MBA 2426 Project and Change Management
MBA 2426 Project and Change Management
The World Bank expects about 25 to 30% of all money spent in the World to be spent on projects. The popularity of ‘doing work by projects’ is often attributed to the versatility of projects as a mechanism for turning ideas into reality. In other words: to bring about change. A project is a temporary organization embedded in a wider and more permanent organization, which simultaneously prioritizes, selects, plans, and executes many projects, as well as coordinates among them. How is that done? Which units and roles are needed for this and how is it all coordinated? How are projects managed, and how are they embedded in the larger permanent organization? How are project-based initiatives leveraged for organizational change? These questions are addressed through the concept of Organizational Project Management (OPM) and Change management, which are parallelly practiced in this course by understanding both theoretically through OPM and change management theory, as well as practically by observing organizational reality.
This course takes an organization-wide perspective. The students will learn what projects are, how to manage projects, how they are embedded in their wider parent organization, the prioritization, selection, and integration of projects in the organization’s workflow, the different strategies for the project-based part of the organization, and how this all is governed for the achievement of organizational objectives. Meanwhile, students will also learn how to implement change, how to understand resistance to change, and how to institute change through projects.
After the course, the student will have:
- Explain the different forms of change and how change is accomplished through projects.
- Explain resistance to change and strategies to cope with bottom-up resistance and overcome organizational inertia.
- Explain advanced project management concepts, theories, and practices, including project life-cycle, planning, stakeholder management, and agile and traditional methodologies.
- Analyze the concepts, processes, and implementation practices of projects, programs, portfolios, and megaprojects.
- Identify organization-wide strategies to govern project-based operations and market presentation.
- Apply governance theories, including agency theory, stewardship theory, transaction cost economics, ESG perspective, shareholder, and stakeholder theory, to practical project and organizational settings.
- Apply AI-based solutions for real-life project management scenarios.
- Explain business ethics, underlying moral principles, and organizational approaches to ethical issues.
- Assess organizational project management (OPM) implementation practices, including potential ethical issues and organizational outcomes.
The student will take away a number of practiced skills, such as:
- Plan and implement organizational change, identify resistance to change, and develop strategies to cope with resistance.
- Utilize different types of information for planning, estimating, and follow-up in project management.
- Analyze organizations using existing theories and AI-based tools to evaluate and consult on project management and organizational change implementations.
- Design organizational project management (OPM) systems and their support institutions (e.g., project management offices, steering groups) using relevant methods and theories.
- Assessing governance paradigms and identifying the ethical implications and consequences of different governance structures.
- Assessing OPM implementations and interpreting assessment reports from these implementations.
After the module, the student has the competence to:
- Analyze academic and practical organizational project management in different industries
- Analyze academic and practical organizational change management in different industries
- Reflect on organizational problem areas and develop innovative solutions for them
- Identify ethical and other issues stemming from an organization’s OPM implementation
- Match academic publications to real-life problems in project and change management
Day 1:
Organizational change, planning organizational change, resistance to change.
Day 2:
Implementing change through projects, and introduction of project management. Casework.
Day 3:
Planning, scheduling, governing, and business integration of projects and OPM governance. Group presentation.
Day 4:
Organizational OPM approaches and philosophies. Case-based game.
Three to four of the teaching hours in this course are dedicated to CSR, ESG, and ethics, and broader social and environmental issues. At least two to three hours are dedicated to the introduction and application of AI-based tools for project management.
The course is a conducted as a teaching module, where the students have classes all day for four consecutive days, a total of 32 hours.
Specific information regarding any aspect of student evaluation will be provided in class. It is the student’s responsibility to obtain this information. Please note that whilst attendance is not compulsory, it is the student’s responsibility to obtain any information provided in class that is not included on the course homepage/ITSlearning or textbook. Homepages and/or ITSlearning are not designed for the purpose of students who choose not to attend class.
Candidates may be called in for an oral hearing as a verification/control of written assignments.
The course is a part of a full MBA and examination in all courses in the MBA programme must be passed in order to obtain a certificate for the MBA degree.
In all BI Executive courses and programmes, there is a mutual requirement for the student and the course responsible regarding the involvement of the student's experience in the planning and implementation of courses, modules and programmes. This means that the student has the right and duty to get involved with their own knowledge and practice relevance, through the active sharing of their relevant experience and knowledge.
Granted admission to the BI-Fudan programme. Please consult our student regulations.
Disclaimer
Changes in exam type can be made until the course starts. In addition, unforeseen events or external conditions may call for deviations in teaching and exams.
Bachelor's degree or equivalent, 4 years work experience, managerial experience and good written and oral knowledge of the English language.
| Assessments |
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Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Submission other than PDF Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 60 Grouping: Group (2 - 8) Duration: 5 Day(s) Exam code: MBA 24263 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Submission PDF Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 40 Grouping: Group (2 - 8) Duration: 4 Week(s) Comment: Group submission, counting 40% of the final grade. Exam code: MBA 24264 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
All exams must be passed to get a grade in this course.
A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 4 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of at least 110 hours.
The oral presentation will be recorded. Each group is responsible for recording and uploading the oral presentation in Wiseflow.