Introduction

I took Organizational Analysis and Management, a.k.a. Organizational Theory, from D. R. Palmer in Winter 2008.

This course is currently required for all non-executive MBA and MSIS students at Santa Clara.

Instructor Profile

D. R. Palmer, not to be confused with the tenured management instructor who is also named David Palmer, is a lecturer at Santa Clara University and management consultant. He also leads workshops through Santa Clara’s Executive Development Center. Palmer has a range of academic credentials including study under Peter Drucker.

I’d better get the main theme of this course review out early: Dr. Palmer is passionate about giving career advice and coaching on career growth, but perhaps not so passionate about Organizational Theory. There was a strong emphasis on practical career advice throughout this course, and generally that is appropriate for a class full of working students who are near turning points in their careers. But that emphasis came at some cost to in-depth coverage of the core course content.

Classroom experience

Class sessions were generally structured as a combination of lecture and open discussion. Typically Dr. Palmer discussed something related to the homework or a career management topic then went into the chapter’s material. For some classes the chapter material review didn’t start until more than halfway through the class period.

Coursework, exams, and grades

The course grade was comprised from five short in-class quizzes, and individual project, a group project, and a class participation factor.

The individual project, Process Map Analysis was a project for each individual to research and map out their own work group in a number of different ways. The idea is to give the student new insight into their own work situation and opportunities for increased effectiveness and advancement. This was a valuable activity for me. Students whose employer had a “no public org chart” policy had a much harder time finishing this assignment than others.

The group project was the major work effort of the course. The class self-organized into groups of about six, and chose one of our employers’ divisions to do the project on. The project involves interviewing around six members of the chosen organization and producing a paper that analyzes the current structure and recommends structural changes.

My class generally found that some of the quiz questions were ambiguous. Students argued about a couple of them in class and won Palmer over. In Palmer’s defense, the entire cohort took ACTG 300 the previous quarter from Chris Paisley, who intentionally put tricky true/false questions on his exams that required careful parsing. Palmer was trying not to use tricky wording, but when the wording was slightly ambiguous we suspected a trap.

What I learned

I had a great experience with the group project, because I had a smart hardworking team and one of our team members got high-level buy-in from his organization to support our project. I probably learned the most from just exploring the current challenges faced by the organization and the historical and structural factors that led to them. My whole career has been in software development organizations, and it was great to see similarities and differences faced by an organization full of knowledge workers in a different industry.

From the individual project I got some good insight into my place in my company. Particularly, I started differentiating between direct power over resources and business plans and indirect power such as dependent work relationships. My work group is high in informal power — people throughout the organization rely on us to help meet their goals, and we have specialized experience and knowledge that can’t easily be replaced. Yet we do not have a comparable amount of direct power over financial resources, large-scale hiring, or setting business plans. This changed some of my long-term career thinking, which is the whole point of the project.

I don’t think I became too well grounded in Organizational Theory itself, but I learned many of the key concepts and terms and I’ll be able to use the text and other resources from here to keep talking the talk as I continue in the MBA program.

Criticisms

Not enough class time was spent on the core OT topics. Although Palmer’s emphasis on career planning was very appropriate for the SCU graduate student body, he could probably have cut the amount of lecture time devoted to this by half and had a more effective course.

Recommendation

I got a lot of value out of this course and the workload was manageable, yet I’m hesitant to give it a blanket recommendation because some students will be put off by Palmer’s lecture style. If you’re ready for some introspection on your career growth, think ahead about a project group you’d like to work with and a company you can do the project on, and take this course.

Trailer

This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.

Update 2008-08-17

Allan Chen posted a thorough review of this class from the previous quarter on his blog. Although his review is more critical than mine, I think our reviews are very consistent.