Unit information: People, Work and Organisations in 2018/19

Unit name	People, Work and Organisations
Unit code	EFIM20022
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Harry Pitts
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	School of Management - Business School
Faculty	Faculty of Social Sciences and Law

Description including Unit Aims

Unit Directors: Dr Harry Pitts and Dr Vanessa Beck

This unit aims to provide students with a grounding in classical and cutting-edge interdisciplinary social scientific theories of work and empirical developments in the study of how people and organisations relate. It will help students develop a strong set of critical analytical and conceptual frameworks and apply them to a series of contemporary issues in the organisation of work, labour markets and economic life. Critical social theories including labour process theory; the total social organisation of labour; and Marxism will be used as a means by which commonplace understandings of work can be unpicked and unpacked to better capture and represent the experience of changing workplaces and careers.

Applying different theoretical and conceptual frameworks in different contexts, the unit focuses specifically on the varied range of forms and locations in which work takes place, including work inside and outside the home, the gig economy, health and social care, the creative and digital industries, migrant labour, self-employment and unemployment as they are experienced in social-psychological terms across lines of class, ethnicity, age and gender.

By looking in-depth at what it is like to work and manage in a range of different professions, the unit will also provide students with more general intellectual, personal and technical skills that can be drawn upon in the development of their own future careers, including a glimpse into up-and-coming alternative sectors of business and employment like social enterprise and cooperatives, theoretically informed assessments of their own careers, and understanding of the practical implications of contemporary trends in employment for people, work and organisations that they will experience themselves in their post-university careers.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the unit, students will be able to:

1. Identify how employees and employers are affected by and respond to the key trends and themes of the contemporary experience of work in a range of formal and informal workplaces.
2. Evaluate and apply relevant critical and social theories of work, management and organisation to further the understanding of the underlying factors impacting upon the experience of contemporary work.
3. Analyse and synthesise findings from key empirical studies informing the development of the study of working life so as to generate new knowledge and insights about the changing world of work.
4. Enhance verbal and non-verbal communication skills independently and in groups.
5. Identify required employability skills as they are reflected in the work-based literature and gain an understanding of the implications for individual career development.

Teaching Information

The mode of delivery will be a mix of large-group sessions and small-group sessions. In the second half of the unit a series of guest lecturers will deliver a majority of the large-group sessions.

Assessment Information

Assessment will be a mix of formative and summative with the use of feed forward.

Formative assessment: Group poster and 10 mins presentation reporting on research project (ILOs 1, 2, 4 and 5)

Summative assessment: 3,000 word essay (100%) based on findings from formative assessment (ILOs 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)

Based on the findings of the case study work competed in the formative assessment, students will be set assignment questions that, drawing upon their ability to communicate the results of their group projects, require them to bring together theoretical approaches, empirical issues and case study areas to identify and understand practical issues about careers and employment.

Reading and References

Core text

Watson, T., 2017. Sociology, Work and Organisation. 7^th edn. Routledge.

Indicative additional and supplementary texts

Strangleman, T., and Warren, T., 2008. Work and Society: Sociological Approaches, Themes and Methods. Routledge

Pettinger, L., Parry, J., Taylor, R., and Glucksmann, M. (eds.), 2006. A New Sociology of Work? Wiley-Blackwell

Other resources

Work, Employment & Society ‘On the Front Line’ series: http://journals.sagepub.com/topic/collections/wes-2_on_the_front_line/wes

Leading journals in the field, including Work, Employment & Society, Organization Studies, Human Relations, Organization, Human Resource Management Journal, British Journal of Industrial Relations, and Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society.