COHR 307 - Introduction to Organizational Consulting

This course is intended to provide you with frameworks from the social sciences useful for understanding organizational processes and learning how to apply these frameworks to particular organizational consulting challenges. Through a sequence of readings, lectures, cases, and experiential exercises you will learn both the theory and practice of organizational consulting.

Learning objectives

This course is intended to develop your consulting skills at multiple levels:

• at the more "macro" level, an objective of this class is to align strategic vision, organizational structure, task, people, reward, and control subsystems. That is, at one level this course is about the interactive relationship of strategic intent and organizational design.
• at the more "micro" level, a goal of this course is the development of diagnostic skills (to "read" the organizational contexts effectively) and action skills (to "work" the organizational contexts effectively). These skills include the sophisticated use of power and influence, persuasion tactics, and communication skills.
• more broadly the pedagogy used will enhance your ability to analyze business cases in a consulting team setting covering a wide variety of issues across a broad number of industries.
• this course serves as the building blocks for the advanced management consulting class where you will have the opportunity to apply the skills to an actual organizational consulting engagement.

Note: COHR 307 will not be offered in 2023W.

Prerequisite: COMM 203.