Surviving the Iron Cage: Organizations in a Complex World

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

We live in a society populated and dominated by organizations. Throughout our lives we engage with many different types of organizations: hospitals, schools, businesses, government agencies, religious institutions. It has been argued that the very essence of modern society is the rise of large scale formal organizations, which can help us by creating efficiency, predictability, and fairness, but can also trap us in an iron cage of numbing bureaucratic rationalization. The objective of this course is to help you analyze and assess the good, bad and ugly about modern organizations. It specifically aims to provide analytical tools and case studies to help you: 1) understand how different kinds of organizations function 2) assess organizational effectiveness and failure, and 3) evaluate the role of organizations in a globalizing world. Broadening our understanding of organizations can facilitate our ability to both negotiate our way through organizations and, perhaps most importantly, try to change them