Pedro Monteiro, Author at Talking About Organizations Podcast

50: Celebrating 50 Episodes! What Have We Learned?

November 27, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

This is our first "milestone" release, celebrating our 50th episode and providing an opportunity for us to gather all the cast members to reflect on what the podcast has meant to us and how much we have accomplished.Read More

49: Engineered Culture and Normative Control – Gideon Kunda

October 30, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

Originally published in 1992, Gideon Kunda's ethnographic study of a high-tech corporation altered the discourse on organizational culture. "Tech," the firm being studied, was a firm on the rise and saw itself as a leader and ground breaker in the rapidly growing high-tech industries of the 1980s. But as the firm grew, it began indoctrinating its tried-and-true hard-work formula in aggressive and unhelpful ways.Read More

48: Stratified Systems Theory — Elliott Jaques

October 11, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

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. Read More

46: Classics of Management and Organization Theory – AoM 2018 Workshop LIVE

September 12, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

A special recording from a workshop on management classics held at the 2018 Academy of Management Conference in Chicago. Hosted by Pedro, this PDW intended to raise interest towards classic authors/ideas in the field of organization and management theory. It offered scholars from all levels the opportunity to reflect on insights of earlier scholarship and their relevance for current research, complementing the strong emphasis (on new ideas and approaches. This is of great importance as the field has thus far been more attentive to disruptions than continuities; pursuing novelty over tradition.Read More

45: Fate of Whistleblowers – C. Fred Alford

August 2, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

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.Read More

44: Transaction Costs and Boundaries of the Firm – Williamson and Malone

July 16, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

We explore an important reading that bridges organization theory with economics -- Oliver E. Williamson’s article, “The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach,” where he asserts that the assumption of firms operating on a profit motive has not helped organization theorists understand and explain the behaviors of firms. He thus argued that transactions, not the products or services the firm provides, is a better unit of analysis.Read More

43: Centralization/Decentralization Debate – The Federalist Papers

May 30, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

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!Read More

41: Images of Organization – Gareth Morgan

April 3, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

We tackle Gareth Morgan’s classic book Images of Organization, originally published in 1986. This lengthy and detailed volume synthesizes an incredible range of organization theories and concepts over the previous century and presents them under the umbrella of eight distinct metaphors. Each metaphor represents a different way of understanding the existence and dynamics of organizations, their members, and their interactions with the environment.Read More

40: Symposium on the Gig Economy LIVE

February 24, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

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.Read More

39: Carnegie Mellon Series #4 – Organizational Choice

February 8, 2018 Pedro Monteiro

The podcasters discuss a fascinating article, “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly back in 1972 by Michael Cohen, James March, and Johan Olsen. This is another episode from the Carnegie-Mellon University tradition, alongside Episode 4 on Organizational Routines and Episode 19 on Organizational Learning. This installment addresses organizational decision making and choice and, like the others in this series, it changed the way people think about organizations and organizational behavior.Read More

Pedro Monteiro