Students learn the following concepts as well as the different theoretical traditions in which they are embedded:
- Context of cultural diversity: globalization/localization, the nation state, migration;
- Concepts of cultural difference and diversity: dynamics of identity, ethnicity, culture, religion, language, multiculturality, hybridity;
- Approaches to diversity management in society and organisations.
Students learn to apply basic concepts addressed in the course in order to explain the dynamics of cultural diversity and its management within a particular organisational or societal setting.
Students learn to assess and discuss in a critical way the various subjects of the course referred to above. Additional skills: critical thinking, writing, presentation, team planning, text analysis.
This course will occupy the students of the track MCD on an almost full-time basis in the first three weeks of the first block. It will consist of daily lectures and discussions of basic MCD concepts. Moreover, students will have a first encounter with cultural diversity issues in an organisation by doing interviews as a team.
The course is obligatory for students who do the Master track Management of Cultural Diversity.
Students have to pass all assignments/exams within this course. If one assignment is not passed the whole course with all assignments has to be retaken the following academic year.
Assignments: individual paper (50%, minimum grade 5.0) and team memo based on team assignment (50%, minimum grade 5.0).
Labour market orientation: meeting with diversity consultant as guest lecture, team assignment in an organization.
Knowledge regarding cultural diversity, management and/or policy development
Having been allowed entry to Master track Management of Cultural Diversity, Master Arts and Culture Studies
Cultural diversity is a basic trait and challenge of organisations and institutions in contemporary societies. People with different cultural backgrounds, different religions and speaking different languages encounter each other in several ways including: as colleagues at work, as employees and clients of organisations, as pupils, parents, managers and teaching staff of schools, as patients, doctors, nurses and managers in hospitals, as citizens, media makers, policy makers and politicians in the public sphere, etc. These encounters create new opportunities and risks for interactions and relations of cooperation, i.e. they raise new and challenging organisational issues and questions. These issues and questions call for new answers that will be decisive not only for the viability of modern institutions and organisations, but also for the degree of participation, well-being and identity formation of the different people involved. In this course we will study these issues as the subject matter of the whole MCD track in an overarching and introductory way. Thus the students will have a framework in which they can position the subsequent contents they will study in the following courses and they will have a first encounter with cultural diversity in a specific setting.
- series of articles.