Course coordinators: Julie Uldam & Rasmus Koss Hartmann, Department of Management, Society and Communication (MSC)

Faculty 

Pre-requisites

Participants must be enrolled in a PhD program with a project dealing with technology and its relationship to management, organizations and/or society (unless dispensation is provided by the course coordinators). 

As part of the course registration, participants are required to hand in:

(1) a short motivational statement of about 500 words on why you are applying for the course

After being accepted to the course and two weeks prior to the course start at the latest, participants are required to hand in:

(2) a short paper of 2,500 – 3,000 words max. (plus references) in which his/her PhD project (or one of the papers of a cumulative dissertation) is presented and explicitly related to the course curriculum. The paper must include specific links to one or several texts from the course literature (further instructions will follow after acceptance to the course). 

It is a precondition for receiving the course diploma that PhD students hand in the required paper in advance and attend the entire course.

Aims

Technology has long been part of the human experience. But our current moment represents a particularly intense instance of technological transformation, comparable in scope to the transformations brought about by steam engines, electrification, petrochemicals and similar innovations with profound implications for society, organizations and management. This is reflected in surging interest in questions about both specific technologies and technology in general in management and organization research as well as media and communication studies. 

This PhD course explores these issues, examining the novel questions and dynamics occasioned by our current moment and its defining foundational technologies, the particular transformations that we are observing in management, organizations and society because of them, and the deep continuities that persist in spite, or because of, technological change. It will provide students with a state-of-the-art theoretical understanding of technology as it relates to management, organizations and society, and with an occasion to experiment with different theoretical perspectives that can inform empirical analysis of this evolving set of phenomena. 

Content

The purpose of the course is to introduce students to, and let them experiment with, current perspectives in the social scientific analysis of technology, to understand technology as (shaping) an evolving context for research, focusing on management and organization studies and media and communication studies, and to reflect on the implications of technology and technological change. The course will address themes related to transparency, power, control, innovation, learning and ethics as they relate to technology and reflect on how these themes are impacted by the particular technologies that define our specific historical moment. 

Students will learn how to engage with technology from a suite of theoretical perspectives, and to think about their own research through this expanded theoretical repertoire in order to do more interesting and assumption-challenging research. 

Finally, students will be trained in the craft of writing about and communicating management and organizational research, with a focus on becoming better, happier and more productive academic writers. 

Tentative program

Lectures will introduce a particular perspective on technologies and society that reflects the presenters own research agenda broadly conceived and exemplify the use of this perspective in a recent empirical project. 

The course coordinators will facilitate student presentations and lead the discussion sessions. 

Breaks are included in the allotted timeslots.

Number of hours

30 hours of presence, 24 hours of direct teaching activity (6 hours set aside for lunch)

Teaching style

The course combines keynote lectures by MSC faculty with facilitated discussions and student presentations. 

Learning objectives

Upon completing the course, students will:

• Be able to apply and reflect on a repertoire of state-of-the-art social science perspectives on technology, organizations and society
• Do so judiciously in the context of their own and others’ research projects in verbal and written form

Course literature

For Monday:

Chosen by presenter

Flyverbom, M. (2022). Overlit: Digital Architectures of Visibility. Organization Theory, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877221090314

Power, M. (2022). Theorizing the Economy of Traces: From Audit Society to Surveillance Capitalism. Organization Theory, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877211052296

Zuboff, S. (2022). Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy? The Death Match of Institutional Orders and the Politics of Knowledge in Our Information Civilization. Organization Theory, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877221129290

Reaction paper

Bodrožić, Z., & S. Adler, P. (2022). Alternative futures for the digital transformation: A macro-level Schumpeterian perspective. Organization Science, 33(1), 105-125.

For Tuesday:

Hansen, H. K., & Weiskopf, R. (2021). From Universalizing Transparency to the Interplay of Transparency Matrices: Critical insights from the emerging social credit system in China. Organization Studies, 42(1), 109–128. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840619878474

Thompson, J. B. (2005). The New Visibility. Theory, Culture & Society, 22(6), 31–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276405059413

Galič, M., Timan, T., & Koops, B.-J. (2017). Bentham, Deleuze and Beyond: An Overview of Surveillance Theories from the Panopticon to Participation. Philosophy & Technology, 30(1), 9–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-016-0219-1

Reaction paper

Felin, Teppo and Kauffman, Stuart, Disruptive Evolution: Harnessing Functional Excess, Experimentation, and Science as Tool (2023). Industrial and Corporate Change, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4374767 

For Wednesday:

Chosen by presenter

Hartmann, M. R., & Hartmann, R. K. (2023). Hiding practices in employee-user innovation. Research Policy, 52(4), 104728.

Beane, M. (2019). Shadow Learning: Building Robotic Surgical Skill When Approved Means Fail. Administrative Science Quarterly, 64(1), 87–123. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48589023

Michel Anteby, Curtis K. Chan (2018) A Self-Fulfilling Cycle of Coercive Surveillance: Workers’ Invisibility Practices and Managerial Justification. Organization Science 29(2):247-263.

Reaction paper

Sánchez-Monedero, J., & Dencik, L. (2019). The datafication of the workplace. Working paper, Cardiff University https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/125552/1/Report-The-datafication-of-the-workplace.pdf

For Thursday:

Chosen by presenter

Bennett, L., & Uldam, J. (forthcoming) CSR in the disinformation age.

Uldam, J., & Lundgaard, D. (forthcoming) The Janus head of visibility: Challenges to aspirational talk on social media.

Uldam, J. (2019). Extra-parliamentarian political power and (social) media visibility. Journal of Political Power, 12(2), 293-311.

Reaction paper

Thompson, J. B. (2005). The new visibility. Theory, culture & society, 22(6), 31-51.

For Friday:

Chosen by presenter

Albu, O. B. (2022). Managing Visibilities: The Shades and Shadows of NGO Work in Repressive Contexts. Management Communication Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189221144991 

Etter, M., & Albu, O. B. (2021). Activists in the Dark: Social Media Algorithms and Collective Action in Two Social Movement Organizations. Organization, 28(1), 68-91. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508420961532 

Leybold, M., & Nadegger, M. (2023). Overcoming communicative separation for stigma reconstruction: How pole dancers fight content moderation on Instagram. Organization, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084221145635 

Reaction paper

Chaundhry, I. (2014). Arab revolutions: Breaking fear|# hashtags for change: Can Twitter generate social progress in Saudi Arabia. International Journal of Communication, 8, 943–961. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/2362