Dmitrijs Kravcenko

40: Symposium on the Gig Economy LIVE

February 24, 2018 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

A SPECIAL EPISODE FROM OUR VERY FIRST EVENT!

Key-participants-e40
The TAOP Symposium on the Gig Economy was a unique, one-day interdisciplinary symposium on the forms and effects of management in the contemporary sharing (a.k.a. gig) economy that took place on 15 December 2017 at the University of Sussex. Blending individual and panel presentations from leading scholars and commentators with group conversations, we wanted to examine the continuities – as well as disruptions – in the ways that work is organised through, and in light of, online platforms such as uber, deliveroo, upwork.

The aim of the symposium was to advance understanding of the sharing economy, with particular attention to its relation to the classics in management and organizational scholarship; as well as to explore methods suitable to grasp the sharing economy as an object of inquiry.

We are extremely pleased with all the wonderful feedback received from the delegates, as well as with developmental feedback – thank you all so much! Reflecting on the original goals of the symposium, it seems that our ambition to hold three types of conversation in one day was perhaps too ambitious. The keynote, panels and all the panelists were amazing, but did not leave as much space for open discourse as we had envisioned. Still, the conversations we did witness and take part in were phenomenal and it really was rewarding to engage with such a diverse group of first-class (Taylor pun intended) scholars.

 

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

 

e40-programme

38: Socialization and Occupational Communities – Van Maanen

February 4, 2018 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

John Van Maanen

In this episode, we examine John Van Maanen’s classic ethnographic study of police recruits from an urban police department in the U.S. “Police socialization: A longitudinal examination of job attitudes in an urban police department,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1975, presents Van Maanen’s study on the socialization process of new police officers from their training and indoctrination at the police academy to their early months on the beat. What he found was intriguing. Some recruits joined the force “highly motivated and committed,” but over time their attitudes changed and commitment dropped sharply and swiftly. On the job, supervisors preferred the lesser motivated patrol officers over their more committed counterparts. Officers showing initiative were seen as creating more work and inducing higher risk to others. Over a short period of time, police officers learned to “lay low, don’t make waves” through the department’s systems of rewards and punishments and a climate that encourages teamwork over individuality. The result was a major step forward in understanding socialization processes in organizations.

The study is notable for Van Maanen’s role as participant-observer. He underwent police training at the academy while interviewing other recruits and spent time on patrol with new officers. This helped him understand the recruit’s perspective, however it required him to function in a covert role. While his activities were well-understood and permitted by leaders and supervisors in the police department, they weren’t necessary understood by all officers whom he observed. Nor were they necessarily understood by the civilians whom he encountered. While Van Maanen did not find himself facing difficult or ethically challenging situations during the study, questions have since arisen about the value of using covert techniques in research. Hence, part of this episode is devoted to discussing the ethical questions and controversy on using covert methods to access populations for study that might ordinarily not provide informed consent.

Join us as we explore this terrific ethnography and understand the process of socialization from an insider’s perspective!

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

Read with us:

Van Maanen, J. (1975). Police Socialization: A Longitudinal Examination of Job Attitudes in an Urban Police Department.  Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. 20, No. 3 (1975): 207-228.

Referenced in the Episode:

Roulet, T., Gill, M., Stenger, S., & Gill, D. Reconsidering the value of covert research: The role of ambiguous consent in participant observation. Organizational Research Methods Vol. 20, no. 3 (2017): 487-517.

37: Socrates on Management – Oeconomicus by Xenophon

December 5, 2017 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
This episode takes us to ancient Greece and one of the great practical philosophers, Xenophon (pronounced ZEN-uh-phun), whose Oeconomicus may have been one of his "minor" works in the world of philosophy, but it is a fascinating work for those interested in management and organizational studies. The book is written as a dialogue, with Socrates playing a sort of narrator who engages with men and encourages them to become more virtuous, with varying success.

31: Process Studies, PROS and Institutional Theory LIVE

August 15, 2017 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

With Special Guests Trish Reay, Tammar Zilber, Hari Tsoukas, and Ann Langley

Ann Langley

Hari Tsoukas

Trish Reay

Tammar Zilber

Please join us for the first of two fascinating special episodes recorded from the International Process Symposium 2017. The aim of the Symposium is to consolidate, integrate, and further develop ongoing efforts to advance a sophisticated process perspective in organization and management studies. PROS is an annual event, organized in conjunction with the annual series Perspectives on Process Organization Studies published by Oxford University Press, and it takes place in a Greek island, in June every year.

In the first installment, Dmitrijs and Ella sit down to talk to Professors Trish Reay (University of Alberta) and Tammar Zilber (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) about institutional theory. The second is a conversation that Dmitrijs and Ella had with Professors Hari Tsoukas and Ann Langley about the process view in general and about PROS, as an academic congregation, in particular. At the end of the episode, Hari and Ann say a few words about the 2018 conference, it’s theme and the motivation behind it.

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

30: Corporate Culturalism

August 2, 2017 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
Hugh Willmott Strength is Ignorance; Slavery is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations was Hugh Willmott’s critique of corporate culturalism, a dominant theme in management studies in the 1980s. In 1993, when the paper appeared in the Journal of Management Studies, strengthening corporate culture was seen as a way to improve organizational performance. But instead of an academic response, Willmott used George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to explain his objections.

29: Carnegie Mellon Series #3 – Designing Business Schools, by Herb Simon

June 6, 2017 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
We discuss Herbert Simon’s article “The Business School: A Problem in Organizational Design,” published in 1967. This was written at a time when the business school enterprise was facing difficulties and wrestling over its identity. The paper framed these challenges as a design problem relating to a business school's purpose, what the business school should teach to its students, and what type of faculty would be needed to fulfill the purpose.

28: Organizations as Rhetoric

May 16, 2017 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
Our next episode in the JMS classics series covers Mats Alvesson's ", Organizations as Rhetoric: Knowledge-Intensive Firms and the Struggle with Ambiguity" from 1993 that concluded with the idea that organizations are best understood as 'systems of persuasion' where actors use their agency to engage in discourse on behalf of the organization.

27: Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm

April 25, 2017 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
We discuss Andrew Pettigrew's classic JMS article, "Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm,” that introduced Pettigrew's triangle of context, content, and process into the discourse on change management though his study of change in an UK chemical firm.

26: Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations

March 28, 2017 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
We discuss another JMS classic, Karl Weick's "Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations," that examines how that the central mechanisms behind failure and incidents is given by the interaction between humans and technology (and not by technology in itself). Weick's study examined the the Bophal Disaster, a gas leak incident that took place in 1984 in India and shows how individuals enacted rather than encountered the events.

25: Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities

March 15, 2017 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
We discuss another JMS classic, “Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities the case of Scottish Knitwear Manufacturers” by Porac, Thomas, and Baden-Fuller from 1989. Employing an approach based on the ‘interpretive’ side of organizations, the Authors propose that a key mechanism in competition and strategy is given by the “mental models used by key decision-makers to interpret the task environment of their organization”. These, in turn, emerge out of material and cognitive exchanges among customers, suppliers, and producers.