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 |
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.
By the end of the unit, students will be able to:
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 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.
Core text
Watson, T., 2017. Sociology, Work and Organisation. 7th 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.