Maria Barbini