ASRK14004U Organisation, Management and Risk Communication

The course introduces students to the nature and dynamics of organisations, with a particular emphasis on how to manage processes and people within them under conditions of risk. Based on an introduction to organisational theory and recent research within the field of management, the course highlights important managerial dynamics and dilemmas as found in a number of different types of organisations (private as well as public).

The course addresses the challenges post-industrial organisations face; be they from globalisation and regionalisation, from the development on information technology, or the rise of virtual and flexible forms of organisation. These events all pose challenges to the way organisations have been structured traditionally, their processes and practices, as well as to the tools readily available for the manager. Central to these challenges stands a changed set of risks that organisations must handle, both on a day-to-day basis and in their strategic planning.  By emphasising a double focus on the organisation as an actor in relation to other collective actors, as well as on individuals within these collective organisations, the course enables an analytical approach to risk in the context of management and organisation.  The last part of the course will introduce the students to the field of ‘risk communication’ in order to illustrate the close relationship between organisational identity and risk, and to make available the variety of different strategies of, and approaches to, risk communication.

Altogether, the course will consist of four main parts:

1. Organisational theory
2. Management
3. Risk Communication
4. Exercise in crisis communication: How to communicate an unforeseen event. This practice exercise is based on role-playing and will train the students’ ability to communicate during a crisis. The training takes place in a rehearsal room and will last for approximately three days. It will be executed jointly with private and public sector professionals and the outcome will, for example, be a press release, a news report, a communications strategy or an emergency contingency plan.