Dmitrijs Kravcenko

69: Our 5th Anniversary Special!

October 13, 2020 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
Celebrate five years of the Talking About Organizations Podcast with us!!!

Happy 5th Anniversary!!!

On October 13, 2015 — The Talking About Organizations Podcast descended upon the unsuspecting world of academia with the release of Episode 1: Scientific Management – F.W. Taylor’s One Best Way, covering the much misunderstood and severely misrepresented work of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Our original quartet of podcasters Dmitrijs, Ralph, Pedro, and Miranda (aka 3 late-stage PhD students and Ralph) took a leap of faith to get behind something they truly believed in – that the field of management and organizational studies was in trouble because of systemic neglect of its own history and foundations, and that a semi-serious podcast might be a way to help fix that. Still, the question remained – would this project last beyond the first few releases, would it have lasting value, or would they succumb to excessive workload and finally heed the word of their more serious colleagues about not wasting time on silly things and publishing papers instead, if they ever wanted to get a job in academia? 

And here we are five years later — with many new cast members and sixty-nine episodes under our belt — and still going strong! Reaching beyond the traditional canon of classics with the works of Fayol, Maslow, Weber, and so many others; we have included more recent “classics” such as Hochschild, Kerr, and Forester; commentaries on movies, plays, and documentaries from Twelve Angry Men to American Factory; and various conference specials from the Organizational Knowledge, Learning, and Capabilities conference and the Academy of Management‘s annual meeting. Our podcast reaches thousands of listeners each month and is included in the curriculum of at least (confirmed) thirty-eight business schools and universities around the world! 

And so, on October 13, 2020 (in a year when any sort of festivity is a welcome diversion), we are celebrating our fifth anniversary with a series of releases spread out over the next two weeks. Details on each of the releases are below. Come join us and share a virtual beverage of your choice as we ring in five years of Talking About Organizations!

Note: Pictured from L to R: Pedro, Catherine, Maikel, Dmitrijs, Tom, Leonardo, Miranda, Ralph

Part 1 (released October 13th). “Behind the Curtain: How We Do the Podcast”

In these release, we offer listeners an insider perspective on the making of our episodes. Dmitrijs, Pedro, Ralph, and Tom discuss how we choose an episode topic, schedule it, record it and conduct post-production, and release it through the web and RSS feeds. We also talk about the broader Talking About Organizations Network and what we enjoy most about doing the podcast.

 

Part 2 (released October 13th). “Questions from our Listeners”

About a month before the anniversary, we solicited questions from our listeners about things they wanted to know or suggestions for the podcast. Out of the large number of excellent questions received; Dmitrijs, Miranda, Maikel, Jarryd, and Tom broke it down to five that we tackled and discussed in our own Talking About Organizations way. The questions are:

  1. I was thinking about the politics of publishing in peer-review nowadays. What does a naive junior scholar need to know to get their work published – down to the nitty-gritty? Would that be something?
  2. We would like to hear more about <pick one: sociomateriality studies / strategy as practice / charisma in leadership in small and medium sized firms, etc.> What are the gaps that we need to plug?
  3. In 1993 Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote a highly cited article in AMR called Barriers to the Advancement of Organizational Science: Paradigm Development as Dependent Variable. In it he argues that the field of organisational science (i.e., management and organisational studies) displays a high degree of dissensus compared with other social science disciplines such as economics and political science.  “The question for organizational science is whether the field can strike an appropriate balance between theoretical tyranny and an anything goes attitude, which seems to be more characteristic of the present state.” My question, to draw upon the technology product terms, is this is a bug of our discipline or a feature?
  4. I think the podcast could provide some further understanding for the issues we are facing right now and how org theory can help tackle them: virtual work / remote work, the end of the office, conspiracy theories, heavy disruption, mental exhaustion and burn out, high uncertainty, etc. I believe existing theories have a lot to say about those contemporary issues. I think you should also consider covering new papers or books rather than very established ones or streams of literature. e.g. the pieces that get awards if they explore new perspectives or literatures? Not things we have seen a large number of times! (we also included a related question submitted to us at the last minute about mini-meetings and remote work)
  5. How can the podcast explore grand challenges or wicked problems? There is not always a single seminal work that encompasses such problems, which are pervasive in our modern environment.

 

Part 3 (released October 21st). “Perspectives of our Guests”

In this final release of our 5th year celebration, we welcome the perspectives of several past guests, hosts, and observers of past recordings — with additional commentary from cast members Pedro, Miranda, Catherine, Leonardo, and Tom. Our guests discussed the experiences (and fun) of participating in the podcast, the podcast’s current role and potential future directions, and the state of scholarship in organization studies. We thank our guests for taking time out of their busy schedules to talk with us!

  • Ella Hafermalz — Former co-host of the program who participated in ten episodes — 28 (Organizations as Rhetoric), 31 (Process Studies), 35 (Emotional Labor), 41 (Images of Organization), 49 (Engineered Culture & Normative Control), 50 (50th Episode celebration), 51 (Tyranny of Light), 53 (Charlie Chaplain’s Modern Times), 57 (Reward Systems), and 66 (Workplace Isolation, as returning Special Guest)
  • Deborah Brewis — Guest of Episode 17 on Rosabeth Moss Kanter and tokenism; Deborah was instrumental in establishing our thematic collection with the Management Learning Journal.
  • Simone Phipps & Leon Prieto — Guests of Episode 56 on Charles Clinton Spaulding and African-American contributions to management scholarship.
  • Maja Korica — Guest of Episode 52 on Rosemary Stewart and management in practice.
  • Marc Ventresca — Guest of Episode 46, covering a professional development workshop (PDW) on classics of organization theory and management science at the Academy of Management annual meeting in 2018
  • Fabricio Neves & Polyana Silva — Two of our loyal listeners who even joined the virtual audience for recordings of Episode 64 (Disasters and Crisis Management) and Episode 66 (Workplace Isolation)

 

 

68: Globalization and Culture Clashes — “American Factory” (Documentary)

September 8, 2020 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

Movie Poster

American Factory is an important and powerful documentary, telling the story of cultural clashes and labor-management relations as a Chinese firm re-opened and re-purposed a close automotive plant in Ohio. Six years earlier, in 2008, General Motors (GM) shuttered its Moraine, Ohio automotive plant, rendering thousands of workers unemployed. Then in 2014, China’s Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co. Ltd. purchased the facility and sought to re-purpose the plant to manufacture automotive glass. With it came a bold vision, workers emigrating from China would pair up with re-hired GM employees. Despite a substantial pay cut, the re-opening of the factory signaled a new hope for the American workers.

Alas, it would not be easy.

Using a fly-on-the-wall style of documentary, directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert allow viewers an up-close look at both American and Chinese workers and managers as they struggled to bring the new plant to profitability. The camera was kept very close as workers formed, stormed and, to an extent, normed during the first couple years. But some cultural barriers proved too difficult for quick solutions. From differing conceptions of company loyalty to opposing perspectives on corporate values workplace relations, safety, compensation, and unionization, Bognar and Reichert showed how the Americans and Chinese faced and (only occasionally resolved) conflict.

We analyzed this film through the lenses of several important organization theories and management science classics. Among them are Herzberg’s two-factor theory covering hygiene and motivation forms of incentives and Maurice Halbwachs’ concept of collective memory and ‘spaces’ — such as how the American workers recalled the facility’s layout for automotive manufacturing and therefore struggled with the changes being imposed by the Chinese managers.

Part 1. A new factory; An emerging culture clash
 
Part 2. On incentives, leadership, and the future of work

 

Watch with us:

Reichert, Je. & Benello, J. P. (Producers), & Bognar, S. & Reichert, Ju. (Directors). (2019). American factory. USA: Higher Ground Productions.

To Learn More:

Halbwachs, M., (1992). On collective memory. University of Chicago Press. http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/hawlbachsspace.pdf

Herzberg, F. (1966). Work and The Nature of Man. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B. and Snyderman, B. (1959). The Motivation to Work. New York: Wiley

Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2011). Managing the unexpected: Resilient performance in an age of uncertainty (Vol. 8). John Wiley & Sons.

Related Episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:

Episode 16, “Contingency Theory — Lawrence & Lorsch.”

Episode 54, “Measuring Organizational Cultures — Hofstede.”

Episode 60, “Contingency Theory — Woodward.”

66: Workplace Isolation – Forester

July 16, 2020 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
In this episode (which took place in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic), we explore the social and emotional impacts to the worker on having to work from home. For some workers, the concept of telework is hardly new. But many other vocations place great value on regular social contact with clients and customers. These include teachers, doctors, lawyers, public servants, and many others. The sudden thrust to teleworking for an unknown period of time has raised questions as to how these workers are coping with the new normal.

63: Remote Operations — The Hudson’s Bay Company

April 14, 2020 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
For this episode we discuss the history of a classic firm which exercised remote operations as a matter of course and faced multiple pandemics during its early existence. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) was chartered in 1670 by King Charles II at a time when the French monopolized fur trading with Native Americans in modern-day Canada. From then, the English would establish its own robust fur trading industry, establishing hundreds of posts from the western shores of Hudson Bay all across modern western Canada. The case is exceptional in demonstrating the historical challenges of remote operations where communications were limited to letters sent annually with the fur shipments across the Atlantic. How could London possibly maintain oversight and exercise control under such conditions?

51: The Tyranny of Light — Hari Tsoukas

December 6, 2018 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

  

Haridimos Tsoukas

Haridimos Tsoukas‘ 1997 article “The Tyranny of Light” was a bold article that challenged conventional wisdom about the oncoming information society. The Internet, personal computers, and the dot-com boom were still new and exciting. With information technologies advancing at an incredible pace, the sky (and the capacity of silicon) was the limit. Internet start-ups were sprouting up everywhere as young entrepreneurs strove to become the next Bill Gates. Never mind that the vast majority failed and faded quickly away (see Episode 49 and the example of normative control in a tech company). The possibilities seemed endless.

But so too were the dangers. Hari Tsoukas foresaw the problems that an information dominated society might produce. Could greater access to information have undesirable consequences, such as the loss of understanding or the growth of distrust? Could an information society disrupt socio-political norms? If these became true, what would happen.

Bolstered by hindsight and knowledge of how the information society evolved, we (your intrepid podcasters) take a look back at 1997.  To what extent Tsoukas got the future right, and what else transpired that Tsoukas could not have known or anticipated. What does this suggest for society and its leaders today?

 

 

You will also be able to download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 |  Part 3

Read with us:

Tsoukas, H. (1997). The tyranny of light: The temptations and the paradoxes of the information society. Futures, 29(9), 827-843.

To know more:

Rivera, L. A. (2012). Hiring as cultural matching: The case of elite professional service firms. American sociological review, 77(6), 999-1022.

Rivera, L. A. (2016). Pedigree: How elite students get elite jobs. Princeton University Press.

Turco, C. J. (2016). The conversational firm: Rethinking bureaucracy in the age of social media. Columbia University Press.

50: Celebrating 50 Episodes! What Have We Learned?

November 27, 2018 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

Talking about organizations has reached 50 episodes!

 

Pedro and the mythical signed poster!
Ralph and Miranda in BIrmingham, UK around the time of Episode 15
Brian Pentland performing live on Episode 21
Dmitrijs and Pedro working hard at the TAOP Symposium

 

To mark this occasion, we gathered all seven of us hosts to discuss what we like (and perhaps not) about the podcast and podcasting, what our favorite or most remembered episodes were, and what we have learned along the way. 

Turns out, one of the key things we learned was how much such a small number of dedicated scholars and practitioners can do with a lot of motivation and energy. As we discuss, there were many in the beginning who scoffed at the idea of podcasting on classic and emerging organization theories and concepts of management science. But with over 12,000 active listeners worldwide, Talking About Organizations has proven to be useful and entertaining all at once.

We hope you enjoy this brief retrospective. Also, click on the below graphic to view all the places where we have podcasted from in our many travels — sometimes having to find unique and interesting places to record to avoid noise and other problems!

Did you know THAT…

  • the podcast grew out of intellectually fertile soil of the Innovation, Knowledge and Organisational Networks Research Centre at the Warwick Business School. Thank you Jacky Swan, Davide Nicolini, Dawn Coton and many others for your early support and feedback!
  • while TAOP is no longer the sole academic podcast of its kind in management and organization studies, it is by far the largest one? Enjoyed by over 12000 regular listeners, Talking About Organizations is a reminder to all of us of the value of conversations to intellectual development and of the interest that our community has in foundational texts.
  • by the 50th episode we have had the pleasure of welcoming 25 guests on the show 27 times? And this is excluding guests and keynote speakers for our special events!
  • Speaking of special events, December 2017 marked the very first time we independently hosted an event – the Symposium on the Continuities and Disruptions of Management in the Gig Economy, featuring a whole bunch of wonderful people! Also big thanks to Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and University of Sussex for providing the resources that made it possible!
  • Katharina Dittrich (E4 and E21) and Mats Alvesson (E28 and E32) are the only two guests to make more than a single appearance on the show? Katharina also holds the honor of being our very first guest!
  • the podcast has been referenced in two peer-reviewed journals? See du Gay and Vikkelso (2018) and Bridgman, Cummings and Ballard (2018) for examples of two articles showing exceptionally good taste in their choice of sources.
  • there is a myth that rare collectable artefacts from the early days of the podcast exist scattered throughout the land… these range from the five original coffee mugs to a unique signed poster from the time of E21. Rest assured – we don’t know where most of these are either.

48: Stratified Systems Theory — Elliott Jaques

October 11, 2018 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

Elliott Jaques

Gillian Stamp

As bureaucracies became more prevalent as a feature of organizations post-WWII, questions surfaced as to how they could be improved. Was there an optimal way to design them? What was the best role of individual members within a bureaucracy? Could individuals be developed to handle higher level roles?

Among those asking such questions was Elliott Jaques, co-founder of the Tavistock Institute and later the author of the renowned book Requisite Organization that combined social theories with theories of organization. As a scientific approach to organizational design, the “stratified systems theory” of requisite organization sought to optimize the hierarchical structure based on the time-span of decisions at echelon. Then, using methods for measuring individual capabilities and capacity for decision making, members could be assigned posts within the organization based on best fit. Stratified systems theory (SST) established a common schema for using time-span that could be applied to any organization.

Stratified systems theory found a home in the U.S. Army due to its immediate applicability in the Army’s large, complex hierarchical structures during the Cold War. The seven strata prescribed in the Theory were found to be analogous with various echelons in combat organizations, and the individual capabilities mirrored the duties and requirements of officers at particular ranks from lieutenant (lowest stratum or Stratum I) to general (highest or Stratum VII). For this reason, and because the report is in the public domain, we opted to read Jaques’ Army Research Institute Report Level and Type of Capability in Relation to Executive Organization, co-authored with Brunel University colleague Gillian Stamp in 1991. The report gives both a good summary of the theory and a thorough explication of its potential use in practice.

But as a scientific approach to organization, SST has been heavily criticized and largely shunned. Why, and whether or not this is fair is among the many topics we tackle in this episode.

You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 |  Part 3

Read With Us:

Jaques, E. & Stamp, G. (1991). Level and Type of Capability in Relation to Executive Organization. Alexandria, Virginia: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Public domain.

To Learn More:

Kleiner, A. (2001). Elliott Jaques Levels With You, Strategy + Business, 22

Jaques, E. (1997). Requisite Organization: Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century. London: Gower.

Jacobs, T. O., & Jaques, E. (1990). Military executive leadership. In Clark, K. E. & Clark, M.. B. (Eds.) Measures of leadership (pp. 281-295). Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

________ (1991). Executive leadership. In Gal, R. & Mangelsdorff, A. D. (Eds.) The handbook of military psychology (pp. 431-448). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

45: Fate of Whistleblowers – C. Fred Alford

August 2, 2018 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
We discuss Fred Alford's book Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power in 2001 to understand and make sense of horrible treatment often suffered by those who witness and report illegal or immoral acts and have the courage and persistence to speak up and stand for what is right. In workplace environments, we have a name for such heroic men and women – whistleblowers. But historically, the experiences of many other whistleblowers are discouraging – being ostracized, ignored, harassed, marginalized, physically attacked, socially isolated and ultimately defeated while the wrongdoers continue with their organizations. Alford's study brings these experiences to light in hopes of changing attitudes toward those who would speak up for what is right.

43: Centralization/Decentralization Debate – The Federalist Papers

May 30, 2018 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
The Federalist Papers was a series of writings from American history leading up to its current Constitution, completed in 1787. Formed as thirteen separate colonies, this newly independent nation tried to form a central government that granted maximum autonomy to the States to prevent the emergence of an American monarchy. We explore two in this episode and use them to host the first-ever TAOP debate where two of us argued for federalism and two argued for anti-federalism!

42: Carnegie Mellon Series #5 – Organizational Learning

May 3, 2018 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
We discuss Barbara Levitt and James G. March’s article “Organizational Learning,” published in the 1988 edition of the Annual Review of Sociology. Although the authors hailed from Stanford University in California, we have included this episode in our Carnegie-Mellon Series because of James March’s involvement and perspectives on organization that clearly influenced the article. This work was a literature review across various streams in organizational learning up through the 1980s. Topics include learning from experience, organizational memory, ecologies of learning, and organizational intelligence. Of particular interest is how organizational learning was defined as not an outcome but a process of translating the cumulative experiences of individuals and codifying them as routines within the organization. From this, the authors applied the brain metaphor – such as memory and intelligence – to explain the phenomenon.