Content
This course provides a graduate-level introduction to the major theoretical traditions in organization theory and their integration with network perspectives. The seminar is organized canonically, tracing the historical development of organizational analysis from classical theories of bureaucracy and rational control to contemporary approaches that emphasize networks, fields, and relational governance. Rather than treating organizations as isolated, efficiency-seeking entities, the course highlights how organizational structures, behaviors, and outcomes are shaped by environments, institutions, power relations, and social networks.
Across the semester, students will engage with foundational paradigms including scientific management, contingency theory, organizational ecology, neo-institutionalism, resource dependence, and social network theory. Special attention is given to how these paradigms address enduring organizational problems—coordination, control, legitimacy, inequality, and change—at multiple levels of analysis, from individuals and teams to organizations, fields, and interorganizational systems. Network perspectives are introduced not as a substitute for organization theory, but as a unifying analytical lens that reveals informal structures, relational mechanisms, and patterns of interdependence that cut across formal organizational boundaries.
The course emphasizes close reading, critical discussion, and applied theoretical reasoning. Through seminars and case-based research focused on the Asia-Pacific region, students will learn to mobilize organizational paradigms analytically, compare competing explanations, and develop theoretically informed research questions suitable for advanced academic work.
Audience
An elective for NCCU IDAS doctoral students, particularly second-year and above. This course may also be of interest to MA students preparing to write a prospectus or thesis.
Requirements
No prerequisites. Students will be expected to read and write at a graduate level.
Materials
- Syllabus – Networks and Organizations
Semesters Taught
- Spring 2026 – National Chengchi University