Management Consulting and Strategic Change

Course

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/E_IBK3_MCSC

Course Objective

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, said “change is the only constant in life”. This certainly holds true for organizations. In the span of just over a decade they have had to wither a global financial
- and economic crisis, relentless digitalization, climate change and the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. In short, organizations are facing various strategic challenges and need to consider how to manage and respond to these challenges. Typically, this involves change and consultants play a significant role within these organizational change processes. The course “Management Consulting and Strategic Change” draws on essential themes around consulting and change and in both theory and practice you will analyse these themes from different viewpoints. An important part of the course is that you gain experience with change processes and the work of consultants. You learn to develop your own opinion about these important themes and by meeting and interviewing consultants you are also asked to draw on the themes discussed in the lectures to critically reflect on an actual consulting project in your case assignment. Overall, you develop analytical skills that are useful for your future academic work (e.g., thesis writing) as well as any advisory function. The course focuses on the following learning goals: Bridging theory and practice (knowledge):
• Develop your own position and argumentation in relation to the topics discussed during the course.
• Critically reflect on the key underlying assumptions and arguments developed in the literature and position them in relation with each other. Bridging theory and practice (application):
• Critically examine the connection between the themes discussed in the lectures and how these appear in real-life change and consulting projects. Social skills:
• Contact, interview and engage with consultants in the field.
• Organize your work in a team

Course Content

The course offers a mix of theoretical and practical elements. First, a series of lectures is dedicated to an exploration of various important themes that help you to better understand consulting and change. Typical topics one can think of are “The consultant-client relationship”, “The ethics of consultants”; “Change management”; “Employees & resistance”; “Management fashions” and “The impact of management ideas”. A thorough understanding of these topics opens up opportunities for an engagement with the more practical elements of consulting and change and the chance to ‘experience consulting and change’. Here you will be asked to draw on the themes and theories discussed during the lectures and to reflect on an actual consulting project. We also aim to include interactions with change managers and/or consultants. In short, the course combines theoretically informed analytical rigour with practical relevance. This helps you academically but also gives you a glimpse of a top career choice for many BA/IBA graduates: consulting/change management!

Teaching Methods

Lectures and seminars

Method of Assessment

To be announced

Literature

To be announced

Target Audience

The course is very useful for students BK/IBA who are interested in following the bachelor specialization Management Consulting. Moreover, looking ahead at your master, the course is an excellent starting point for those of you who next year want to pursue further studies in the domains of Management Consulting, Leadership & Change Management or Strategy & Organization. Moreover, the course is relevant for anyone (also beyond BK/IBA) who is interested in change processes and for those who wonder whether one of the most popular careers among business administration students, namely that of a consultant, can be a good start for you!

Recommended background knowledge

For BK: Management & Organisatie; Academische Vaardigheden; Integratieperiode; Strategie; Onderzoek & Advies; Foundations of Strategic Management. For IBA: Organization Theory; Academic Skills; International Strategy; Integrative Research Project; Foundations of Strategic Management.
Academic year1/09/2431/08/25
Course level6.00 EC

Language of Tuition

  • English

Study type

  • Bachelor