Ralph Soule

39: Carnegie Mellon Series #4 – Organizational Choice

February 8, 2018 Ralph Soule

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 third 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.

cohen_michael_5x7_1 bw

Michael Cohen

This episode is the fourth in our series on the Carnegie Mellon School. The first was way back in Episode 4, in which we discussed the works of James March, Herbert Simon, and Richard Cyert regarding organization routines. The second was Episode 19, with organizational learning as the topic as we explored James March’s work on exploration and exploitation, and the third was Episode 29, where we spoke to Denise Rousseau about Herb Simon’s problematization of business education. Now we move to another important work from this School regarding organizational choice, which contributes to our present understanding of decision making in organizations.

Scholars at the time viewed decision making from a very rational perspective—a problem arises, the organization mobilizes, a solution emerges, and everyone moves on. This flew in the face of the author’s experiences, showing that matching solutions to problems was considerably messier in practice. Instead, the decision making processes appeared to be anarchic. At the time this idea of organized anarchy was quite radical. Although present organizational scholarship has grown to accept anarchy as part of the workplace… addressing organized anarchy as a serious research theme was potentially radical back in the early 1970s, especially in light of the previous work of these very authors!

The purpose of the article is to lay the foundational for a behavioral theory of organized anarchy. Using what they refer to as the garbage can model, organizations are described as “a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work” (p. 2). ‘Garbage can’ represented a useful, if unsettling, metaphor as it described organizational behavior where problems, choices, and decisions were merely tossed about into and recycled. At the center of the article is a model, presented as an iterative mathematical program, that demonstrates these behaviors in practice. Although clearly not an empirical study, the exploratory model did an excellent job of displaying some surprising behaviors as the podcasters discuss. They also showed a practical use of the model to demonstrate how various types of colleges and universities might exercise different paradigms, resulting in radically different organizational behaviors.

Join us as we discuss the garbage can model and its implications for our contemporary understanding of organizations and their management! Also available is a sidecast by Tom inspired by this episode.

 

You may also download the audio files here:  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Appendix (Text version here)

Read with us:

Cohen, M.D., March, J.G. and Olsen, J.P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative science quarterly 17(1), 1-25.

To know more:

Lomi, A. and Harrison, J.R. (2012). The Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice: Looking Forward at Forty. Research in the Sociology of Organizations 36, 3-17.

 

 

37: Socrates on Management – Oeconomicus by Xenophon

December 5, 2017 Ralph Soule
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.

36: The Human Capital Hoax – Employment in the Gig Economy

November 14, 2017 Ralph Soule

Episode 36 represents a momentary break from older seminal readings to a very recent essay covering a timely topic – the negative effects of ‘Uberization’ and the gig economy on the economic and social fabric.

Peter Fleming

While the text and the phenomena are quite recent, the author analyzes these matters by re-reading a classic approach in economics and tracing its ‘dark’ influence on contemporary dynamics. The podcasters, therefore, were eager to sink their teeth into this piece as it shows how much understanding fundamental discussions might help us to make sense of current issues — an argument we explored in Episode 40, covering the Symposium on the Sharing/Gig Economy!

The Independent Social Research Foundation recently held an essay contest with the winners being published in Organization Studies journal. The runner-up was Peter Fleming’s “The Human Capital Hoax: Work, Debt, and Insecurity in the Era of Uberization,” a treatise and pointed critique of the emergence, development, implementation, and negative effects of Human Capital Theory.

Fleming’s essay traced the beginnings and promise of Human Capital Theory in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of a desire to endow workers with ‘responsible autonomy.’ The argument was that if workers were granted more freedom and authority to do their best work for the company, they would perform better. Human Capital Theory (HCT) emerged to capture how workers behaving individualistically could be viewed as capital separate from the organization itself, much like an organization’s equipment or facilities. The allure for firms is efficiency, and for workers is flexibility. But as Fleming warns, there is a ‘dark side’ to this idea, which is becoming manifest in reduced job satisfaction, poor work-life balance, deep debt for education, and intensified management of individual contracts.

What questions are unanswered? What should policymakers consider in addressing the problems Fleming raises? How does society try to rebuild the social fabric that appears to be crumbling in industrialized societies?

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

Also read a response to our podcast by one of our listeners — Reflections on The Human Capital Hoax by Benoit Gautier
Read with us:

Fleming, P. (2017). The human capital hoax: Work, debt, and insecurity in the era of uberization. Organization Studies 38(5), 691-709.

To know more:

Bregiannis, F., Bruurmijn, W. J. M., Calon, E., and Duran Ortega, M. A. (2017). Workers in the gig economy: Identification of practical problems and possible solutions. Paper submitted for the Geneva Challenge 2017.

Mumby, D. K., Thomas, R., Marti, I., and Seidl, D. (in press). Resistance redux. Organization Studies.

Also, the article has natural links to several previous episodes.

  • Episode 18 on the Gig Economy and Algorithmic Management with Arianna Tassinari, which discusses fundamental concepts of the gig economy.
  • Episode 1 on Taylor and Scientific Managementgiven that the ‘uberization’ described by Fleming represent at the same time a departure and a re-emergence of the bad sides of Tayloristic approaches.
  • Episode 34 on Trist and Bamforth’s article on organizational changein the coal mining industry; while these authors shows how industrialization/bureaucratization upset social cohesion and Fleming posits that the gig economy is undoing worker’s solidarities and creating ‘individualized’ work arrangements.

 

35: The Managed Heart – Arlie Hochschild

October 24, 2017 Ralph Soule
The Managed Heart, originally published in 1983 by Dr. Arlie Hochschild, introduced the concept of emotional labour as a counterpart to the physical and mental labour performed in the scope of one’s duties. The importance of emotional labour is made clear in Dr. Hochschild’s descrption of flight attendants, who regardless of the dispositions of airline passengers, turbulence in the flight, or personal stress is required to act and behave in ways that minimize passenger anxiety and encourage them to fly with that airline again. Thus, the book explores the challenges of stress, protecting one’s personal identity and private life, differentiated (and often unfair) gender roles, miscommunication between supervisors and workers or workers and clients, and others.

33: Foreman – Master and Victim of Doubletalk

September 13, 2017 Ralph Soule

To open Season 4, this episode covered Fritz J. Roethlisberger’s classic 1945 article from Harvard Business Review (HBR), “The FOREMAN: Master and Victim of Double Talk.” The article resulted from a study concerning the dissatisfaction of foremen in mass production industries at the time. Foremen suffered under low pay and poor wartime working conditions. Meanwhile, management addressed the foremen’s concerns through short-sighted “symptom-by-symptom” corrective actions to little effect. As a result, foremen were leaning toward unionization, while management found itself unable to keep pace with the social implications of rapidly advancing technologies on the supervisory structure.

Fritz Roethlisberger

Roethlisberger’s essential question was this: “Can management afford not to take responsibility for its own social creations – one of which is the situation foremen find themselves?” The foreman had to lead workers toward fulfilling production requirements under increasingly complex conditions, requiring greater knowledge and skill than foremen past and yet under intensifying restrictions to their autonomy and decision making, along with a wider network of supervisors and administrative staff that the foreman must report to.

The result were conditions where the foremen became insecure due to micromanagement and being held liable for problems or issues beyond their control. The foreman could not avoid these interactions, and thus was forced to “become a master of double talk,” advising superiors of the situation at the front in ways that avoided or mitigated criticism from them. Thus, the foreman also became a victim of double talk, of a ballooning culture that saw employees as little more than cogs in the machine and foremen as barely more, yet the foremen still had to “deliver the goods.” Roethlisberger’s account of the foremen’s conditions and the roles they play in the firm are compelling and troublesome indeed, and led him to recommend an entirely new form of administrative structure with administrators being far more connected to the workers and serving as enablers to the foremen.

 “The FOREMAN: Master and Victim of Double Talk” continues to be popular in reprints and HBR considers it a classic of the journal. It also represents a recurring challenge for firms facing disruptive technologies or their rapid evolution – how do administrators keep pace with the social changes that result, so that direct supervisors remain enabled and empowered?

Join us as we talk about the article and its implications for present-day managers and firms!
Note: Scroll down further to see a Figure from the text that we referenced often.

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

Read with us:

Roethlisberger, Fritz J. “The foreman: Master and victim of double talk.” Harvard Business Review 23.3 (1945): 283-298.

To know more:

Storberg-Walker, J., & Bierema, L. (2006). “Another look at a historical foundation of HRD: F.R. Roethlisberger’s foreman.” Paper presented at the AERC, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Figure 1. Forces Impinging Upon the Foreman (from the original text)

 

 

32: Organizational Stupidity with Mats Alvesson and Bjorn Erik Mork LIVE

August 23, 2017 Ralph Soule

With Special Guests Mats Alvesson and Bjørn Erik Mørk

Mats Alvesson

Bjørn Erik Mørk

Ralph attended the 2017 Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities conference in Valladolid, Spain and had the opportunity to discuss The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work (Profile Books), co-authored by Mats Alvesson and André Spicer, with Mats Alvesson (keynote speaker) and Bjørn Erik Mørk (OLKC board member). This was another special recording to bring listeners engaging conversations about current work in organizational science and learning. Thanks to the OLKC 2017 organizing committee for making this possible.

OLKC is an annual conference that gathers scholars and practitioners in the field of Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities to present and discuss their latest research and practice.

“Functional stupidity” is the term used by Alvesson and Spicer to describe a strange phenomenon they observed in practice: smart people in organizations that do seemingly not smart things because people are discouraged to think and reflect. Examples of functional stupidity include being encouraged not to ask difficult questions, not “rocking the boat,” adoption of management fads and excessive focus on brand and image. In rare cases, functional stupidity can be adaptive because it supports order and stability, but there is great potential for catastrophe in the form of financial insolvency, organizational chaos, and technical error that leads to loss of life. Mats, Bjørn, and Ralph talked about functional stupidity and real world implications for nearly an hour after Mats’ keynote speech at the conference.

We hope you find their conversation engaging and stimulating!

You may also download the audio file here:  E32
 

25: Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities

March 15, 2017 Ralph Soule
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.

24: Learning by Knowledge-Intensive Firms

February 21, 2017 Ralph Soule
We discuss another of the classics from the Journal of Management Studies, a paper from 1992 by William Starbuck, entitled “Learning by knowledge-intensive firms”. This time, we are very happy to be joined by the author of the work, Professor William Starbuck, one of the leading experts in Organization Theory, whose research covers an incredible number of areas of expertise, as shown in his biography. This paper is the first to discuss knowledge intensive firms, concept based on the economists’ notions of capital and labour intensive firms, and which are defined as those firms where “knowledge has more importance than other inputs” (p.715).

23: Influence of Institutions and Factor Markets

February 7, 2017 Ralph Soule
This is an episode in our special series of Classics in the Journal of Management Studies. Mike Wright co-authored "Emerging multinationals from mid-range economies: the influence of institutions and factor markets" in 2013 that looked at the variety in the development of emerging economies and, through institution theory, increased understanding of competition between multinational economies and the respective national ones.

22: Human-Machine Reconfigurations – Lucy Suchman

January 17, 2017 Ralph Soule
We discuss Lucy Suchman’s book “Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action” that studied the interaction of humans with a state-of-art photocopier designed to be more user friendly and more helpful in solving user problems. Yet videos showed that people found it complicated and difficult. Suchman shows that these interaction problems are greatly due to the underpinning assumptions about users’ behavior, more specifically, due to the idea that humans’ actions are based on the following of plans, which she refutes.