2016/17 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

LUBS5002M Information and Organisation Design

15 creditsClass Size: 75

Module manager: Professor Andrew Robinson
Email: amr@lubs.leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable

Year running 2016/17

This module is not approved as an Elective

Objectives

Every day the business press carry stories about issues of economic organisation: about how managers have experimented with organisational innovations to solve co-ordination and motivation problems and respond to the needs of ever-changing markets and technologies. Within the firm, new pay systems and new bases for compensation have emerged. Job definitions and career paths have changed. Financing and ownership patterns have been radically altered. Relationships between suppliers and customers have been restructured, the scope of activities carried out within the firm has shifted, and the pattern of information flows, authority, and reporting within and between organisations has been redrawn.
This Masters level module provides students with a durable ‘toolkit’ of economic techniques aimed at understanding and analysing these issues and the analysis of organisations, markets, and management more broadly.

Learning outcomes
Upon completion of this module students will be able to critically evaluate:
- economic techniques that can be applied specifically to the analysis of organisations, markets, and management as well as a wider range of economic issues
- how a firm deals with uncertainty, risk and imperfect information and apply this to scenarios in insurance, banking and finance
- the relative strengths and weaknesses of markets and organisations
- the different economic approaches to decision making, motivation and ownership that lie at the heart of the operation of organisations

Skills outcomes
Upon completion of this module students will be able to:
Transferable
- interpret problems and develop possible solutions
- communicate in writing to an advance academic level

Subject Specific
- communicate complex theoretical explanations
- conduct research of complex theoretical explanations and apply to real world examples in business and finance

Syllabus

Indicative content:
The syllabus using a range of traditional and ‘modern’ economic concepts and theories including game theory, principal-agent theory, transaction cost theory and evolutionary theories to gain a greater understanding of current issues facing organisations. In particular it addresses the following issues:
- Does organisation matter? Co-ordination, markets and management;
- Markets and organisation: How are decisions co-ordinated?
- The Economics of information: Information problems for markets and organisations
- Elements of decision-making: Insights from game theory
- Agency relations between owners, managers and employees: Incentives and governance
- Markets and Hierarchies: A Transaction Cost approach
- Strategy and performance frameworks
- Evolutionary approaches to organisations: The dynamics of organisational functioning.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lecture	10	2.00	20.00
Seminar	10	1.00	10.00
Private study hours			120.00
Total Contact hours			30.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			150.00

Private study

reading for lectures 50 hours
preparation for classes 30 hours
preparation of coursework 20 hours
preparation for exam 20 hours

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

- Feedback will be provided to students on their responses to a number of pre-set tutorial questions. Students will also be actively engaged in class discussions and debates.
- Students will receive a typed sheet of comments along with the grade for their coursework assignment.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	1,500 words	30.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		30.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Exams

Exam type	Exam duration	% of formal assessment
Standard exam (closed essays, MCQs etc)	2 hr 00 mins	70.00
Total percentage (Assessment Exams)		70.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 22/09/2017

Disclaimer

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