MAN-10030 - Module Specification
Keele Business School
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2024/25

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2024/25

This module approaches organisation from a sociological, rather than a psychological or economic perspective. As a subject, sociology is concerned primarily with the conduct of society, how things work and what relations are created both at the institutional level and at the level of everyday interaction. Sociologists love to question how society is organised and structured through its institutions. This area of social science asks how we, as organisational participants as well as employees at work, are organised by and disciplined through everyday practices and institutions.
In trying to understand how institutions work, this module pays close attention to how people express themselves in terms of their social relations. Rather than study the behaviour of individuals, what is examined is how we affect each other on a grand scale, either through action or accounts. Interest extends to the more familiar forms of organisation, such as family, class, community and group, as well as to more formal networks, such as partnerships, cohorts, professions, business associations and other forms of strategic alliance.
The module focuses on how institutions help create, reproduce and regulate order and how power is exercised, distributed and resisted. The module seeks to examine these issues through covering sociological debates about contemporary work situations and closely examining detailed empirical cases.

The aim of this module is to broaden students' understanding of managing organisations in the context of social change.

Intended Learning Outcomes

identify and describe the features of sociological theories associated with understanding the development of contemporary working practices: 1,2
describe the conceptual and theoretical links that exist between work and wider social theory on topics such as inequality, power and social change: 1,2
apply sociological theories to the study of a specific example or case study: 1,2

Study hours

12 hours lectures
12 hours tutorials
82 hours private study which includes additional reading, thinking time, discussing ideas with other students, etc.
24 hours assignment preparation
20 hours exam preparation

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment