BUU44520 Exploring Organisational Experiences

(20 ECTS) 

Lecturer:

Prof David Coghlan

E-mail: dcoghlan@tcd.ie 
Office Hours: By appointment

Module Description

This course focuses on developing insider inquiry skills whereby course participants develop an advanced management capability through undertaking inquiry into an organisation with which they have a directly-experienced familiarity. The core ingredient of this course is curiosity and a spirit of inquiry into organisational processes and a learned ability to reflect critically on experience and make sense of it. A general empirical method for “inquiring from the inside” grounds the abductive/clinical approach to the course and participants are required to demonstrate how they are learning to inquire critically into organisational processes in their selected organisation. In this manner the course also provides a formation in a research methodology.

Each participant will select an organisation with which he/she has a directly-experienced familiarity and will engage in critical inquiry and reflection on his/her experience in that organisation, in three papers, a single-page pensee, reflective pauses, a reflective journal and seminars. Lectures and seminars will provide the opportunity for participants to attend to their own learning and to practice the general empirical method so as to learn to move from description to explanation.

All students are expected to keep a reflective journal/notebook (electronically) in which they record accounts of and reflections on their practice of the general empirical method. Initially many of these will be based on the reflective pauses scattered throughout the book but progressively they will be based on the students’ own pursuit of their own questions and insights from experience. As the participation mark is based largely on the journal, students are expected to be proactive in submitting their journals for inspection and feedback consistently during the course.

This is a self-directed course where participants are expected to take initiatives to pursue their own questions through their reflection and their self-selected relevant reading. Success in the course involves participants being able to demonstrate how they have engaged in insider inquiry by applying the general empirical method in pursuing the questions about their respective organisations that arise from their experience and demonstrating how they have learned in the process. It is also a highly participative course where participants are expected to engage in conversations about their inquiry and learning, particularly in the seminars, thereby learn critical team-working skills and how to support others’ learning.

This module takes an “inquiry from the inside” approach and teaches students to research their experience of working in an organisation and how they seek to understand and to form critical judgements about what goes on in that organisation. This course flags an advanced management competence.

Learning and Teaching Approach

Individual critical inquiry into experience and group discussions

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this module each student will have learned:

• To attend to their direct experiences in an organisation.
• By means of a general empirical method to inquire critically into their experiences so as to come to an understanding of that organisation’s action theory.
• To reflect on learning from experience.

Relation to Degree

Workload

Recommended Texts/Key Reading

Required core course textbook:

Coghlan, David. Inside Organizations. SAGE: London, 2016.

General Supplemental Readings:

Provided during the course

Assessment

Assessment will be based on a series of assignments:

• Paper 1 to be submitted at the end of Semester 1 [20%].
• Paper 2 to be submitted late in Semester 2 [35%].
• Paper 3 to be submitted at the end of the course [15%]
• Participation [30%] for the journal/reflective notebook which will be submitted and inspected regularly and participation at seminars.

Biographical Note 

David Coghlan is Professor Emeritus at the Trinity Business School, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and is a Fellow Emeritus of the College. He specializes organization development and action research and participates actively in the both communities internationally. He has published over 300 articles and book chapters. He is author/editor of 18 books, of which include Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization (5^th ed, Sage, 2019) is an international best-seller. Other books include: Collaborative Inquiry for Organization Development and Change (Edward Elgar, 2021), Conducting Action Research for Business and Management Students (Sage, 2018), Inside Organizations (Sage, 2016) Organization Change and Strategy (Routledge, 2016) and Collaborative Strategic Improvement through Network Action Learning (Edward Elgar, 2011). His most recent book is: Edgar H. Schein: The Artistry of a Reflexive Organizational Scholar Practitioner (Routledge, 2024). He is co-editor of Handbook of Research Methods in Organizational Change (Edward Elgar, 2023), The Sage Encyclopedia of Action Research and of the 4 volume sets, Fundamentals of Organization Development (SAGE, 2010) and Action Research in Business and Management (Sage, 2016). He is a member of the editorial advisory board of several journals, including Action Research, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Action Learning: Research and Practice, Systemic Practice and Action Research and Organization Development Review. In 2021 the Organization Development and Change Division of the Academy of Management awarded him and his co-author A.B. (Rami) Shani the Pasmore-Woodman prize which is given annually to two or more colleagues who, over a sustained period of time, have managed to maintain a significant working relationship and have produced original and innovative research in the field of orgaisational change and development.