Course Requirements

Curriculum

A combination of required core and elective courses are offered, to balance the needs for topic knowledge and program flexibility. The qualifying exam is based on a core set of six courses taken over the first and second years. Additional methods and theory classes are offered within and outside the department. A sample schedule follows the list of courses.

The Ph.D. degree requires students to successfully complete the following courses and examinations:

• Completion of 8 core and elective theory courses (32 units);
• Completion of 4 core and elective research methods courses (16 units);
• Completion of 2 additional elective courses (8 units; theory or research methods) that offer an opportunity for an integrated course of study proposed by the student, with the advice and consent of the advisor, and approved by the Graduate Advisor;
• Satisfactory completion of a qualifying examination. The exam is based on 6 core classes taken in the first 2 years. 
• Satisfactory completion and presentation of the qualifying paper;
• Satisfactory completion of a Ph.D. Dissertation and oral Dissertation Defense that demonstrates the candidate’s ability to contribute significantly and independently to the field of technology management.

Core Theory Classes 

TMP 272 Organizational Theory (4 units)

This course is designed to give students exposure to various theories of organizing. The course begins by exploring the foundations of organization theory, including Taylorism, Industrial Relations, the Chicago School, and the Carnegie School. Next, the course explores important elaborations of organizational theory including Transaction Cost Economics, Resource Dependence (and structural contingency theory), Institutional Theory, and Population Ecology. Finally, the course explores recent directions in organization theory including Network Forms of Organizing, Process-Based Theories of Organizing, and Work-Based Theories of Organizing. Students will leave this course understanding the antecedents and consequences of organizational form.

TMP 273 Technology Strategy (4 units)

This course is designed to expose students to a broad foundation in technology management strategy research. The course will offer an introduction to the range of research on strategic management, from the theoretical to the empirical, and from the classic to the current. At the heart of the course will be our ability to understand and explain technology strategies, and how and why these differ across organizations and across industries. The course begins with an introduction to the core concepts of strategy and the various factors that may influence firm performance. Then we will cover a number of topics that are central to research in technology management strategy. Each session is meant to introduce you to some classic and current theory on the topic, to link theory to the process of innovation and to point out some additional research that would be valuable to students with a greater interest in the topic. Finally, we will end each session with a discussion of the opportunities for further research in current and evolving domains. These topics include: strategy and the locus of performance, the industrial-organizational economics origins of strategy, transaction cost economics, the resource-based view (RBV), the knowledge-based view, competence and capabilities based theory and how these theories help us understand innovation, technology evolution, industry evolution and technical change.

TMP 274 Networks and Innovation (4 units)

This course explores how organizing processes enable and constrain the development and use of technological innovations. The course focuses on the role of networks in developing ideas for new technologies and the use of networks to diffuse technologies within organizations. The course covers such theoretical perspectives as structuration theory, practice theory, network emergence theory, and diffusion theory. Students will leave this course understanding how networks within organizations affect the paths of technology development and use.

TMP 275 Technology and Organizational Change (4 units)

This course is designed to introduce students to fundamental questions and approaches to the study of technology and organizations. Specifically, we will explore how organizational structures enable and constrain the development of new technologies, and how new technologies enable changes in the process of organizing. The purpose of the course is to provide students with a thorough grounding in various theoretical perspectives on technology development and use. Students will leave this course understanding how social and political dynamics underlie all technological development and shape the innovation process.

TMP 276 Teams and Meso-Organizational Theory (4 units)

Organizational science is an interdisciplinary field that draws primarily on psychology, social psychology, sociology, and economics. As such, the field spans from what is often called “micro” (organizational behavior) to “macro” (organization theory). This course introduces students to many of the core theoretical underpinnings of what sits in the middle: “meso” organizational theories. Meso-research generally looks at intra-organizational processes, what connects individuals and organizations. Using teams as a pro-typical example, teams are groups of individuals where the dynamics between individuals shape organizational outcomes. In other words, what happens within these teams (which are more than a simple aggregation of individuals) are critical to understanding how an organization acts (which often act in ways that are not efficient or effective as a result of what happens inside organizations). In general, the focus is on understanding what happens inside organizations and across levels of analysis. We focus on what firms actually do and how that departs from individual motives and from economic or institutional assumptions of how firms should act.

Technology Management Electives

TMP 293 Discourse and Institutions (4 units) – Sample Elective

This course is designed to give students an understanding of how systems of meaning such as — cultural frames, discourse systems, categorical logics, rhetorical forms, conventions of understanding, subjective field mappings, collective ontologies or institutional logics operate so as to define the nature of markets, technologies, organizations, and organizational environments. The course will review the history of how these kinds of meaning structures have been theorized and studied by organizational scientists over the last century. The course will review contemporary research traditions in the field and also examine how new programs grounded in modern text mining technologies are emerging in research areas such as information science, computational hermeneutics and the digital humanities.

TMP 271 Organizational Behavior (4 units) - Sample Elective

This course is designed to provide foundational knowledge in Organizational Behavior, including classic and contemporary theories, ongoing controversies, and ground-breaking empirical studies. In a single quarter it is impossible to complete an exhaustive tour of the field, so we will explore select research domains that will give you a sufficient lay of the land. Topics related to individual, team, and organizational processes will be covered, including perception and personality, motivation, stress, power and influence, conflict, negotiation, decision-making, organization culture, organization structure and design, and organizational change. Students will leave this course with a broad familiarity with theory and research concerned with micro-organizational processes, the analytical skills necessary to critically evaluate and integrate work in this area, and the insights that contribute to the current dialogue in the field.

TMP 280 Theory, Research and Practicum (4 units) – Sample Elective

This course is a proseminar for Ph.D. students. Its focus is on professional development. Over the course of the term, we will cover a variety of topics, such as how to succeed as a PhD. student, and what the differences are salient across various academic disciplines related to Technology Management. We will also cover a number of processes such as how the academic job market works, managing the review process, and getting tenure.

TMP 291ST Work in the Age of Intelligent Machines – Sample Elective

We have long predicted radical economic and social transformation given the introduction of ostensibly "intelligent" technologies into the world of work. And while history reveals a story of more gradual and constrained change, many prominent analysts claim that recent advances in AI and robotics mean this time is different. We will use this doctoral seminar to assess these arguments, current work realities and possible futures so that we can propose more valuable research. In this course we will simultaneously develop familiarity with critical technologies (e.g., machine learning, robotics) and with work on the adoption of technologies. We will consider analysis from a wide range of disciplines and sources, ranging from economics, organization studies, sociology, human-computer/robot interaction, ethics, law, medicine, political science, corporate/public research and beyond.

Methods Courses

TMP 283 Qualitative Methods (4 Units) - Core Methods Course

This course introduces students to qualitative methods. We will focus on interviewing and ethnography as two major types of qualitative research, and we will discuss grounded theory as a method of analyzing qualitative data. There are other types of data collection and other analytic tools, and we will also consider new approaches to conducting and analyzing qualitative research. We will discuss how and why you might choose to adopt qualitative methods. Although reading methods texts and research reports written by fieldworkers is crucial for learning to do qualitative work, it is not sufficient. As a result, we will do some hands-on activities to develop skills at recording, coding and analyzing qualitative data.

TMP 282 Network Analysis (4 Units) – Sample Elective

This course is designed to review theoretical, conceptual, and analytic issues associated with network perspectives on communicating and organizing. The course will review scholarship on the science of networks across a wide array of disciplines for an in-depth look at theories, methods, and tools that can be used to examine the structure and dynamics of networks. The majority of class time will be spent discussing the assigned readings. A series of laboratory exercises will provide experience with computer-based network analysis, modeling and visualization.

Basic and Advanced Statistics (4 Units each) - Sample Elective Generally taken in other departments. Students with advanced methods upon entrance may be able to place out of some of these courses.

Sample Program of Study for Ph.D. Students in Technology Management

Year One

Fall Quarter

• Course 1: Qualitative Methods
• Course 2: Social Movements
• Course 3: ED 214A

Winter Quarter

• Course 1: Networks and Innovation
• Course 2: Organization Theory
• Course 3: ED 214B

Spring Quarter

• Course 1: Proseminar
• Course 2: Organizational Behavior  
• Course 3: Computational and Computer Modeling

Year Two

Fall Quarter

• Course 1: Technology Strategy
• Course 2: Intelligent Machines
•  Research and Preparation related to Qualifying Paper and Exam

Winter Quarter

• Course 1: Teams and Meso-Organizational Theory
• Course 2: Technology and Organizational Change
• Course 3: 597A: Qualifying Exam Reading Course
• Research and Preparation related to Qualifying Paper and Exam

Spring Quarter

• Course 1: Discourse and Institutions
• Course 2: 597B: Qualifying Paper Writing Course
• Writing and Preparation related to Qualifying Paper and Exam

Due: Qualifying Exam - end of June of 2nd year
Due: Qualifying Paper - end of June of 2nd year

Year Three

Fall Quarter

• Presentation of Qualifying Paper to Faculty and Fellow Students

Winter Quarter

• Ph.D. Dissertation Research and Preparation

Spring Quarter

• Ph.D. Proposal Defense

Year Four

Fall Quarter

• Ph.D. Dissertation Research 

Winter Quarter

• Ph.D. Dissertation Research 

Spring Quarter

• Ph.D. Dissertation Research 
• Job Market begins during summer 

Year Five

Fall Quarter

• Ph.D. Dissertation Research 
• Job Market Applications

Winter Quarter

• Ph.D. Dissertation Research 
• Job Market Interviews

Spring Quarter

• Dissertation Completion and Defense by Spring of Year 5