Program Mission

All individuals encounter and engage with organizational communications, processes, and consequences of organizational activities as they work and go through life. To study these directly helps students enhance their capacity to engage effectively with organizations as citizens and stakeholders.

Analyzing organizations will also help students determine their views concerning professional responsibility, which is a stated purpose in Lafayette’s mission statement.

Students will increasingly experience the applications of what they learn in the minor throughout their careers as citizens and employees, and we expect that students will engage actively in furthering their education about organizations throughout their lives.

Program Goals
  • Students can take advantage of perspectives gained from their liberal arts education to examine the central role of organizations in collective life. To that end, this minor presents students with a focused course of study covering different scholarly vantage points on organizations. 
  • An Organizational Studies minor adds to the depth of the student toolkit in considering meaningful work. Importantly, it allows students to identify opportunities and obstacles that exist on the way to realizing their goals. 
  • This minor provides students with a routinized and formal structure of courses in organizational studies. Pursuing this minor can satisfy the scholarly ambitions of those students interested in studying organizations, while also encouraging their pursuit of full majors in other disciplines. 
Learning Outcomes

Students will:

  • Learn essential background knowledge of organizational processes, structures, and types.
  • Apply multidisciplinary approaches to researching organizations.
  • Develop further awareness of the influences that organizations can have in society in the context of patterns of consumption and/or societal inequalities, including critical perspectives.
  • Demonstrate skills in analyzing organizational actions by applying multidisciplinary concepts and perspectives through exposure to the case study method and applications of quantitative and qualitative data.
  • Understand aspects of organizations that impact the satisfaction that people experience in different work settings.