10728 Sociology of Organizations

Credits: 6 intermediate credits in Sociology & Anthropology

Prerequisites: none

Recommended: Classical Sociological Theories

The course is based on a translation of Images of Organizations, by Gareth Morgan (Sage, 1997), and on a collection of articles edited by Nitza Berkovitz.

The course acquaints students with central sociological approaches to the study of organizations and major discussions in the field today. Students study the field through various images of organization: organizations as machines, organizations as cultures, organizations as political systems, organizations as instruments of domination, etc. Through the theoretical perspectives provided by these images, the course discusses issues such as: how the institutional, political and economic environments influence modes of activity and organization, how culture develops within organizations, how the organization itself can be viewed as a cultural and symbolic product, how learning processes take place in organizations, the relationship between organizational efficiency and managerial ideology, how global organizational models are translated into the local context, what does the gender category contribute to understanding organizational processes, etc.