Coordination, Control, and the Management of Organizations: Course Content and Materials (3rd of 4 Ccmo Documents)

Abstract

The course Coordination, Control and the Management of Organizations (CCMO) develops a theory of organizations that provides a clear understanding of how organizational "rules of the game" affect a manager's ability to resolve problems, increase productivity, and achieve his or her objective. The course explores the choice of the organizational objective function and the value implications for equity and debt holders, employees, suppliers and society as a whole.

The viewpoint of the course is that of a general manager addressing organizational strategy with an internal rather than an external focus. The analysis emphasizes the constraints that external markets, such as capital, supplier, labor, and product markets, place on a firm's internal organizational strategy. The framework developed is analytical, but not mathematical. It provides an understanding of how organizational structure affects performance and how current economic and social forces are reshaping the role of managers, both today and in the future.

This documents contains

I. CCMO Course Description

II. CCMO Course Syllabus

III. CCMO Course Reading List, a complete session-by-session reading list for a 35 session version of the course.

IV. CCMO Assignment Questions, a complete set of session by session assignment questions for a 35 session version of the course.

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The CCMO materials are presented in four electronic documents entitled as follows (you can go directly to each document and its abstract by clicking on the title below):

1. Organizations and Markets: History and Development of the Course and the Field, by Michael C. Jensen, George P. Baker, Carliss Y. Baldwin, and Karen H. Wruck, Dec. 10, 1997 (forthcoming in "The Intellectual Venture Capitalist: John H. McArthur and the Work of the Harvard Business School," 1980-1995, Thomas K. McCraw and Jeffrey L. Cruickshank, eds, (Harvard Business School Press, 1998)).

2. Coordination, Control, and the Management of Organizations: Course Notes, by Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling, with contributions from George P. Baker and Karen H. Wruck, April 20, 1998, Harvard Business School Working Paper.

3. This document -- Coordination, Control, and the Management of Organizations: Course Content and Materials, by Michael C. Jensen and Karen H. Wruck, April 20, 1998, unpublished manuscript, Harvard Business School.

4. Coordination, Control, and the Management of Organizations: Practice Questions, by Michael C. Jensen, William H. Meckling, George P. Baker, and Karen H. Wruck, with contributions from Carliss Y. Baldwin, and Malcolm S. Salter, April 20, 1998, unpublished manuscript, Harvard Business School.

Return to main CCMO abstract.

JEL Classification: A23, D21, D23, D60, G30, J33, J50, L20