INTELLECTUAL (COGNITIVE) SKILLS
After successfully completing the course, students will be able to:
Knowledge and understanding
Define main concepts of organisation, bureaucracy, conflict in organisation, general postulates of scientific management, globalisation and prismatic society, organisational pathology and good governance, especially principles of new public management - completely new termns and meanings in the organisation of modern administration. These concepts and topics are not studied in classic administrative science or general sociology, except ephemerally. In that sense, they are a part of a specialised sub-discipline of these sciences.
Explain: Organisation and public administration are not just an order of relations, but also social groups and structures. On the micro level human activity is explained by inherent principles of the division of labour and specialisation, but without psychological and social criticism and the theory of administrative dysfunctions. On themacro level, recent understanding connect the change of organisation with the processes of globalisation and the idea of new public administration that explain aberrations and inadequacies of older models. Both trends in analysis are directed towards a new paradigm of administrative sciences and sociology of administration. The explanation is based on the analysis of the process of modernisation, and later globalisation. Explain: Human behaviour in an organisation is dteremined by general organisational tasks and roles, but management cannot be reduced to this component only.
Application
Group and describe: People in administration frequently do not understand paradoxes they are faced with. Some of them are based on unique social situations and seem contingent, and some are universal and subject to scientific analysis and systematisation. The beginning of scientific analysis is the discovery of universal principles of good governance, but criticism follows soon. Early criticism relied on social and psychological consequences of bureaucracy, but then a far-reaching criticism of dysfunctions immanent to organisation ensued. Today the understanding of these processes is reached through synthesis of sociological, political and psychological consequences of globalisation and codification of good governance principles.
Understand: Aforementioned phenomena and processes are very dynamic and cannot be followed in categories of statical legal analysis. Organisational structures and processes, effects and efficiency can be understood only from the standpoint of sociology of administration.
Apply: Course is oriented towards practical knowledge and understanding of changes. Changes are exceptionally fast (Europeanization, globalisation) and cannot be understood or followed without an insight into and understanding of systematic general framework in which every phenomenon (as well as pathologies of administration: growth and corruption) is understandable. Such knowledge results in innovation and voluntary agreement with objective circumstances. To prepare students for real worls of employment is a practical and useful purpose of the course.
Outline: Without special instructions, students should be able to clearly define and understand basic presented problems.
Analysis
Demonstrate: A large part of analysed topics is relevant for direct experience of students. Access to the phenomena of bureaucracy, conflict in organisation and motivation are reduced to characteristics of a person or culture in law explanations, and in fact these are clear global and diacronical changes. This is shown through ananalysis of research and theoretical insights.
Categorise: Types of admnistrative organisation, principles of governance, companies, and especially understanding of the categories used by 'new public management' and the concepts of European administrative area serve as an introduction to the spcific area of sociology of public administration and systematisation of experience in leading a group.
Analyse: The course is complementary to descriptive and normative descriptions of administration, as the focus is on possibilities and development of skills of understanding and analysing administrative phenomena in their systematic connection.
Compare: Descriptive and typollogical analysis, both on the level of theoretical generalisations, and on the level of descriptions of research and concrete examples, especially in Socratic method, means bringing problems closer to the students to facilitate the necessary inductive concluding.
Synthesis
Constructing elementary explanation is significantly easier because the students have a certain work and life experience and their knowledge needs to be contextualised. Themethod based on discussion, especially seminar as a highly interactive form of teaching, stimulates proposals motivated by explanations that frequently difer from direct experience. Current experience suggests that the students like to use presented explanations, experience and theories as a background for their own proposals.
Evaluation
Examine: Critical consideration lies at the heart of the method and contents of the course, since theories of administration often cannot be reduced to narrow experience of practitioners who perform individually defined tasks.
Compare: Freedom of drawing conclusions is the best method to internalise knowledge, but also a valuable instrument of building positive attitutdes towards administration. Sociology in general attempts to formulate universal standpoints, knowledge and skills connected with global phenomenon of administration. Concluding is not possible without facts and research results, theoretical leaps towards intellectual generalisations. Skill of comparing is more than just an illustration of a problem, it is a method of reaching conclusions.
Evaluate: Many approaches contain open or implicit value related message, a request for the assessment of scientific, hypothetical and real correctness. Advantages and disadvantages of theoretical approaches in the explanation of different social phenomena need to be understood.
Assess: To which extent can certain methods provide answers to formulated questions and to which extent certain theoretical frameworks enable elaboration of answers to formulated questions; in other words, assess the applicability of theoretical approach and applied methods for a specific phenomenon that is being analysed.
Knowledge is assessed in seminars, mid-term examinations, written and oral exams.
Mid-term exam is a written form of assessing knowledge in which the student must demonstrate to what extent they followed lectures and literature. Since meaningful learning is emphasised, mid-term examinations, written and oral examination form a whole.
Seminar paper is, on one hand, focused on public presentation of the student's own text in which they analyse the text, demonstrate its understanding and categorisation into the corpus analysed in lectures, synthetic presentation and final evaluation. Apart from oral presentation, the student has to write a seminar paper that will contain all the elements mentioned above.
Written exam consists of providing answers to analysed questions and serves as al elementary triage of the student according to reproductive knowledge, butt oral examination is a part of the examination.
Oral examination consists of testing the understanding of basic concepts and theories, comparison of these theories and concepts, demonstrating the ability to apply them to the explanation of social phenomena and occurrences from everyday life, evaluation of the applicability of these concepts and theories in the sense of their explanatory power for individual phenomena. Oral examination is not a test of stereotypical knowledge, but of learning outcomes.
