Organization and Society
Lecture 1: Introduction
1. The course: the ODD-curriculum and the objective of O&S
2. Lay-out of the course
3. Assignments, literature, and examination
4. Kick off: modern society, its characteristics, developments, and challenges (part
1)
1. The course: the ODD-curriculum and the objective of O&S
ODD- curriculum:
Society
Infrastructures Social practices
O&S focuses on the relation between society and organizational infrastructure
Main question: how can designers help build organizational infrastructures that can
support organizations to provide a responsible contribution to society?
To answer this question we need:
- A descriptive macro-sociological perspective: insight in societal developments relevant to
the infrastructural design of modern organizations
- A prescriptive designer’s perspective: a model that can help to guide strategy formulation
and design in order to cope with these developments
Infrastructure: Structure, technology, HR: combined this is design. Bad design undermines the
design. Good design develops the organization’. Social practices reproduce and change the
infrastructures within the organization.
Organizations contributes to the society, infrastructure and social practice= organizations.
Society also affects the organizations and how these are organized.
2. Layout of the course
Macro-sociological perspective: institutional orientation on organization and society
1. Modern society: characteristics, developments and challenges (lectures I and II, seminar I)
2. Organizations in modern society: characteristics, developments, and challenges (lecture
III, seminars II and III)
1
,Conceptual frameworks
3. An institutional perspective on organization and society (lectures IV and V, seminars III
and IV)
Designer’s perspective: guiding strategy formulation and design
4. Using the institutional perspective for strategic institutional orientation and organizational
design (lecture VI, seminar V)
5. Applying the institutional perspective
3. Assignments, literature, and examination
- Text, reflective and case assignments
- Work groups consisting of three persons
- Literature: papers available on the internet (see course description)
- Examination: written (‘closed book’) examination and all assignments: sufficient
4. Kick-off: modern society, characteristics, developments and challenges (part 1)
Line of argument of this lecture and the next: a macro-sociological perspective on modern society
with a cybernetic twist
Cybernetics: the structure of a system conditions the system’s capacity / incapacity to deal with
the problems it faces.
1 characterizing modern society in terms of its ‘structure’
2 identifying structure induced capacity for regulation
3 identifying structure induced incapacities
4 identifying disturbing developments
5 identifying main challenge to modern organizations
Characteristic features of
modern society (1)
Structure induced capacity Structure induced incapacities (3)
for regulation (2)
Main challenge to modern organizations (5)
Disturbing developments (4)
2
,Characteristics of modern society:
Organization society: why do we live in a modern society?
Functional differentiation society
Risk society
Global society
Market society
Etc.
Characteristics provide us with different capacities. Characteristics also provide problems and
incapacities. Capacities and incapacities causing problems. Organization are challenged ….
(obligation).
Lecture 2: Modern society: characteristics, developments, and challenges
0. Previous lecture
1. Structural characteristics of modern society
2. Structure induced capacities for regulation
3. Structure induced incapacities
4. Disturbing developments
5. Main challenge
0. Previous lecture
Characteristic features of
modern society (1)
Structuture induced capacity Structure induced incapacities (3)
for regulation (2)
Main challenge to modern organizations (5)
Disturbing developments (4)
Goal: organization – society Infrastructure
Designer Strategic/outside/future
Responsible contributions to society
Ultimate aim: to develop a step-by-step model that can support the design of responsible
strategy.
3
, How?
1. We need to know something about the environment
a. The type of society we live in
b. Relation between organization and society
2. Conceptual models that organisations can use to make sense of their environment.
3. Step-by-step model.
Modern society
There are five characteristic features, which will result in capacities and incapacities. Which one
is going to win? It leads to problems and therefore to challenges within the organization. Denk
hierbij aan de wipwap.
1. Structural characteristics of modern society: modern society is a:
1.1 Functionally differentiated society
1.2 Organization society
1.3 Risk society
1.4 Market society
1.5 Global / nation-state society
Modern society is a:
1. FD: Functionally Differentiated
2. OS: Organization Society
3. RS: Risk Society
4. MS: Market Society
5. GL/NS: Global/nation-state society.
There will be more than five, but we will choose five.
1.1 Functionally differentiated society
Types of societies can be characterized with regard to the way they organize the production of
societal values such as health, producing food, education, e.g.:
- Tribal society (e.g. a tribe living in the Amazon forest)
- Society consisting of a group of ‘self-sufficient’ families united in a local community
(e.g. the Greek polis)
- Society consisting of estates such as clerics, nobility, peasants and commoners (e.g.
medieval estate society)
Modern society can be characterized as a functionally differentiated society
1. production of societal values has become an explicit object of organization
2. different societal values are produced by different (complex) systems devoted to the realization
of a particular societal value (e.g. health system, educational system, economic system, science
system, political system, judicial system)
3. each complex system realizes its own societal value and therefore has its own societal function,
each system is a societal subsystem
4. society consists of a set of subsystems each with its own function: functional differentiation
5. functionally differentiated subsystems of society can be described in terms of
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