King's College London

This course introduces students to theories and practices of human resource management (HRM). Emphasis is placed on understanding how HRM as a function relates to strategic business decision-making. In addition, the course discusses the design of key high-performance and high-commitment HR practices. The course stimulates critical thinking about the roles that alternative HRM strategies and practices can play in contributing to positive employee and organizational outcomes.

This course analyses the basic concepts associated with competing theoretical perspectives on the nature of the firm and analysis of market coordination. It develops an awareness of how recent advances in the theory of Industrial Organization relate to previously dominant perspectives in the field. Students develop an understanding of how different approaches to Industrial Organization have been applied at the level of specific firms, particular industries, and with regard to concrete policy initiatives. Students learn to outline, evaluate, and illustrate the contributions of transaction cost economics, resource-based theories of the firm, and evolutionary approaches to Industrial Organization; evaluate and illustrate accounts of the market order which highlight the role of social rules, relationships, and conventions in the functioning of competitive processes; and demonstrate the policy relevance of recent theoretical advances in Industrial Organization by evaluating the promotion of quasi-market structures in sectors such as broadcasting.

This course introduces students to the full range of the material and visual culture of the ancient world in Rome from the Republican period to late Antiquity. The course includes a study of the built environment, from the major urban and imperial monuments to the forts and farms of the frontiers, the images housed in public buildings, houses and tombs, as well as portable objects, and the material residues of daily life and ritual. Students in this option undertake the spring term of the yearlong course Art & Archaeology of Greece & Rome.

This course introduces students to the history of the world from 1780 to 1900. It focuses on the idea of modernity, following four major themes that help explain the making of the modern world: War and Empire; the Material World; Politics and Revolution; and Societies and Cultures. A series of chronologically organized lectures and seminars address significant events, topics, and concepts relating to the history of Britain, Europe, and other world regions. This course asks students to think thematically over time; to detect connections and contrasts between phenomena in different places; to recognize that all regions of the world have complex histories; and to develop a world historical imagination.

This course teaches the history of the ancient world across three continents and 1800 years. It shows how the classical world of Greece and Rome developed alongside the civilizations of the Near East and beyond. It explores the evidence on which the history of the period is based, and introduces students to the most recent interpretations of the past. The course follows the rise of Rome first in Italy and then in the Mediterranean and northwards as far as Britain, also exploring its cultural impact in different parts of the Empire.

The course introduces students to key arguments about the various ways that economics increasingly underpins the cultural sector and the creative industries. The module outlines broad concepts that provide the students with foundational knowledge about cultural economics, cultural markets, and cultural value. Recent changes, such as the digitization of culture are introduced which help students identify and understand how the economics of culture is subject to change. Students learn about the way cultural labor is valued and often de-valued and the structures of cultural economies which enable inequality. A wide variety of cultural sectors and products are examined including cultural heritage, festivals, and cities of culture. Students consider the impacts of cultural production on the environment and innovative ways to change the footprint of culture, media, and creative industries.