Working Across Boundaries 5 credits

This course prepares you to navigate the academic, interpersonal, and professional challenges of your master studies. As you begin your programme at JIBS, you will encounter new expectations, diverse perspectives, and complex organisational contexts. This course provides a foundation for critical engagement, collaborative learning, and personal development, helping you build the mindset and habits needed to thrive throughout your program. You will work through three modules that teach you, respectively, how to navigate the boundaries between student and academic life, boundaries among team members, and within organisations. In “Ethics,” you will explore how values, norms, and social order shape interactions and work in the university setting through debate and reflection, you will strengthen your ethical reasoning and understanding of academic rigor. “Teams” introduces you to team structures, group dynamics, and the role of diversity. Through workshops, you will develop strategies to communicate, collaborate and negotiate effectively in teams. In “Individuals and Organisations,” you will learn concepts like organisational structures and roles, psychological boundaries and work-life balance to better understand individuals’ roles and boundaries within organisations. By completing this course, you will be equipped to think critically, reflect purposefully, and question constructively. You will be able to organise your studies, engage meaningfully in class discussions, and approach coursework with confidence. You will also gain insight into your values, your role in diverse teams, and your ability to manage your professional development with awareness and responsibility. <br> **Connection to Research ** The course draws on contemporary research in organisational behavior, ethics and management. You will engage with scholarly literature and frameworks to analyse issues related to ethical reasoning, team dynamics, and the relationship between individuals and organisations. **Connection to Practice ** Through discussions, workshops, and reflective exercises, you will critically engage with research findings and consider how theoretical insights relate them to practical situations in academic and organisational contexts. You will participate in case-based discussions, simulations, and roleplays built around organisational dilemmas. These activities develop your skills in critical thinking, professional communication, collaboration, and ethical judgement. Practice-oriented assessments, including team-based case analysis, group presentations of recommendations, and individual reflective essays, require you to apply theoretical concepts to real-world scenarios, supporting the transfer of knowledge to future academic and professional settings. **Connection to Ethics, Responsibility, Sustainability (ERS) ** You will engage with ethical reasoning, responsible teamwork, and the role of individuals within organisations. In the Ethics module, you will analyse ethical dilemmas and academic integrity through debate and reflection. In the Teams module, ERS perspectives are addressed through discussions of responsible collaboration and inclusive communication. In the Individuals and Organisations module, you will reflect on boundary management, and professional responsibility towards broader societal implications of organisational practices. ERS perspectives are applied through discussions, reflection, and collaborative workshops.