Objective and attainment levels

Objective

The aim of the  pre-Master’s course in COM is to provide students with knowledge, insight, abilities and attitudes that will enable them to successfully complete the Master COM. Two sub-aims have been formulated in order to achieve this:

• With the help of a socio-academic analytical and conceptual framework, the student is able to give a critical oral and written account of the different theoretical approaches in the field of Culture, Organization and Management;
• The student is able to assist in mapping cultural ans political processes of organizations and in formulating solutions for organization and/or cooperation issues.

Attainment levels

The mentioned aims have been defined in the following end terms:

Knowledge and insight: the student has knowledge of, and insight into:
• the diversity of organizational forms and processes, and their connectedness;
• theories about cultural, identity and power processes in organizations, and their link to a number of central business aspects;
• theories about processes of modernization, globalization and information technology, and their effects on (networks of) organizations and organization members;
• approaches to cultural diversity and intercultural communication, and their applications;
• theories and models of diversity management and intercultural management;
• theories and models of cultural diagnose, advice and intervention;
• methods and techniques of academic research, especially qualitative research methods, and the specific demands of organizational research.

Skills: the student is able to:
• critically discuss and compare different scientific theories and their adhering concepts, connect elements from these theories and apply them to actual social and/or organizational issues;
• critically assess scientific theories and their use, and set up a scientific argument about this both orally and in writing;
• formulate an academic problematization and make an analysis of an actual social and/or organizational issue based on secundary sources (literature research);
• analyse and interpret data;
• assess research results on their reliability, validity and usefulness;
• make proposals, based on theoretical and methodological knowledge, to analyse actual social and/or organizational issues.

Attitude: the student has acquired:
• the ability to reflect on the possibilities and restrictions of scientific theories and (organizational) research;
• a critical attitude towards common presumptions in society;
• intellectual integrity;
• an academic attitude, that is to say, the willingness to critically assess assumptions and theories.