Greetje Corporaal

111: Visible & Invisible Work – Susan Leigh Star

March 12, 2024 Greetje Corporaal 0:03:05
In this episode, we focus on the emerging discourse from the 1990s on how automated systems would potentially change the very meaning of work. The discussion is on a seminal work of Susan Leigh Star and co-author Anselm Strauss, “Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work,” published in CSCW’s flagship journal, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, in 1999. The article focuses on the challenges and risks of automating work processes without due consideration of all the invisible work done in an organization that systems designers might overlook.

110: Organizations and Law – Lauren Edelman

February 13, 2024 Greetje Corporaal 0:04:11
In this episode, we explore two articles from Lauren Edelman, “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law” from 1992 and “The Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance Procedures as Rational Myth” from 1999. These studies showed a wide variety of organizational responses to the enactment of civil rights legislation, but that certain responses were legitimated due to their success in symbolically showing effort in addressing discrimination and thus institutionalized across other organizations.

109: Emergence of Mental Health Professions – Abbott

January 23, 2024 Greetje Corporaal 0:03:12
In this episode, we return to Andrew Abbott’s The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor from 1989 to study in depth one of his case studies that may illuminate the present-day mental health crises gripping many nations from the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Construction of the Personal Problems Jurisdiction” chronicles how social changes from the Industrial Revolution led to the maladjustment and isolation felt by many newly industrialized workers who could no longer reach back to the stable social structure from whence they came. As a result, several professions emerged and competed for jurisdiction over the diagnosis and treatment of personal problems.

108: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life – Goffman

December 12, 2023 Greetje Corporaal 0:03:58
Erving Goffman’s 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life was an important attempt at explaining both apparent and hidden human behaviors across social and organizational settings. Through a comprehensive framework employing theater as a metaphor, he describes the roles of people as performers and members of an audience who try to shape the unfolding situation in ways suitable to their aims. Meanwhile, there is a backstage where people return to being themselves and proceed to set conditions for the next performance, and rules and protocols seek to protect such backstage behaviors from unwanted observation or disclosure. The aim for each person is to be seen in the best or most purposeful light.

107: Institutionalized Rules and Formal Structures — Meyer & Rowan

November 14, 2023 Greetje Corporaal 0:03:57
We discuss John Meyer and Brian Rowan’s famous 1977 article “Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony.” In it, they argued that “institutionalized products, services, techniques, policies, and programs function as powerful myths, and many organizations adopt them ceremonially” (p. 340), even if they result in organizations becoming less efficient or effective in their intended missions or purposes. In fact, these myths can become so powerful as to stigmatize organizations that reject them.

103: Bringing Work Back In — Barley & Kunda

July 11, 2023 Greetje Corporaal 0:03:54
In their 2001 Organization Science article “Bringing Work Back In,” Steven Barley and Gideon Kunda lamented how the study of work, its organization, and its performance shifted after the 1950s. Work was the center of attention among the classic era of organization studies beginning with Frederic Taylor, but afterward, the focus shifted to post-bureaucratic concepts such as boundaryless organizations and networks. Barley and Kunda argues that these new ideas are not grounded in rigorous studies of how people perform work in such new organizations.

96: Informating at Work – Shoshana Zuboff

December 6, 2022 Greetje Corporaal 00:04:58
We discuss Shoshana Zuboff’s "In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power" that examines several cases of organizations introducing information technologies in the workplace hoping to improve organizational performance, transparency, and collaboration but instead dehumanized the workplace and ushered in new ways of managerial surveillance. In Part 1, we discuss the major themes of the book, her telling of the histories of both blue- and white-collar work, and her incredible case studies.

95: Labor-Management Relations – Tom Lupton

November 8, 2022 Greetje Corporaal 00:04:39
This month, we discuss examine Lupton’s famous study of worker-management relations, "On the Shop Floor: Two Studies of Workshop Organization and Output" published in 1963. Tom Lupton spent 12 months as a factor worker in two different settings examining why workers intentionally worked at a level below management expectations. He found that social structures formed that protected workers from overuse or abuse by management and ensured a stable pay. These structures discouraged workers from working too hard or not hard enough. In Part 1, we will examine the cases in depth and present Lupton’s findings.

93: Approaches to the Study of Work — Classics AoM PDW LIVE

September 13, 2022 Greetje Corporaal 00:03:29
This year’s professional development workshop (PDW) on Classics of Organization and Management Theory explored key approaches to the study of work and was held at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Seattle, Washington in the U.S. It represents the fourth edition of a standing series showcasing the enduring relevance of early organizational research. Steve Barley, Gina Dokko, Ingrid Erickson, and Davide Nicolini presented central insights on research traditions related to the study of work and related topics such as careers and technological change. They also addressed various ways that these insights can shed light on the changing nature of work.

92: Organizational Secrecy — Case of the Manhattan Project

August 9, 2022 Greetje Corporaal 00:05:21
We are examining organizational secrecy using the Manhattan Project during World War II as a case study. The Manhattan Project came about following the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 and the understanding that Nazi Germany was trying to develop a powerful weapon that could change the course of the war. Naturally, the American effort had to be kept secret to hide both the existence of the project and, failing that, any information about progress and potential employment. How did they do it and what challenges did they face? What could we learn about maintaining secrets in contemporary organizations?