People and Organisations – an MBA course at Said Business School

A core course taken in the first term
8 lectures, 8 lectures, plus case studies
Examined by 4 case studies (40%) Final exam (60%)

Pre-course thoughts
This is one of the ones I’m really looking forward to. From people and what makes them tick to companies and how to make them tick this course covers the business of actually making stuff happen. I’ve done some work with company culture in the past and I’m looking forward to reading and discussing this stuff in more depth.

One of my big areas of interest is getting value out of IT by actually building systems people want to use, and teaching them how to use them. I’ve also done work where corporate intranets were used to try to drive changes in company culture. According to my mentor this kind of stuff is something of a theme at the Said Business School. Which is nice.

Post course thoughts
It was indeed good, the subject was interesting, but sadly the way it was taught turned me off, and I can’t work out why. At times the need to see things through academic psychological theory turned me off, and an insistence of memorizing the names and dates of obscure papers wound me up something rotten.

At the end of the day this was worth doing, the people who took this course will be better managers for it, but I just feel it was something of a wasted opportunity.