COHR 410 - Knowledge Management

This course is designed to explore how organizational and social contexts affect the way people organize information and acquire knowledge about the world. The course will encourage the critical examination of organizations and a more complex understanding of organizations and their leaders. This will be accomplished by taking an interdisciplinary perspective on bureaucracies, businesses, governments, and other forms of organization to learn how they shape, define, and influence individual human beings, groups, and society. In addition to standard management textbooks and readings, the class uses the work of poets, fiction writers, essayists, and social critics to provide alternative source material for these inquiries. The student is encouraged to reflect on how knowledge and information is obtained and how its presentation can be used to influence how others think and act.

Learning objectives

The objectives of this course are:

1. to cause students to examine how information, its presentation, and the context in which it is acquired can influence how we think, feel, and act.
2. to encourage a critical examination of the pros and cons of modern organized life and to consider the role the knowledge and information play in shaping public and personal views of organizations and their role in society.
3. to encourage students to develop personal management philosophies based on an examination of organizations, leaders, and historical events from different points of view.
4. to cause to students to reflect on the moral aspects of organizational life.

Note: COHR 410 will not be offered in 2023W.

Prerequisite: COMM 203.