Specialised Course 1 (7.5 ECTS)

 

This course aims to provide students with tools, concepts and theories to analyze the challenges that businesses encounter in their provision of the complex and compound good that constitutes tourism. The course combines different knowledge areas, including people management, corporate social responsibility and destination management, to engage students in a critical debate on how to situate sustainability at the center of industry practice. Looking at the evolving tourism industry, students will develop a fuller understanding of the different demands and challenges that arise in the planning, development and delivery of tourism. Case studies will ensure students appreciate the relevance of the material to the current industry trends.

 

Many private as well as public organizations provide “content” or “experiences” in the guise of cultural services, events or products. Examples span from public cultural institutions, such as theatres and museums, to private firms within e.g. architecture and advertising, and over to the entertainment industries of e.g. music, film and literature. These otherwise very different industries share certain managerial challenges. The two most important such challenges are a) Successfully managing the creativity of highly specialized skill-holders who develop these industries’ products and services (such as artists, musicians, designers, and writers); b) Successfully managing highly uncertain and political external environments, shaped by unpredictable tastes and trends in consumer markets, cultural policies and subsidies. This course introduces these fundamental managerial challenges and discusses some basic management methods of overcoming them.

Service and Innovation: Social Practice in Innovation and Services
This course introduces students to cultural and sociological research perspectives, which examine services as part of everyday practice and explores interactions between providers and users in order to better understand the bilateral processes of “serving” and “being served”. In the context of this course, services are to be understood as more than the mere use of objects, technology and infrastructure; they are routines constructed at the confluence of multiple factors including, but are not limited to, material artefacts. Throughout the course, students will learn how by co-structuring the role of objects, technology and infrastructure we can analyse them without collapsing into technological determinism. In this context, the course will give particular attention and emphasis to the study of digital services and digitalization as a social phenomena. In addition, the study of service as practices will give students a better understanding of the roles that perceptions and norms have in shaping the collaborative nature of service co-production. Based on refined understandings of services as practices, students will learn to discuss implications for innovation and management in public and private organizations.

 

 

 • Discuss and apply the concepts and theories on tourism supply, innovation and sustainable development presented in the course to solve practical problems of tourism organizations and destinations.

 • Analyze a practical challenge related to tourism supply from the perspectives of innovation and sustainability and make recommendations for improvement.

 • Identify and discuss the role of various core sectors involved in tourism supply (hospitality, transportation, intermediaries and attractions) and their role in relation to society and the environment.

 • Analyze the characteristics of tourism supply innovation and the idea of sustainable tourism from an organizational perspective.

 • Present and discuss current trends within destination management in tourism.

 

 • Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of the central concepts and theories presented through the course

 • Critically examine and apply theory and tools to the management of organizations and projects within the creative industries.

 • Understand the principles of creativity, creative processes, and creative labour, and recognize these in real-life cases

 • Know the basic concepts and methods relevant to management of creativity of specialized skill-holders

 • Know the basic concepts and methods relevant to management of highly uncertain and political external environments

 • Analyze and recognize organizations and projects within the creative industries, and provide theory-based suggestions for management of real-life problems.

 

• Identify, diagnose and argue for theory-based approaches to studying service and innovation as social practices
• Relate concepts models and theories to empirical evidence
• Assess the relationships between innovation and service practices, and demonstrate an understanding of their implications at organizational and societal levels
• Apply critical and reflective skills in individual and collective learning activities
• Construct and sustain coherent arguments based upon an understanding of competing perspectives presented during the course

 

 

7.5