• INTRODUCING EDEN
• EDEN IN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR - STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
• COORDINATORS
• FACULTY
• OBJECTIVES
• EVALUATION
• PROGRAMME
• ADDRESS(ES)
• PRACTICALITIES

For full information on the EDEN concept and benefits, please click here.

The programme in Organizational Behaviour / Strategic Management will include seminars on the following topics :

• CSR and Politics
• Corporate Governance
• Entrepreneurship Research
• Organizational Design
• Social Network Analysis
• Economics and Management of Innovation
• Strategic Management
• Advanced Strategic Management

Prof. Richard M. BURTON, The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, U.S.A.

Prof. Borge OBEL, Aarhus School of Business, Denmark

Richard M. Burton is Professor of Management and Organization at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. He teaches MBA and PHD courses in organizational design and computational organization theory. His research interests are in organizational design and computational organization theory. Together with Professor Obel, he has published a third edition of their organizational design book, Strategic Organizational Diagnosis and Design: The Dynamics of Fit, Springer/Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004. They are also the developers of the OrgCon (Organizational Consultant), a knowledge base software program which aids the organizational designer. They are currently researching the implications of organizational climate for organizational design and also the application of organizational misfits for dynamic organizational change management.
Professor Burton has visited at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, the University of Southern Denmark and the Universite d’Aix-Marseilles. He is a Senior Editor of Organization Science and Assoicate Editor and, formerly Departmental Editor for Management Science. At Duke, he has been active in faculty governance and has served as Chair of the Academic Council.

Børge Obel is Rector and Professor at The Aarhus School of Business and a professor at EIASM. He teaches Master and PHD courses in organizational design. His research interests fall within strategy, management, organizational design, expert systems, and quantitative approaches to organizational design. Together with Professor Burton, he has published a third edition of their organizational design book, Strategic Organizational Diagnosis and Design: Developing Theory for Application, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004. In 2006 their new book Organizational Design: A step-by-step- approach, Cambridge University press will appear. Currently he is doing research on strategy, leadership, and organization of Danish SME’s. Professor Obel has been the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Odense University. He has visited The Fuqua School of Business frequently. Professor Obel spent the spring and summer of 1998 at Stanford University. Professor Obel is Editor of the Danish Journal on Management Research and associate editor of Management Science. He also serves on a number of company boards.

Lex Donaldson is Professor of Organizational Design at the Australian Graduate School of Management, which is a joint venture of the Universities of New South Wales and Sydney. He teaches courses on organizational structure, organizational design and corporate governance on the MBA program. He also teaches the philosophy of science on the PhD program. He has taught organizational theory and philosophy of science to PhD students at London Business School and the University of Iowa. His research interests are organizational theory, especially contingency theory, organizational structure and corporate governance.

Charles C. Snow is the Mellon Foundation Professor of Business Administration and Chair of the Department of Management & Organization at Penn State University’s College of Business where he has been on the faculty since 1974. He is a native of San Diego, California, and he obtained his bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on business strategy, international business, and new organizational forms. He has been a visiting professor at The Amos Tuck School (Dartmouth College), Norwegian School of Management, and the University of Oregon.
Professor Snow is on the editorial board of several academic journals including Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, and Journal of World Business. He has co-authored six books on organizations and management, the most recent of which is Collaborative Entrepreneurship: How Communities of Networked Firms Use Continuous Innovation to Create Economic Wealth (Stanford University Press, 2005). He has taught MBA courses and executive development programs in more than 25 countries.

Our goal is to understand better how to develop and utilize what we know from theory and experience to create and choose among various organizational designs. We want to develop an operational knowledge base which will help us design organizations which will perform well.

The seminar will focus on the understanding and development of an organizational design knowledge framework. How do we as researchers apply our understanding of organization theory, including new forms, and our knowledge about organizations to the development of a robust research-based normative framework on an organizational design appropriate for the situation and condition of the organization, particularly in today’s rapidly changing world? The seminar will have an emphasis on information processing.
Organizational Design begins with an understanding of organization theory, but goes beyond understanding how organizations behave to consider how they should be designed in a world of rapid change, information abundance. Design is complex and requires the integration of knowledge from various fields and points of view and disciplines. This synthesis is obtained from an information processing view of organization, or how organizations use, transmit and interpret information.

Burton, DeSanctis and Obel’s new book, Organizational Design: A Step by Step Approach, 2006, Cambridge University Press provides a base model. The seminar will address how researchers can critically modify and embellish the knowledge base to incorporate new ideas and the most recent developments in organization theory into a systematic and comprehensive framework for the recommendation of what design the organization should have. Going beyond the basic contingencies of environment, technology, management style, size and strategy, we will discuss and develop organizational design implications of climate, information technology, organizational learning, and new approaches to strategy. We will discuss how organizational design evolves in a dynamic perspective in today's fast moving world.

The target group of the seminar is Ph.D. students and junior scholars. The purposes of the seminar are:

1. to provide participants with a thorough understanding of the contingency, dynamic multiple contingency and configurational approaches to organization design
2. to consider, in depth, the concept of fit, its theoretical meaning and implications for empirical study
3. to develop and integrate new ideas on design into the organizational design framework;
4. to develop research skills to contribute to the knowledge of organizational design;
5. to outline a possible organizational design research project for each participant.

It is very important to emphasize that each participant will be expected to develop a proposal for a research project of personal interest (e.g., part of thesis) which incorporates issues from organizational design and knowledge framework development. The participants will be requested to present their research problems and research ideas at the beginning of the seminar.

Active participation in the seminar is expected. Readings before and during the seminar will be required (a reading list will be published on February 15, 2006). There will be several work sessions. Participants will be expected to present their ideas and work to the seminar audience.

The participant's capacity to develop and integrate new ideas into the organizational design knowledge base will be evaluated. This will be done on the basis of individual participation throughout the seminar and the individual’s presentation at the end.
(Certificates of participation will be sent only to those attending the entire seminar and found to meet the evaluation criteria in a satisfactory way).

Day 1

09.00 - 10.00
Introduction

10.00 – 11:00
Professor Richard Burton: The Concept of Organizational Design: Misfits, the Knowledge Base and Multi-Contingency Theory

11:00 – 12:30
Professor Børge Obel: Comprehensive Organizational Design: The OrgCon

12.30 – 14.00
Lunch

14.00 – 16.00
Professor Børge Obel: Comprehensive Organizational Design: The OrgCon

16.30 - 17.30
Professor Richard Burton & Professor Børge Obel: The research of creating a knowledge base for the OrgCon: Knowledge and validation

Day 2

09.00 - 12.00
Professor Børge Obel: Research in Organizational Design: empirical studies

12.30 – 14.00
Lunch

14.00 – 15.30
Professor Richard Burton: Computational Studies in Organizational Design

16.00 - 17.00
Professors Richard Burton and Børge Obel: Discussion of the research challenges in Organizational Design

Day 3

09.00 – 12.30
Professor Lex Donaldson: The Contingency Theory of Organizational Design: Theory, methodological issues,
relationship to other organizational theories

12.30 – 14.00
Lunch

14.00 – 17.00
Professor Lex Donaldson: Theoretical Developments: new theories and analytic techniques and philosophy of science

Day 4

09.00 – 12.30
Professor Charles Snow: The Configurational Approach to Organization Design

12.30 – 14.00
Lunch

14.00 – 17.00
Professor Charles Snow: The Multi-Firm Collaborative Network: The Art of Doing Research on New Organizational Forms

Day 5

09.00 - 12.00
Student presentations

12.00 - 13.30
Lunch

13.30 - 14.30
Student presentation

14.30 - 18.30
Student evaluation

19.00
Dinner and celebration

Day 6
End of seminar - return

TIME AND LOCATION
The seminar will be held at the AARHUS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS.
The programme will start on May 2, 2006 and is scheduled to end May 6, 2006

PARTICIPATION FEE
The participation fee is 1500 €. This fee includes participation to the seminar, the documents, lodging and full board.
Doctoral students will be assigned rooms for two.

Should you wish a single room, an extra fee of 50 € per night will be charged to you.

Cancellations made before April 18, 2006 will be reimbursed with 10% deduction of the total fee. No reimbursement will be possible after this date.

EIASM SCHOLARSHIPS
The Institute offers a limited number of scholarships of 700 € each. Scholarships are strictly limited to students coming from an EIASM Institutional Member (the Academic Council). Allocation of the scholarships is entirely at the discretion of the European Institute.

APPLICATIONS
Interested doctoral students should register online (and add the required documents) no later than March 2, 2006. Besides doctoral students, other researchers may participate. The number of participants will be limited to create a stimulating environment. The selection among the applicants will be conducted by the Institute’s Faculty. They will review the following documents which should necessarily complement each application form:

• the applicant’s curriculum vitae demonstrating his/her capabilities of doing research ;
• a letter of recommendation of his/her local faculty supporting the application ;
• a two-page description of his/her doctoral research, indicating the general objectives.