Organizational Learning

Several different approaches to organizational learning and change, as well as considerations concerning the management of employee issues during change processes will be discussed. However, these approaches differ considerably in addressing the subject of learning and knowledge, which necessitates a clear distinction between these concepts. In addition, internationalization of companies leads to opportunities for and constraints of organizational learning. The course will therefore also discuss an approach to the management of subsidiaries in different countries.

This course aims at exploring the different ways in which organizations learn from past experiences and subsequently conduct change. Since decisions on important organizational changes can be undertaken successfully only if the organizational members are willing and able to learn from prior experiences they need to overcome their (quite natural) resistance to change. Therefore this course also aims at understanding different methods of bringing organizations to learn and change reliably.

In presence

The course consists of different kinds of sessions: lectures and discussions on theoretical foundations and discussion of business cases. The business cases are connected to the preceding lectures, however, in most cases, not fully. After some of these class discussions. I will upload questions on the cases that the students have to answer and that are related to the class discussions. These answers will be graded. However, not all case discussions will be followed by questions that the students have to answer. We will also have videos to discuss and a simulation study.

Students have to submit assignments during the course. There will also be one final exam which will address everything that has been done in class, i.e. lectures and case discussions.

The grading system will be as follows:

Cases: 40%

Exam: 60%