Research paper identifying an organisational situation of sufficient institutional, cultural and political complexity to allow the application of social science concepts for diagnostic, discursive analysis.

 

The purpose of the assignments is to encourage you to think about and apply what you know to real-world organisational situations and settings using the language of academic writers in the OADD (Organisational Analysis Design and Development) field. This is in line with ‘assessment for learning’ principles and external validation for MAHRM (Management Human Resource Management). So students are required to:

 

–       Demonstrate an ability to go beyond mere description, exposition and reproduction of textbook facts, models, theories etc.

–       Show critical awareness and the ability to argue analytically

–       Provide evidence for their interpretive understandings

–       Show an ability to use concepts as a guide to informed action

–       Demonstrate sensitivity to how theory can inform HR judgement

–       Show that they have gained confidence in and facility with OADD material to discuss and deploy this knowledge across all the modules of the MAHRM (Management Human Resource Management) course.

You need to find or construct an organisational situation to analyse. This may be a real organisational issue/ problem/ context from your own experience or from secondary sources like books, learned journals, corporate documentation, newspapers, internet, film, TV, drama etc. You may elect to construct your own case from memory, carry out a little bit of research on an organisation you have access or to find a ‘written up’ case in a textbook or journal article (provided that this has not been discussed in OADD class or in another class on your course).

 

You are required to undertake a case study analysis in the OADD (Organisational Analysis Design and Development) area. As mentioned above, the work will comprise the analysis of a single, real organizational situation either from your own experience or from secondary sources like books, learned journals, corporate documentation, newspapers, internet, film or TV programme etc. You may also select for analysis an appropriate case from a textbook, 

The purpose of the analysis is to provide you with an opportunity to apply some of the ideas and concepts discussed in the literature and/or in class in making a diagnostic analysis of the chosen organisational situation. This means: 

(i)           Finding your situation. It needs to be of sufficient complexity to allow for an in-depth (but not overlong) analysis. This might be an issue, a narrative, a problem, a relationship.

Practical analysis

(ii) Describing your situation. Enough to orientate the reader without with giving excessive detail.

 

(iii) Examining the situation with the aid of suitable concepts, models, paradigms, perspectives or theories from the literature, and showing what insights are gained thereby. 

 

(iv) Explaining the past and/or present and/or future course of events on the basis of your analysis. In other words, showing what has been gained by it. Has it enabled you to go beyond common-sense and the obvious? Are there indications of further directions for investigation, perhaps beyond the scope of your analysis?

 

(v) Making modest suggestions/recommendations for action. This is more optional than the other elements. Some case studies lend themselves to recommendations others more the dissection of a problem and its conceptualisation.

 

(vi ) Giving your work a title. What has it all been about? Your title should tell us.

 

Some examples of situations and themes, which former students have used as the basis of a case study

·      A mechanistic/organic organization facing change

·      The myth of the ‘strong culture’ in an organisation

·      The ‘complex’ organization: a usable concept?

·      The dysfunctions of bureaucracy or adhocracy

·      Critique of the ‘spaghetti organisation’ in the software design industry

·      Problems/opportunities associated with cultural change/stasis

·      The team as an agency of socialisation and control in nursing

·      Patronage, networks and advantage in an organisation

·      Departmental politics and their effect on organizational behaviour

·      The gender-blind organization or the gender-aware organization

·      Different constructs of managing within an organisation

·      An organisation examined as a system of signs and symbols

·      Looking at an organisation as a theatre of appearances

·      The role of stories/language in studying an organisation’s communications

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·      A theory of aesthetics as applied to an organisational context