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The Nature of Organizations
Rating: 4.8 out of 5(49 ratings)
1,288 students

The Nature of Organizations

Understand the Models, Power, and Culture of Modern Organizations
Created byMike Clayton
Last updated 1/2025
English
English [Auto],

What you'll learn

  • Understand the nature of organizations and how they work
  • Be able to identify and understand the common models for the way organizations work
  • Recognize and work with different forms of power in organizations
  • Understand organizational culture and how it forms
  • Recognize different organizational cultures
  • Understand the principal contributions of six critical organizational thinkers

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Course content

5 sections • 36 lectures • 4h 1m total length

  • What is an Organization?4:10

    Please download the PDF document for lesson summaries and recommended exercises.

  • Morgan’s Eight Organizational Metaphors7:35
  • Organizations as Structures: Understanding an Organization as a Structure4:16
  • Organizations as Processes: Understanding an Organization as a Set of Processe6:10
  • Features of an Organization: What an Organization Needs8:24

    The lecture outlines 11 essential features every organization needs, including goal and vision, a mission, strategy, processes, structure, physical resources, people, culture, governance, knowledge, memory, and technology.

  • Why do we Need Organizations? Structure vs Agility6:33

Requirements

  • No experience is necessary, but a familiarity with different types of organizations will help you to put the course into context.

Description

We all work within one form of organization or another. And, if you want to advance, you'll need to understand how organizations work.

A great number of smart people have made a detailed study of organizations. And, if you work in one, their ideas can teach you a lot that is valuable. So, this course summarizes the most important of these ideas.

It is designed to serve the needs of working managers, who need a broad-brush overview of all the important thinking. It will help you if you need to understand:


What an organization is

  • How different organizations are structured

  • How to navigate the power structures within organizations

  • What we mean by organizational culture and where it comes from

  • The different types of organizational culture

  • The ideas of the leading thinkers on organizational theory and practice


Five Sections

This course is made up of five sections, which cover:

  1. Introduction to Organizations

  2. Organizational Models

  3. Power in Organizations

  4. Organizational Culture

  5. Masters of Organizations


In this course, you’ll meet the work of people like Kim Cameron, Peter Drucker, Amitai Etzioni, Charles Handy, Geert Hofstede, Henry Mintzberg, Gareth Morgan, Edgar Schein, Max Weber, and many more.


But, more importantly, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the way the organizations you work in and with operate. This will give you a real edge in climbing the organizational ladder.

Who this course is for:

  • Anyone who works in organizations and needs to know how they work
  • Anyone studying organizations as part of a further or higher education coure.

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