Happy 5th Anniversary!!!
On October 13, 2015 — The Talking About Organizations Podcast descended upon the unsuspecting world of academia with the release of Episode 1: Scientific Management – F.W. Taylor’s One Best Way, covering the much misunderstood and severely misrepresented work of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Our original quartet of podcasters Dmitrijs, Ralph, Pedro, and Miranda (aka 3 late-stage PhD students and Ralph) took a leap of faith to get behind something they truly believed in – that the field of management and organizational studies was in trouble because of systemic neglect of its own history and foundations, and that a semi-serious podcast might be a way to help fix that. Still, the question remained – would this project last beyond the first few releases, would it have lasting value, or would they succumb to excessive workload and finally heed the word of their more serious colleagues about not wasting time on silly things and publishing papers instead, if they ever wanted to get a job in academia?
And here we are five years later — with many new cast members and sixty-nine episodes under our belt — and still going strong! Reaching beyond the traditional canon of classics with the works of Fayol, Maslow, Weber, and so many others; we have included more recent “classics” such as Hochschild, Kerr, and Forester; commentaries on movies, plays, and documentaries from Twelve Angry Men to American Factory; and various conference specials from the Organizational Knowledge, Learning, and Capabilities conference and the Academy of Management‘s annual meeting. Our podcast reaches thousands of listeners each month and is included in the curriculum of at least (confirmed) thirty-eight business schools and universities around the world!
And so, on October 13, 2020 (in a year when any sort of festivity is a welcome diversion), we are celebrating our fifth anniversary with a series of releases spread out over the next two weeks. Details on each of the releases are below. Come join us and share a virtual beverage of your choice as we ring in five years of Talking About Organizations!
Note: Pictured from L to R: Pedro, Catherine, Maikel, Dmitrijs, Tom, Leonardo, Miranda, Ralph
In these release, we offer listeners an insider perspective on the making of our episodes. Dmitrijs, Pedro, Ralph, and Tom discuss how we choose an episode topic, schedule it, record it and conduct post-production, and release it through the web and RSS feeds. We also talk about the broader Talking About Organizations Network and what we enjoy most about doing the podcast.
About a month before the anniversary, we solicited questions from our listeners about things they wanted to know or suggestions for the podcast. Out of the large number of excellent questions received; Dmitrijs, Miranda, Maikel, Jarryd, and Tom broke it down to five that we tackled and discussed in our own Talking About Organizations way. The questions are:
In this final release of our 5th year celebration, we welcome the perspectives of several past guests, hosts, and observers of past recordings — with additional commentary from cast members Pedro, Miranda, Catherine, Leonardo, and Tom. Our guests discussed the experiences (and fun) of participating in the podcast, the podcast’s current role and potential future directions, and the state of scholarship in organization studies. We thank our guests for taking time out of their busy schedules to talk with us!
To mark this occasion, we gathered all seven of us hosts to discuss what we like (and perhaps not) about the podcast and podcasting, what our favorite or most remembered episodes were, and what we have learned along the way.
Turns out, one of the key things we learned was how much such a small number of dedicated scholars and practitioners can do with a lot of motivation and energy. As we discuss, there were many in the beginning who scoffed at the idea of podcasting on classic and emerging organization theories and concepts of management science. But with over 12,000 active listeners worldwide, Talking About Organizations has proven to be useful and entertaining all at once.
We hope you enjoy this brief retrospective. Also, click on the below graphic to view all the places where we have podcasted from in our many travels — sometimes having to find unique and interesting places to record to avoid noise and other problems!
