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Organisational Behaviour, Leadership and Change (715N1)

15 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Autumn teaching

Change and Leadership will provide you with the theoretical grounding to understand and appraise different modes of organisational change, their drivers, the responses of staff and other stakeholders, and the role of leaders in leading and responding to change. The relevance of theory will be explored in contexts including cultural change, restructuring and mergers/acquisitions. The module examines the principles of managing change at a number of levels building progressively from individual change, to team change and organisational change up to change at the meso-macro level in complex economic systems (eg change of sectoral or even national importance). The distinctive roles for leaders and approaches to leadership will be explored in relation to these levels.

Within the continuum, reflecting positioning of the module between organisational behaviour and strategy, topics to be addressed will cover six main areas including: 

• Behavioural, cognitive, humanistic and psychodynamic theories of individual change 
• Teams: their constitution, internal dynamics and role in organisational change
• Historical approaches to organisational change (under ad-hoc management, scientific management, human relations and contigent approaches) 
• More recent (and emerging) paradigms in organisational change
• Planned vs. emergent change: complexity and inter-organisational influences
• Leadership: role choices and constraint, and frameworks for managing change

The assessment is a coursework-based task requiring you to select a change scenario for a chosen organisation and to describe how that change process should be undertaken, with specific reference to options for change and appraisal of their suitability, through reference to relevant theories of change. Strengths and weakness of relevant approaches will be identified. Specific attention to the role and style of leadership required for the change process or programme will be a key component of the report.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 117 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.