All of us deal with organisations large and small every day of the year. One organisation collects the rubbish regularly, another supplies water, another runs the shops and others provide the daily necessities of life. Organisations educate children, care for the sick, serve charitable causes, and provide entertainment, car servicing, public transport, and the goods and services that people expect to be available in a modern society.

Unless you live on a desert island, you simply cannot get away from organisations.

Most of the people taking this course work for an organisation in the public or private sector of the United Kingdom’s massive economy. This is presided over, to some degree, by a government which itself is a massive organisation.

Programme Introduction

How do, or should, organizational structures differ ?

But are all organisations much the same? Should they all have the same basic structures? Or are there different kinds of organisation that are best suited to achieving particular objectives? For example, is a structure designed to generate and distribute electricity also suited to achieving the aims of a charity or to developing new ‘high tec’ products in the IT field?

Have ethics and morale values any role to play in commercial business ?

It is evident that religious bodies, public organisations established to provide healthcare programmes, or private charities established to help particular groups should have some ethical basis.

But what about the private, commercial sector? Is making money the only valid objective, or should account be taken of wider community issues, even in areas where the law does not specifically require it? Can ‘good’ ethics also be ‘good business’? Is there something other than short-term profit, or increases in share price, that matters, even though it doesn’t show immediately in the profit and loss account or the balance sheet?

Organisational culture and internal politics

Is there such a thing as culture in an organisational sense? If so, do some cultural stances encourage most people to do their best, most of the time – and others have the opposite effect?

And what is it within an organisation that can prevent it from achieving its objectives, even if these are clearly defined and appropriate, and the ‘right’ organisational structure appears to be in place? Can there be factors operating against the organisation’s aims from within, sapping its strengths, just as a tapeworm does when it grows inside the human intestines?

These are all questions this course will ask you to face. It will encourage you to continue to examine them in every aspect of your life, at work and in organisations that you deal with in any capacity outside work

In Session A, we will focus on the reasons for having organisations, the varied legal structures which they use, what makes them effective – or not – and why the modern economy could not continue without them.

In Session B, the spotlight falls on the ethical and moral aspects of organisations in every sphere of activity. We will examine just what is meant by ethics in the organisational sense and the conflict that can exist between individuals’ ethical standards and those of the organisation for whom they work.

In Session C, the question of organisational culture and internal politics will come under the microscope. Organisations vary widely in their management styles, and in the extent to which they are successful in taking the majority of their staff with them along the path which they have chosen. The way in which the aims of individuals, or groups of individuals, may conflict, or even undermine, those of the organisation will be analysed.