Topic outline

  • Course Overview

    Welcome to the Organization Design Course (2024)!


    PLEASE NOTE
    • First lecture Tuesday 27th February!
    • You must attend the first session to ensure your place in the course!
    • Ensure that you have gone through the MODULE 1 material & readings before Tuesdays lecture!
    • Lectures and workshops are on-site only
    • There is a course break between 27.3-3.4.2024 (Spring break, no teaching)

    Zoom link and information for Tuesday sessions:
    • Meeting ID: 661 6946 5860
    • Passcode: 160159

    Basic information
    • Organization Design, MNGT-C1010, AALTO BIZ
    • Teaching language: English
    • Credits: 6 ECTS
    • Teaching period IV
    • Bachelor's level course
    • No prerequisites
    • It is recommended to take this course as close to Bachelor's Thesis as possible, as we will cover a lot of article based materials and help you to read academic material purposefully
    • Minimum of 70% participation needed due to interactive tasks

    General Overview
    The course introduces the concepts, tools, and principles of organization design, aligned with the theories of strategic management. The main emphasis will be on understanding how a firm's organization design can be assessed from a multitude of angles and what kind of design choices are available when designing organizations.  

    Throughout the course we will touch upon the above-mentioned topics through the analysis of the requirements set by the business environments and other boundary conditions. We will investigate underlying principles that drive companies’ success.

    The course acknowledges that most of the students already know something about organizations and organization development, and some students may have a lot of business expertise. However, a common theoretical backbone is needed, as well as a common language, and a common set of tools.

    Teaching methods

    Teaching will be carried out with learning centered theory-practice combination. Every Tuesday we will cover theoretical basis and on Thursdays we will practice how this theory is taken into practice with case studies, exercises, and frameworks. We combine lectures, small group discussion, reflection, and individual learning assignments to reach the ambitious learning objectives of each week.

    We have invited a number of guest lecturers to get additional perspectives to our topics (see modules below).

    Evaluation and deliverables
    Course deliverables include: 1) weekly assignments, 2) active participation, and 3) in-class exam. 

    Every week, students deliver exam question proposals based on the module readings. This will be carried out as individual exercise and there will be 2-4 readings/week. Each weekly exam question/answer is worth 10 points.  

    The final grade for the course is based on the grade for the assignments (40%), participation (10%), and the grade for the written exam (50%)