General Tips
1.    Please consider carefully if you send your tutors neatly typed exam answers. You will not be using word processors in the exam, so you might as well practice your writing skills. Show your tutors your handwritten answers.
2.    Time your answers. By writing out your answers, you can judge how much you can produce in under exam conditions and plan your exam strategy.
3.    Allocate the appropriate time in your exam for each question.  If you have met the time allocated per question, wrap up your argument and proceed to the next one.
Part A – Short Answer Questions
In your exam, you will be asked to choose FOUR from a list of TEN concepts.
Each question is worth 15 marks.
Total for Part A is 4 x 15 = 60 marks.
Hint: Explain these concepts and support your answer drawing from the case study. Identify how these terms are contested by using relevant Organisational Theory perspectives.

1.    Communities of Practice
2.    Institutional Logics
3.    Organisational Culture
4.    Technological Imperative
5.    Organisational Effectiveness
6.    Learning organisations
7.    Organisational structure
8.    Hegemonic Masculinity
9.    Managerialism
10.    Communicative Rationality
11.    The social construction of technology
12.    Deskilling
13.    Agency problem
14.    Physical structure of organisations

Part B – Essays
In your exam, you will be asked to choose TWO out of six questions.
Each question is worth 20 marks.
Total for Part B is 2 x 20 marks = 40 marks.
Use this guide and discuss your answers with your tutors in class. You may produce answers in groups of four, and ensure you provide answers that engage in-depth.
1.    Public sector organisations fulfil a particular role in society.  Discuss this role and the type of measures of organisational effectiveness that might be appropriate for measuring public sector success
2.    “Modernists…interpret knowledge about culture as a tool of management and culture itself as a variable to be manipulated to enhance the likelihood of achieving desired levels of organisational performance” (Hatch and Cunliffe, 2013: 192-193).
3.    How much does the organisational structure and physical structure of an organisation condition the behaviour of organisational members? Compare modernist, symbolic-interpretive and postmodern approaches.
4.    What are the major differences between conducting an environmental analysis from a modernist perspective as compared to a symbolic-interpretivist perspective?
5.    In what ways can organisational culture be described as a theatre?  In what ways can organisational culture be described as a soap opera?
6.    What is the agency problem? How useful is agency theory in understanding modernist notions of power and control in organisations?
7.    Critical theorists draw our attention to the other side of the modernist assumptions about power and control in organisations. What are their criticisms and what do they alert us to?
8.    Do concepts such as ‘gender regimes’ and ‘inequality regimes’ provide a useful analytical tool for understanding how power operates in organisations?

General Tips Assignment