Example Course 7: The World of Production

In this chapter, we demonstrate how to create actual courses using the Economy Studies design toolkit, showing various example courses. Each of these courses flows from our central philosophy: teach students how to study the economy, rather than teaching them one form of economic thinking in the abstract. In terms of our principles, they vary: some of these example courses focus more on pluralism, others on real-world economics, others yet on thinking about values. As for the building blocks, each of the example courses uses at least one of the ten building blocks, while most use more than one.

These courses are described rather briefly in this chapter, as full syllabi, slides or exam questions would take up too much space in a physical book. More extensive course descriptions, syllabi and teaching material can be found in the online database of our partner organisation Exploring Economics.

The courses shown here are highly diverse, and mainly intended to inspire and to show the range of possibilities. Depending on the knowledge available within a department, the courses designed there could be vastly different from the examples shown here.

Example Courses:

Course outline:

This interdisciplinary course on the topic of production is taught together by an economist and an economic sociologist. In order to achieve as much interaction and cohesiveness as possible, as well as benefiting from the intellectual specialization of both the teachers, each week has a lecture given by the economic sociologist, one by the economist, and a seminar given together by both.

In the lectures and seminars, theoretical ideas and empirical research into production are discussed. The different theories are introduced through the history of economic thought. Furthermore, special attention is given to the different ways in which production processes can be organized and run, how this has changed throughout history and differs between places and organizations.

Throughout the course, a number of excursions are organized in which a few different firms are visited. Here students are given a presentation and tour through the company. Students are required to actively participate and ask (critical) questions to managers, and both higher and lower positioned workers. These excursions are always prepared by looking at mission statements, statistics, annual reports, and potentially also news coverage on the firm. 

Throughout the course, students are tasked to come up with real-world examples (economic or personal) of the theoretical concepts covered in class. These may refer to books, papers and websites. High marks are given to examples that other students did not provide. That is, your mark depends on how many other students provide similar examples and how similar they are to yours. The examples do not have to have equations or numbers, but they should have a story.

For the final assignment students have to choose one firm and perform a short empirical case study of it. For this they are required to do fieldwork (if possible some participatory observation), conduct interviews, and analyze statistics and documents. 

Teaching Materials:

Required background knowledge:

None

Nominal workload:

10 ECTS (300 hrs)

This course uses the following building blocks:

Main:

Additional: