89173 Organisational Design

Warning: The information on this page is indicative. The subject outline for a particular session, location and mode of offering is the authoritative source of all information about the subject for that offering. Required texts, recommended texts and references in particular are likely to change. Students will be provided with a subject outline once they enrol in the subject.

Subject handbook information prior to 2025 is available in the Archives.

UTS: Design, Architecture and Building: Design
Credit points: 6 cp

Subject level:

Postgraduate

Result type: Grade and marks

There are course requisites for this subject. See access conditions.

Description

Designers work in and for organizations but are often unaware of the field of Organizational Design. This subject introduces designers to different forms of organization, examining the how and why of each. Students learn how the material practice of design can be used to create, sustain and transform organizations with different cultures, purposes and outcomes. The subject begins with anthropological and sociological understandings of collective action and ways of organizing cooperation. There is a focus on the modern idea of ‘the firm,’ now ‘the corporation,’ first in systems of industrial production, and then in post-industrial economies demanding Lean and Agile operations. Students research the ways in which organizations manage their employees, and speculatively redesign those organizations to achieve the same outcomes but with different workplace activities and qualities.

Subject learning objectives (SLOs)

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1.	Explain how groups of humans incentivise collective action and form organisations
2.	Compare and contrast start-ups and enterprises
3.	Distinguish between the four orders of design and reflect on how these orders can be applied to enrich a given product or service
4.	Evaluate a given organisation’s artifacts to identify its underlying values
5.	Design a select set of principles, models, and illustrative cases to introduce organisation design to other service designers

Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)

This subject also contributes to the following Course Intended Learning Outcomes:

Discern consequences of designs (ecological, social and justice impacts) (A.3)
Communicate using a wide range of media and techniques (C.1)
Design for and with, and enable designing by, diverse stakeholders (I.1)
Lead a design team to co-create responsible innovations and sustainable systems of service (P.2)
Generate valid insights using qualitative research methods (R.1)
Formulate novel yet significant design research questions (R.2)

Contribution to the development of graduate attributes

A practical understanding of organizational design allows designers to assume leadership positions in organisations and take responsibility for the changes required by what they design.

The term CAPRI is used for the five Design, Architecture and Building faculty graduate attribute categories where:

C = communication and groupwork

A = attitudes and values

P = practical and professional

R = research and critique

I = innovation and creativity.

This subject encourages student learning directed to develop these graduated attributes. The course content, learning strategies and assessment structure is explicitly designed with these attributes in mind.

Teaching and learning strategies

This subject is a seminar with practical components. The aim of the subject is not only help designers understand core aspects of organisational design, including operations management and human resources issues, but to give designers a vocabulary that will allow them to participate in organisational change and leadership initiatives. Most weeks there is a reading that students should complete before coming to class and be ready to discuss. Classes involve presentations and then exercises to help explore the concepts presented. Students should make time to follow up on each class, reflecting on what they have learned in the contexts of organisations they know. This weekly routine is also structured into the second assessment task.

This subject has been designed around face-to-face presentations, discussions and exercises during one 3hr meeting per week (on a Thursday evening). The subject is content intensive, so active weekly attendance is required. It will be possible to attend virtually if sickness makes that necessary.

Content (topics)

The subject content is divided into two parts.

The first concerns conceptual background on the social psychology of collective action and the sociology of different kinds of organiztaion.
The second concerns different strategic design-based approached to organisational design.

Assessment

Assessment task 1: How Organisational Values Are Expressed In Artifacts

Intent:

The aim of this task is to gain the skill of reading how an organisation's values and practices manifest through its designed products, processes and environments.

Select an organisation where you work or where you have access to study its people and work. Obtain permission to study it. Using reportage and/or visuals, document select artifacts that express this organisation’s values, that is, the goals, principles, and standards that its members believe make this organisation distinctive and productive. These artifacts can include material objects, verbal expressions, or group activities. Reflect on how your understanding of their values has shifted between commencing and concluding your research.

Objective(s):

This task addresses the following subject learning objectives:

1, 4 and 5

This task also addresses the following course intended learning outcomes that are linked with a code to indicate one of the five CAPRI graduate attribute categories (e.g. C.1, A.3, P.4, etc.):

A.3, C.1 and R.1

Type:

Report

Groupwork:

Individual

Weight:

50%

Criteria:

inclusion of appropriately used concepts and models from the subject
comprehensiveness yet legibility of documentation
ability to conduct an insightful and generative comparative analyses of organisation designs

Criteria linkages:

Criteria	Weight (%)	SLOs	CILOs
inclusion of appropriately used concepts and models from the subject	30	1	R.1
comprehensiveness yet legibility of documentation	30	5	C.1
ability to conduct an insightful and generative comparative analyses of organisation designs	40	4	A.3

SLOs: subject learning objectives
CILOs: course intended learning outcomes

Assessment task 2: Guidebook to Organisational Design

Intent:

The aim of this task is to help develop a practical familiarity with the language of organisational design so that you can take responsiblity for the organisational change implications of what you design.

Imagine an early career service designer approaches you for mentoring. They want to develop new skills in organisational design to complement their existing skills in service design. Design a physical or digital organisational design guidebook to help this person. Formulate a set of principles, models, and illustrative cases (drawing on what you have learned in this subject) and include these as the content of your guidebook.

Objective(s):

This task addresses the following subject learning objectives:

2, 3 and 5

This task also addresses the following course intended learning outcomes that are linked with a code to indicate one of the five CAPRI graduate attribute categories (e.g. C.1, A.3, P.4, etc.):

I.1, P.2 and R.2

Type:

Essay

Groupwork:

Individual

Weight:

50%

Criteria:

inclusion of most of the topics of the class, appropriately explained
appropriateness of the illustrative case studies
clarity given the target audience

Criteria linkages:

Criteria	Weight (%)	SLOs	CILOs
inclusion of most of the topics of the class, appropriately explained	33	2	I.1
appropriateness of the illustrative case studies	33	3	R.2
clarity given the target audience	34	5	P.2

SLOs: subject learning objectives
CILOs: course intended learning outcomes

Minimum requirements

The DAB attendance policy requires students to attend no less than 80% of formal teaching sessions (lectures and tutorials) for each class they are enrolled in to remain eligible for assessment.

It is a requirement of this subject that all students complete OPELA. Students who receive a Basic grade in the OPELA are required to attend 80% of the Language Development Tutorials in order to pass the subject. Students who do not complete the OPELA and/or do not attend 80% of the Language Development Tutorials will receive a Fail X grade.

Required texts

Readings will be provided by the UTS library through the Canvas page for this subject