Federated Collaborative Networks

Hamideh Afsarmanesh gave two of the lectures of this course. For downloading the slides of her presentations, please use the links in the table of the lectures below.

Course Information

Program Master of Information Studies
Catalog Number 5294VOIA6Y
EC 6
Coordinator drs. A.W. Abcouwer
Staff drs. A.W. Abcouwer, prof.dr. H. Afsarmanesh

Course objective

Taking the impact of the ICT revolution on society as the starting point, this course studies the relationship between (virtual) organizations and the dynamic context of society.

Learning outcomes

  • The student can sum up the concepts behind the adaptive cycle model of change
  • The student can recognize the different roles of management in the phases of the adaptive cycle model and what roles information and information management plays in facilitating the manager
  • The student can illustrate how an organization in crisis can be better understood by using the adaptive cycle of change-model.
  • The student can recognize the roles of new forms of (virtual) co-operation between organizations to deal with dynamic changes in the environment
  • The student can illustrate how the context (life conditions) and the individual worldview – resulting in an actual system of values and norms – can lead to actual behavior
  • The student is able, using the above mentioned knowledge and insights – to comment on practical cases in organizations

Approach

Organizations will inevitably go through phases in their development in a dynamic context. We will indicate the sequence of phases and will focus on the transitions between the phases. In discussing the phases we will emphasize their characteristics, so that they can be recognized and predicted. Consequently, specific success factors – in terms of management competencies and roles of information systems – for organizational change can be derived. To better understand the approach of the adaptive cycle it will be compared with existing theories in the literature on organizational change.

Related to this approach attention should be paid to ways how organizations work together. It means that we will look at virtual organizations as a means of dealing with these type of changes.

Course structure

The course is organized in the first semester – block 2 – and has the following structure.

The lectures

In the lectures the basic insights on the adaptive cycle and the concepts of (virtual) organizations will be studied in a context of organizational change.

The lectures are schedule on Tuesday between 13.00 and 15.00

The following topics will be discussed

Date Lecturer Topic
October 30 Toon Abcouwer Introduction and setting the scene
November 6 Toon Abcouwer The adaptive cycle of change
November 13 Hamideh Afsarmanesh Virtual Organizations

November 20 Hamideh Afsarmanesh Virtual Organizations Breeding Environment
November 27 Toon Abcouwer / Bas Parson Management and Cooperation
December 4 Bas Parson The role of organizational culture
December 11 Boy Knoef The Cynefin model

The working groups

Aside from the lectures working groups are scheduled on Friday from 13.00 – 15.00 (group 1) and from 15.00 – 17.00 (group 2).

During the working groups we will discuss the literature and the schedule the student lectures.

Date Lecturer Topic
November 2 Toon Abcouwer/Bas Parson The inevitability of crisis and revolutions
November 9 Toon Abcouwer/Bas Parson The adaptive cycle of change
Learning from ecology
November 16 Toon Abcouwer/Bas Parson Virtual Organizations
November 23 Bas Parson Team effectiveness
November 30 Students Student lectures
December 7 Bas Parson/Leonarda Telling The role of organizational culture
– insight and understand each other
December 14 Students Student Lectures

Assignments

Parallel to the course, students have to work on several assignments.

The following assignments have to be fulfilled.

  • The students will have to write a literature review on 2 articles in which a critical review is given of the various elements of the adaptive cycle approach compared to existing theories in the field of IM, virtual organizations and organizational change. They will have to find the scientific articles themselves. The reviews have to be published on the Wiki and uploaded to BB together with the PDF of the articles
    http://www.adaptivecycle.nl
    This wiki was used last year for the same course already, the content that the students of last year created is still available. (deadline for the assignment is Monday November 12)
  • The students will have to write a critical reflection on 2 of the article reviews of fellow students. These comments have to be published on the comment pages in the wiki and uploaded to BB.  (deadline for this assignment is Monday November 19)
  •  Students will have to prepare a student lecture on a topic related to the adaptive cycle of change. The topics will be chosen during the working groups on November 2. The lectures will take place on November 23, November 30 and December 14. The lectures have to be documented on the Wiki.
  • In the second half of the course, students will have to work on a real life case to study the relevance of this approach in real life. Students will have to find themselves the organizations they will use for their case study. The results of the case study have to be reported in a 10 page paper and on the wiki.

Assessment

The final grade of the course will be based on the following results.

Attending the lectures and working groups is obligatory.

There will not be an exam!!!

Subtopic Weight
Literature reviews 10 %
Reflection on reviews 10 %
Student lecture and documentation 40 %
Case study and documentation 40 %