At the knowledge level, upon completion of this course, you will have:

At the practical level, upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

At the level of reflection, you will be able to:

Organisations are increasingly expected to act in a responsible manner, both in their contributions to society (their products, services and possible side-effects of the production thereof) and in their contributions to the development and behaviours of organisation members. This course wants to motivate students to engage with the respective literatures from an organisational design and development perspective and aims to encourage students to independently develop a critical perspective on self-selected aspects of theories on and practices of responsible organising. Forms of responsible organising refer us to social practices of coordinating and relating to stakeholders that can occur in, but also between, organisations. Specifically, the course will provide the student with the opportunity to choose a seminar group on a topic area in which the respective seminar facilitators are experts. In the previous years these were CSR programs, sustainability programs, and managing legitimacy. 
The course is explicitely not an introductory course in terms of content/topic/theories. However, sStudents will receive an introduction into writing techniques and techniques of idea generation necessary to develop a research proposal from scratch. The course aims to facilitate students to develop their own, independent and critical insights regarding forms of responsible organising. It is designed to facilitate students in expanding their knowledge on organisational arrangements that enable organisations to make a meaningful contribution to society, at both an organisational and societal level.

The core assignment consists of a written research proposal in which students illustrate how research questions around e.g. CSR programs, sustainability programs, or managing legitimacy can be addressed, and/or which additional steps would be needed to design effective interventions in these areas. Students work in groups and individually. You receive feedback on your developing proposal from the teachers and your peers. You are expected to prepare thoroughly for the seminar session by reading the assigned articles and continuously working on your research proposal based on the feedback from and discussions between the seminar participants. You present your work at least once during the seminars, followed by a debate with your peers. Throughout you engage in a critical-constructive debate on the topic of responsible forms of organising. The oral examination assesses the contribution of the individual student to the final product (in case of group work) as well as to prepare you for the Master’s thesis defence.