Challenges Facing the Professional Organization: Hospitals, orchestras, law firms and more

How to manage and drive the work of those who poses the critical expertise for the organization? How to balance their professional autonomy with managerial authority? This course examines the distinctive challenges of managing professionals (doctors, academics, engineers, musicians, consultants) and the organizations built around their expertise (hospitals, museums, universities, law firms, and management consultancies).

Building on Mintzberg's model of the professional bureaucracy, the course maps what makes these organizations structurally distinctive: authority rooted in credentials rather than rank; coordination through standardized skills rather than direct supervision; and a workforce that answers first to its profession and only second to its employer.

The course is organized around recurring dilemmas of leadership and knowledge production: Who has the right to evaluate a professional's work? How do you introduce change in an organization that resists top-down authority? What happens when the logic of efficiency collides with the logic of craft?

Taught from the perspective of organizational sociology, the course offers analytical tools for diagnosing problems that conventional management frameworks which are designed for hierarchical firms were not built to handle.

After completing this course, students will understand the distinctive organizational logic of professional bureaucracies and be equipped to analyze and navigate the leadership dilemmas they produce.

Upon successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

•        explain Mintzberg’s structural configurations and apply the professional bureaucracy model to real organizations
•         analyze the tension between professional autonomy and administrative control in professional organizations
•         identify and discuss core dilemmas of leading expert workers: motivation, scaling, accountability, innovation, coordination, and resistance to managerial authority
•         compare how different professional bureaucracies – hospital wards, law firms, academic departments – respond to pressures for efficiency, accountability, and reform
•         apply sociological concepts to management cases and construct evidence-based arguments about organizational design choices
•         work collaboratively on case-based analysis and present findings clearly to a management audience

Attendance is mandatory in all units held in presence mode on campus as well as in all synchronously held online units. Justified and pre-announced absences of no more than 1 session of mandatory teaching hours will be tolerated.

The course is taught in English and draws on organizational sociology to address questions relevant to students of organization and management studies. It combines lectures, structured discussion, and case-based learning, with readings from both classic organizational theory and applied management literature. Students are expected to produce written work and in-class presentations and to actively participate in class activities.

Note: The use of AI tools is guarded, given specific instructions for every assignment.

• The overall assessment is based on the following components:
• Assessment 1: Active participation in class activities (individual): 22% 
• Assessment 2: Group case study – analysis and in-class presentation (group assignment; written sections and in-class group presentation): 40%
• Assessment 3: Final in-class exam – a written analysis of a dilemma professional organization, applying course concepts (individual; multi-step written assignment): 40%

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