ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

In today’s volatile world, organizational design is an everyday, ongoing activity and challenge for every executive, whether managing a global enterprise or a small work team both in the private and public sector. Globalization, worldwide competition, deregulation, digital transformation and ever-new technologies drive the ongoing reassessment of the organization. The executive response has been many new forms of organizational design: matrix, virtual, modular, cellular, network, alliance, “spaghetti” or “holacracy” – to name a few. New organizational forms challenge old ways of organizing for efficiency and effectiveness.

Basic knowledge of business economics and management. Daft, R. Organizzazione Aziendale, Apogeo (or similar contents from other handbooks). https://luiss.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/openurl?institution=39LLUISSGC_INST&rfr_id=info:sid%2Fsummon&rft_dat=ie%3D2133427340004196,language%3DEN&svc_dat=CTO&u.ignore_date_coverage=true&vid=39LLUISSGC_INST:Services&Force_direct=false

Knowledge and understanding: The course will offer key conceptual tools to design organizations in a global, complex and uncertain environment. This course provides advanced knowledge and analytical resources that will enable students to understand the processes, content and consequences of organizational decisions to be implemented on a global scale, both in public and private. Applying knowledge and understanding: The students will be able to: - apply organization models on a global scale, such as Multinational Companies, crowd-based organizations etc. - compare pros and cons of each organizational choice - analyze how and why organizations make decisions to face an evolving environment - apply foundations of business research - apply research approaches and quantitative methods to organizational design Making judgements: We expect students to be able to dissect complex organizational issues, analyze them and propose solutions. They are expected to be able to discuss and evaluate key organizational choices. Throughout the whole course, students will be invited to critically analyze when, how and why certain organizational choices are adopted. Communications Skills: This course will give the students the possibility to acquire and understand major terms and concepts in order to communicate their ideas, proposals, analysis and critical reasoning in the field of organization design. Learning skills: This course will empower learners giving them the tools to determine why certain organizational choices are made and how different alternatives are assessed. The case study discussion will increase experiential learning and critical thinking for all students involved in the course.

In this course, we will deal with organizational design as a managerial approach to demands for change in the organization. The theoretical basis is the contingency approach and its application in a dynamic perspective. An important element in this context is strategic and organizational fits. A fit is a match between the organization and its environment, strategy, technology, management style or size. There may also be fits among these factors. The theory of fits provides management with an opportunity to assess the organization design and change it regularly. The issues include multi-dimensional causal relationships non-linearity and longitudinal perspectives - elements in studies of new forms of organization.

Course materials, as reported week by week. Further supplementary readings: Burton, M. R., Obel, B., & DeSanctis, G. (2011). Organizational Design: A Step by Step Approach, Cambridge. Kesler, G., & Kates, A. (2015). Bridging Organization Design and Performance: Five Ways to Activate a Global Operation Model. John Wiley & Sons.

During the course, the following teaching methods will be applied: • lectures • individual assignments • working groups and case studies • keynote speakers’ presentations on real life experiences • presentations and assignment Teaching activities integrate face-to-face lectures with the analysis of business cases performed by both the instructor and the students. Students will be required to join practical training sessions and analyze or discuss, individually or within small groups, case studies focused on the resolution of organizational problems and the definition of the different organizational configurations that can be adopted in different strategic and environmental contexts. These sessions are useful to evaluate student's ability to put into practice the methods of organizational design and analysis acquired during the lectures.

The final grade will be based on the following: • a continuous assessment based on a project developed by groups of students during the semester. Groups will be expected to collect, analyze, and interpret original data related to organizational models within industries/contexts of interest. The enquiry-based approach will be adopted in the course building on research approaches and methodological tools acquired in the Quantitative Methods course. The activities inherent to the project contribute in total to 70% of the final grade. The activities will be divided into 3 "milestones", each of which will be evaluated independently by the teaching team of the course. Milestones will be organized as follows: i) preparation of a survey (Assignment 1-Week 4; 30% of the final grade); ii) literature review (Assignment 2-Week 7; 20% of the final grade); iii) discussion of analyses and results with appendix focused on methodologies (Assignment 3-Week 11; 20% of the final grade). Evaluations will be weighted using “peer evaluation”, which will be adopted to prevent opportunistic behaviors while promoting effective group dynamics. Students will be free to decide their group affiliation, which in any case will be communicated to the "teaching team" at the beginning of the course. • a final written exam, representing 30% of the final grade. The final exam consists of two open-ended questions related to one short case study (total duration 30 minutes). Students who will reject one of the assignment grades or a final grade (after the written exam) that is equal to 24 or higher will have to sit again the exam and prepare the program for non-attendants. The program will require to study all readings mentioned in the syllabus, both the compulsory and the supplementary readings. In this case, the exam will include 4 open-ended questions on the contents on those readings (total duration 60 minutes).

Criteria: 1) students must not have refused a grade above 23; 2) Master thesis assignment is based on a project presented by the student. The project (2/3 pages) must include: • Table of contents • Abstract • Main references

Yes