Contemporary and Emerging Issues for Organizations

Description

Organisations are persistently faced with changing internal and external contextual issues. Changes can thereby be both rapid and profound and often involve interactions between various processes and forces including, but not limited to, the societal, political, economic, and technological contexts in which organisations operate. This course is designed to edify the application of critical thinking skills in evaluating selected contemporary and emerging issues so that the students can use informed judgment in the formation of appropriate business responses.

Learning outcomes

This unit will help you avoid making mistakes and ensure you make the best decisions possible in the circumstances. It will do this through developing your critical thinking and analytical skills. Imagine working as a manager in a few years, or perhaps running your own business. You have a task to do. Rather than jumping immediately to do it, you will be able to analyse the situation from a variety of perspectives, develop an understanding of why the current situation has arisen, explore what is actually happening in this situation, and work out the best way forward. That is, you will be able to generate deep insights into what you are facing as a manager and be able to act using forethought and understanding. To achieve this, we will focus on four areas that can help improve our thinking and analytical skills:

• Critical thinking skills. We will be focusing on what blinkers we put over our eyes that prevent us from thinking things through. This also helps generate self-understanding;
• We develop an understanding of other people, through different perspectives of how people function;
• We reflect on how to act ethically when dealing with a difficult situation;
• Integrative thinking skills. We discuss the method, pros and cons of integrative thinking.