Organisation Dynamics

FaculteitFaculty of Law, Economics and Governance

NiveauBachelor

Studiejaar2026-2027

Beschrijving

Course goals

Learning objectives
At the end of the course, the student should be able to:

List and explain the leading concepts in organizational dynamics (organizational structure, culture, leadership, , organizational behavior and organizational design).
Understand the state-of-the art frameworks that can be used to analyze the organizational dynamics of a (profit and non-profit) firm
Analyze and evaluate the state of organizational dynamics in a firm at a given point in time
Coordinate teamwork to produce a meaningful description of an organizational analysis and an enactment of an organizational scenario

Content

Organizations play a leading role in the creation of work, innovation and wealth. It is therefore not surprising that the dynamics within organizations have been of longstanding interest to scholars and practitioners alike. Our course aims to provide the fundamental principles of organizational dynamics from psychological, behavioral, social, structural and cultural perspectives and how organizational dynamics are at play in real-life organizations and how they can be designed and managed.

The objective of this course is two-fold:

To equip students with a deeper understanding of organizational design, behavior, dynamics, and how they affect the performance of the organizational enterprise. Students will first get a comprehensive overview of the extant theories, concepts and frameworks on organizational behavior, dynamics and design. Here the course recaps and builds upon the ‘Introduction to Strategy and Organization’ (ECB1SO) and ‘Strategy and Management’ (ECB3SM) courses.
To equip students with the ability of applying the learned knowledge in order to analyze a real-life organization (identifying the organizational identity of a firm, identifying organizational behavior on its work floor and visualizing the organizational design of the firm), to evaluate its practices critically based on state-of-the-art theoretical frameworks and to communicate their findings through the production of a formatted presentation performance.

The course (including the course structure and learning evaluation methods) are designed deliberately in two phases, where the first phase emphasizes understanding and identification of organizational dynamics (OD) concepts and theory, which is evaluated with the individual midterm written exam. The second phase encompasses the application of acquired theory through an organizational analysis and critical evaluation of a real-life organization, and communicating the findings back to the organization using an interactive format presentation. The learning evaluation occurs here through the evaluation of an organizational portfolio which consists of a triangulation of a) an organizational analysis report, b) a final presentation performance and c) written documents that are used to prepare the final presentation (script, moodboard, props, etc.)

Academic skills

Understanding and reproducing various theoretical concepts and frameworks and seeing how they fit and work (or don’t fit and don’t work) together.• Asking critical questions, having a curiosity-driven and critical attitude.
Combining different forms of learnings such as experiential learning (learning-by-doing), explicit learning (learning by studying) and reflective learning (learning by thinking) to achieve a deeper level of learning.

Professional skills

Identifying one’s own skills and learning objectives.
Reflecting on one’s own growth and evaluation performance.
Building an effective and creative team
Giving feedback, both in situations where feedback is asked (after presentations, during evaluations) and in uncertain situations where feedback can feel unsolicited, but necessary.
Developing skills in effective communication and coordination of teamwork.
Show personal leadership in team and organizational

Assessment method

Mid-term written individual exam (Remindo) on the material covered during lectures and tutorial classes. The exam consists of open and multiple-choice questions (40%).
Organizational portfolio evaluation (60%). The evaluation is split up into a qualitative analysis of the quality of the organizational analysis (academic quality, level of detail, use of concepts and theory) and a mastery-level based evaluation of the final team performance which tests how many levels the team could master during the final team performance presentation.

Organizational analysis written report (20% of course grade)
Team final presentation performance (40% of course grade)

Effort requirements

The Organizational Dynamics course is an intensive, interactive course with continuous team assignments. If one of the below requirements is not met, students fail the effort requirement:

Lectures are optional with exception of the first lecture.
Tutorials are considered mandatory. One tutorial can be missed per person without a penalty of an additional assignment.
Workshop are considered mandatory to attend.

In case online access is required for this course and you are not in the position to buy the access code, you are advised to contact the course coordinator for an alternative solution. Please note that access codes are not reusable meaning that codes from second hand books do not work, as well as access codes from books with a different ISBN. Separate or spare codes are usually not available.

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