COHR 301 - Business and Management Values

This course is designed to encourage the critical examination of the relationships among individuals, groups, organizations, and society by focusing on values. The purpose of the course is to encourage you to reflect on the complexities of modern organizational and social life so you may better understand how values in each of these spheres influence our interpretation of reality, how we think, what we value, and our ability to act with upon the world. This will be accomplished by taking an interdisciplinary perspective on bureaucracies, businesses, governments, and other forms of organization. We will also explore how values affect our capacity to engage in rational, deliberative thought. Rather than relying on standard management textbooks, the class uses the work of management thinkers, fiction writers, essayists, and social critics to provide alternative source material for these inquiries. The student is encouraged to reflect on the role that organizations and society play in shaping your personal values and how they are lived-out in organized life.

Learning objectives

Specifically, the course has the following objectives:

• to encourage a critical examination of the pros and cons of modern organized life so that students will be better equipped to change or improve organizations when flaws are identified or to defend against unjustified attacks on organizations.
• to encourage students to develop personal management philosophies based on an examination of organizations, leaders, and historical events from different points of view.
• to illustrate complex interrelationships and connections among organizations and society and to reflect upon how these relationships impact concerned and affected parties.
• to cause students to consider how organizations influence the way they think, feel, and act and how they influence organizations.
• to explore the concept of human nature and the effects of work and social organization on the individual and society.
• to cause to students to reflect on the moral aspects of organizational life.

Note: COHR 301 will not be offered in 2023W.

Prerequisite: COMM 203