Organisational Design and Development

Organisations need to constantly adjust how they can best fulfill their task of providing goods and services to society and meaningful employment to their members. Customer and market requirements might change, or new production methods or technology become available. If there are underlying structural issues, these need to be addressed in the organisational design. However, a grand plan for change that forgets about the people who are to carry it out will not work. Likewise, a plan that focuses only on the soft factors and ignores the root causes is almost certainly doomed to fail. That is why Radboud University offers the specialisation in Organisational Design and Development. You will be taught the integrate interplay between design and development. You will become a flexible leader who knows how to get people involved from the start and who understands that plans need to be adjusted to deal with unforeseen bumps along the way.This specialisation takes corporate social responsibility as its starting point: how organisations can operate efficiently while never losing sight of the people involved. Customers, personnel, local residents, related governmental organisations, but also the organisation’s future plans and current reputation (i.e. risk management) are all part of that. Corporate social responsibility is a moral and ethical issue, but also a strategic one of managing reputational risks and creating commitment among employees and investors. The specialisation builds on the tradition of socio-technical system design that aims to jointly optimise both the social and the technical aspects of an organisation. You will explore the possibilities of organisational development and the barriers that may arise. Put simply, you will learn not just what needs to be changed, but also how this can best be done.