Culture, Organization and Management
Student testimonial: Huub
Why the master Culture, Organization and Management?
Culture, Organization and Management integrates three important components. This master’s programme offers you an opportunity to learn how to look at organizations through a very personal lens. You develop an eye for the way people make sense of everything that’s connected to their organizational life. You will link this personal, organizational approach to different societal developments like diversity issues, globalization and transnational entrepreneurship. More importantly: you study the interaction between these development and people, the main building blocks of organizations!
Why VU University?
I opted for the VU University when I was abroad, based upon the fact that no other university offers an organizational science master with this specific cultural, anthropological and ethnographic focus. As for further personal growth: much is possible at VU University when you are a proactive person. The study associations, like SIFE VU, are quite ambitious!
From theory to practice
Previous year I chaired and developed SIFE VU. This organization has brought me a lot of societal and organizational insights, no coincidence since its goal is to bring scientific theory into (good) practice! Setting up a social or sustainable project with a group of motivated students is something I can highly recommend to any student since this will enable you to make a change to both yourself and your target group!
Besides studying, I like to get inspired by doing smaller, practical projects. For instance: I’m participating within the BID Challenge. That’s a competition in which you help an entrepreneur from a ‘developing country’ to develop a mature business plan and guide his or her search for an investor. A great way to co-create a better future. Projects or events like this are irreplaceable add-ons to the more abstract part of COM to me personally.
To argument instead of repeating
COM has a proper theoretical base and is taught by teachers who have a story to tell. You are encouraged to deepen and criticize you own standings. You will be inspired to look at context, time, history and place. And: you are forced to come up with your own arguments instead of repeating others’. I experience this critical, context oriented attitude, as pleasant and believe it to touch upon the core of science.
Experiments within study methods
I enjoyed the incorporation of movie and photography within the fieldwork training. It retriggered my scientific senses for ambiguity, symbolism and spatial outings. These are themes and stories that can't be distracted from annual reports or planned interviews - which is why I and COM believe you have to go out there to interact, observe and feel. COM provides you with a toolkit to do so.
Should I do this study?
If you believe in the power of context, multiple perspectives and embeddedness. If you are interested in human sense making within organizations. If you believe in the importance of ambiguity and conflict. If you’re interested in the interaction between society and organizations from a global perspective. If you are looking forward to a group of motivated teachers with diverse backgrounds. If so, I think you already know you should enroll for COM.
Huub Dekkers, Master’s student in Culture, Organization and Management 2010- 2011
