Samantha Ortiz

96: Informating at Work – Shoshana Zuboff

December 6, 2022 Samantha Ortiz 0:04:58
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.Read More

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89: Administrative Behavior in Public Sector — Herbert Kaufman

May 17, 2022 Samantha Ortiz 0:05:29
This month’s episode examines a classic study in public administration, Herbert Kaufman’s “The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior,” published in 1960. The U.S. Forest Service was a widely distributed organization with its many Rangers individually assigned to manage large tracts of public land. It would have been easy for the Forest Service to lose control and fragment, but it did not. Kaufman’s study showed how and why the various techniques used by the Forest Service kept the Rangers integrated under a common vision.Read More

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88: Social Defenses Against Anxiety — Isabel Menzies

April 12, 2022 Samantha Ortiz 0:04:53
This month’s episode examines one of the classic studies from the Tavistock Institute, Isabel Menzies’ “A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety.” This famous study of how a teaching hospital developed odd and somewhat dysfunctional methods for protecting its nurses from anxiety and stress by effectively isolating nurses from the patients to prevent emotional attachment. Nursing students witnessing these methods in practice found them in violation of their expectations regarding care and their professional calling, and were quitting. What were these methods and why did they come about?Read More

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80: Management Theory & Practice — Sumantra Ghoshal

September 14, 2021 Samantha Ortiz
We discuss a critique of business education -- Sumantra Ghoshal’s article from the Academy of Management Learning and Education, “Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices.” He describes a feedback loop between schools and practitioners that has led to theories based on a “pretense of knowledge” that assumes causality and predictability of the business environment and a “gloomy vision” that assumes the worst of human nature. In effect, theories are built around ideas that managers cannot be trusted and matters of complexity can be managed through mathematical models, setting ethics and morals aside. A great think piece for considering the roles of business schools and professional education!Read More

78: Patterns of Bureaucracy — Alvin Gouldner

July 13, 2021 Samantha Ortiz
We discuss a classic 1954 book by Alvin Gouldner titled, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. This describes the results of an ethnographic study conducted at a gypsum processing plant that included both a mine and a production line for construction materials. Gouldner and his team uncovered three distinct patterns of bureaucratic rules based on the acceptance and compliance of bureaucratic rules by workers and management – patterns still relevant today.Read More

76: Comparative Analysis of Organizations – Charles Perrow

May 11, 2021 Samantha Ortiz
We discuss a 1967 article from Charles Perrow, “A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations.” Perrow proposed a framework for comparing organizations, largely around “technology” which in contemporary times would be taken to mean the work to be performed. The framework allows analysis of the character of the work being done, nature of the raw material (e.g., tangible objects or intangible symbols), and associated task and social structures.Read More

70: Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America – Eduardo Ibarra-Colado

November 10, 2020 Samantha Ortiz
We now continue the effort to expand the canon of organization theory and management science, this time focusing on Latin America. Worldwide, much of the theorizing and publishing of research has been greatly influenced by a dominant mode of thought originating in western Europe, the U.S., and Canada. Eduardo Ibarra-Colado, whose famous 2006 work "Organization studies and epistemic coloniality in Latin America: thinking otherness from the margins" represents a manifesto and call to action by all scholars to consider how the current paradigm severely disadvantages scholarship in Latin America.Read More

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