Paul Postmes, Marco Oteman, Thies van der Linde
This book discusses in greater detail the systems and processes in organizations as described in An Introduction to Organization Theory by Loek ten Berge and Marco Oteman.
By studying the theory and tackling the exercises students and other interested people will come to a better understanding of the systems and processes in an organization and will be able to work with them in practice.
In comparison to the great interest on the part of business in organizational processes and systems, they are rather underrated subjects in the curricula of the universities of applied sciences.
This book provides a practical in-depth approach to fill this gap, and it is suitable particularly for economics courses of the propedeutic phase of traditional universities and universities of applied sciences. This book may also be a good introduction to processes and systems in courses with a less economic or administrative focus.
Drs Paul Postmes works at Hogeschool Utrecht. He teaches business administration, purchasing management and research. He is also account manager of the Logistics and Economics course.
Drs Marco Oteman is a researcher and teacher at Hogeschool Utrecht and an independent consultant. He teaches and is a consultant in the fields of business adminstration, ethics and sustainability.
Drs Thies van der Linde is a teacher at Hogeschool Utrecht. He lectures on business administration and innovation and risk management. He is also account manager of the Business Management course.
Vertaald uit het Nederlands door Eef Eerdmans en Marieke Oteman
Foreword
This publication is the sequel to Introduction to Organization Theory by Loek ten Berge and Marco Oteman. In this publication we focus on a more indepth discussion of systems and processes within organizations. The aim is to engage students and other interested readers in theories, exercises and research with respect to systems and processes within an organization, to come to a better understanding of them and apply them more easily in practice. Organizational processes and systems are underrated in the curricula of universities of applied sciences, compared to the large interest that business displays in them. This book provides a deeper practical insight for especially the economic studies at universities of applied sciences and traditional universities in the propaedeutics phase, or in latter phases as an introduction to processes and systems for studies that are less focused on economics or business management.
Didactic approach: this book consists of seven chapters, which together form an introduction to organizational processes and systems. Each chapter is comprised of five elements:
- An introduction, displayed in italics, in which the contents of the chapter are justified;
- Learning goals, which are achieved on completion of the chapter;
- Key concepts in a mindmap, as a summary and course guide of the chapter;
- Case studies that partially continue in the following chapters. Each chapter consists of approximately 20 pages and ends with an exercise and practice questions, to enable the reader to train himself;
- A summary with an introduction to the next topic, to link the chapters together.
The choice of key concepts is focused on recognizing situations (diagnostics) and on building the ability to improve those processes (optimizing). The student thus learns to design an improvement plan. The key concepts are listed again separately at the end of the book. The skills that are continuously required to deal with the theory, exercises, questions and case studies are the following (2011):
This book is the first edition in what will hopefully be a longer series.
1. The ability to analyze activities and processes;
2. The ability to represent processes schematically;
3. The ability to recognize the key concepts within the field or organization theory;
4. The ability to optimize processes;
5. The ability to measure and control processes.
