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111: Visible & Invisible Work – Susan Leigh Star
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, âLayers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work,â published in CSCWâs…
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110: Organizations and Law â Lauren Edelman
In this episode, we explore two articles from Lauren Edelman, âLegal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Lawâ from 1992 and âThe Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance Procedures as Rational Mythâ from 1999. These studies showed a wide variety of organizational responses to the enactment of civil rights legislation, but that certain…
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109: Emergence of Mental Health Professions – Abbott
In this episode, we return to Andrew Abbottâs 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. âThe Construction of the Personal Problems Jurisdictionâ chronicles how…
- 111: Visible & Invisible Work – Susan Leigh StarIn 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, âLayers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work,â published in CSCWâs 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 â Lauren EdelmanIn this episode, we explore two articles from Lauren Edelman, âLegal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Lawâ from 1992 and âThe Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance Procedures as Rational Mythâ 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 – AbbottIn this episode, we return to Andrew Abbottâs 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. âThe Construction of the Personal Problems Jurisdictionâ 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 – GoffmanErving Goffmanâs 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 & RowanWe discuss John Meyer and Brian Rowanâs famous 1977 article âInstitutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony.â In it, they argued that âinstitutionalized products, services, techniques, policies, and programs function as powerful myths, and many organizations adopt them ceremoniallyâ (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.
- 106: The Study of Organizations Across DisciplinesWe sit down with Woody Powell and Bob Gibbons who, since 2016, have been organizing the summer institute on organizational effectiveness at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) in Stanford, California. We ask them to reflect on the history of CASBS and the summer institute, the value of fostering interdisciplinary conversations on the study of organizations, and the way in which they design and conduct the summer institute to allow young scholars across economics, sociology, management, public policy, political science, information and communication studies, and other fields, to learn from one another.
- 105: Manifest & Latent Roles — Alvin GouldnerAlvin Gouldner wrote the article, âCosmopolitans and locals: Toward an analysis of latent social rolesâ in 1957 to propose that through the 1950s latent roles had been seriously overlooked by scholars. Manifest roles, described as those roles and role identities that are directly related to oneâs defined position in the organizational structure, had been the sole focus. Latent roles comprised the complementary roles that members made salient but were not officially recognized. Instead, managers might dismiss such roles as âirrelevant, inappropriate, or illegitimateâ to recognize formally despite them being essential in the organizationâs social fabric
- 104: Social Structure & Organizations — StinchcombeIn a famous chapter in James G. Marchâs 1965 book, Handbook of Organizations, Arthur L. Stinchcombe laid out a case for expanding the study of organizations outward to include social structure bringing attention to innovation as well as imprinting and inertia. He posited that societies had significant effects on how organizations emerge and operate and that organizations, in turn, impact relations among groups in society. He presented his arguments in three parts. First, that social structures had an imprinting effect on the formation of new organizations, such that these initial forms often persisted despite efforts to change them. Thus, to the second point, each type of organization reflected the history of its creation both in terms of the organization and social structures that dominated at the time. Finally, organizations also reflect the social divisions in society, such as between higher and lower classes.
- 103: Bringing Work Back In — Barley & KundaIn their 2001 Organization Science article âBringing Work Back In,â 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.
- 102: Executive Leadership — Sloan’s “My Years at General Motors”Alfred Sloan was President, Chairman, and CEO of General Motors from 1923 to 1956. His memoir âMy Years at General Motorsâ tells his story about how he took a corporation consisting of several disparate and competing companies and shaped them into division that manufactured cars tailored to different segments of society. He constantly pursued and integrated new technologies into the automobiles themselves while also shaping the buying experience through the introductions of different styles, improved relations with dealings, and financial services that rivaled banks.
- 101: The Motivation to Work — Frederick HerzbergFrederick Herzbergâs âThe Motivation to Workâ presents the results of over 200 interviews with engineers and accountants working in the Pittsburgh area regarding what satisfied and dissatisfied them on the job. They would find that factors leading to satisfaction, such as achievement and performance, were very different than those leading to dissatisfaction, such as company policies or relationships with co-workers and managers. The result became known as Herzbergâs Two-Factor Theory of Job Satisfaction, also known as the motivator-hygiene theory.
- 100: Special Episode — The State of Organization StudiesFor our 100th episode, we look outward toward the various fields of study that have fed into our podcast â organization studies, organization theory, management science, and others â and ask how strong or healthy those fields are. The disciple has, after all, gotten very big with thousands of scholars around the world doing important field work, research, and consultancy projects. But it has also become more fragmented and is experiencing the stresses and strains of a mature profession. So in this one-part reflection, we think about what we have learned so far in 100 episodes stretching over 7-1/2 years and where we might like to see the field go in the coming years.
- 99: Gendering in Organizations — Joan AckerJoan Ackerâs 1990 article âHierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizationsâ was a significant work in feminist theories of organizations. She charged that prior feminist research had wrongly assumed that organizational structures were gender neutral. Instead, everything about organizations from structures to symbols are inherently gendered, and until that was acknowledged and studied, organizations would continue to reinforce long-standing gender inequalities. The article is significant for its synthesis of a growing body of research that questioned the claims of gender neutrality in organizational practices that creates and sustains barriers to womenâs equality in the workplace.
- 98: Managing Innovation — Burns & StalkerWhy do firms seemingly have difficulties converting new ideas into goods or services? The answer is in the classic book The Management of Innovation from Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker that explored the difficulties that firms, industries, and even nations had in innovating due to the disruptions that it brings to power structures and social fabric in organizations. They also explored key misunderstandings about innovation (such as that the false narrative that bureaucratic structures inherently cannot innovate) and the source of of conflicts across different departments and work groups trying to innovate.
- 97: Social Change and Organization â Invictus (2009 movie)The 2009 film Invictus tells the story of how the first post-Apartheid President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, used sports as a unifying force to overcome lingering and bitter racial divides in the nation. The movie and the real-life events that inspired it are powerful. We will look at it through an organizational lens and discuss insights related to leadership, team building, change and other management topics.
- 96: Informating at Work â Shoshana ZuboffWe discuss Shoshana Zuboffâs “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 â Tom LuptonThis month, we discuss examine Luptonâs 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 Luptonâs findings.
- 94: Situated Learning â Lave & WengerThis month, we discuss Jean Lave & Etienne Wengerâs Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, published in 1991. This short but powerful book presents a new way of thinking about adult learning as a social activity in which experienced members of a group or community of practice share their knowledge with new members to perpetuate the group identity. They present five case studies â one by Lave herself with four from other researchers â to help broaden the perspective of how situated learning works social involvement in which newer members are initiated through the exercise of low-risk or controlled tasks.
- 93: Approaches to the Study of Work — Classics AoM PDW LIVEThis yearâs 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 ProjectWe 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?
- 91: Constructive Conflict – Mary Parker FollettWe return to the works of Mary Parker Follett and expand upon âThe Law of the Situationâ that we covered in Chapter 5. In this episode, we revisit Dynamic Administration with a look at the first five chapters as a whole â focusing on Chapter 1 (âConstuctive Conflictâ), Chapter 3 (âBusiness as an Integrative Unityâ), Chapter 4 (âPowerâ), and Chapter 5 (âHow Must Business Management Develop in order to Possess the Essentials of a Professionâ) that introduced Follettâs conception of professionalizing business.
- 90: Organizations in Action – James ThompsonWe will examine James D. Thompsonâs “Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory” from 1967 that established a new direction in organization studies. Beginning with a recapitulation of the theoretical work of the time, Thompson expanded the dominant rational model of organizing with the emerging ideas about human behaviour, complexity, and the relation between organizations and their environments. The result was a proposed theory of administration that remains relevant to this day.
- 89: Administrative Behavior in Public Sector — Herbert KaufmanThis monthâs episode examines a classic study in public administration, Herbert Kaufmanâs âThe Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior,â 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. Kaufmanâs study showed how and why the various techniques used by the Forest Service kept the Rangers integrated under a common vision.
- 88: Social Defenses Against Anxiety — Isabel MenziesThis monthâs episode examines one of the classic studies from the Tavistock Institute, Isabel Menziesâ âA Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety.â 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?
- 87: The Art of War (and Management?) — Sun TzuThis monthâs episode examines war and how principles derived from it are presently applied to other organizational and management contexts. Sun Tzuâs The Art of War is an ancient text that emerged from the Warring States period that lasted from the 5th through 3rd centuries B.C. and engulfed most of modern mainland China. It embraced the complexity of the environment of war, which therefore has allowed it to be adapted for navigating other forms of complexity such as business competition. We examine the text in its original context to illustrate the need to understand the purpose and utility of classic texts.
- What’s Coming for the Podcast in 2022!As we enter our seventh year, we recognize the treasure trove of material that we have collected in our podcast episodes. And so, we are actively looking for ways to turn our program and website into a sort of digital library open for anyone interested in organization theory and management science. Take part in our survey to tell us what is important to you, and you could win a prize!
- 86: Networks and Network Theory — Mark GranovetterGranovetterâs 1973 article, âThe Strength of Weak Ties,â introduced whole new ways of thinking about seemingly simple and straightforward topics and changed the direction of social research. He showed how âweakâ ties, occasional connections between individuals among different networks, were powerful means for providing opportunities and new ideas not otherwise available. He also charted a way for researchers to connect micro-level interactions with macro-level patterns. Given how social networking has changed so much between social media and the pandemic, we decided to give this article a fresh look.
- 85: Carnegie-Mellon Series #6 — OrganizationsIn this episode, we discuss the second edition of James March and Herbert Simonâs classic text ‘Organizations.’ In addition to the well-known concepts such as bounded rationality and satisficing, the book introduces an important critique of the mechanistic view that âclassicâ organization theory to that point approached organizations and its members. How do decisions get made? What causes individuals or join, stay in, or leave organizations? What about the causes and effects of conflict? We explore all this and more.
- 84: Professionalizing Business — Louis BrandeisWe discuss the life and works of Louis Brandeis who originated the term âscientific managementâ that aimed at conserving effort and making work life more predictable, reducing worker stress and increasing satisfaction. He also advocated for a more altruistic and professionalized form of business leadership that served both the needs of customers or clients and those of the workers under their supervision. A collection of his lectures entitled Business â A Profession expounds on these ideas, and he includes a number of case studies and illustrations to show both the human and financial potential of his professed forms of management where profit would not be the only measure of a businessâ success.
- 83: Organizational Design — Jay GalbraithWe discuss several works by Jay Galbraith on the theory and practice of organizational design, which is about creating organizations to provide better outcomes and serve the organizationâs purpose and strategy. This episode begins with a focus on one of Jay Galbraithâs earlier publications, an article titled, âOrganizational Design: An Information Processing Viewâ for designing organizations to make better decisions in times of high uncertainty, and then brings in his more recent works promoting his five-point âStar Model,â a design tool for use by managers.
- 82: Women of Organizational Scholarship — Classics AoM PDW LIVEPresents a professional development workshop we hosted at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. It sheds light on the foundational texts of female scholars for the field of organization and management theory but whose work is often overlooked. Includes presentations by Emmanuelle Vaast on Jean Lave, Marta CalĂĄs on Edith Penrose, Martha Feldman on Susan Leigh Star, Maja Korica on Rosemary Stewart, Maria JosĂŠ Tonelli on Isabel Menzies Lyth, and Lisa Cohen on Rosabeth Moss Kanter.
- 81: Diversity and Inclusion — EGOS 2021 Special LIVEThe COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on societies and the workspace have demonstrated the importance of open conversations on matters of diversity and inclusion. The theme for the 37th Colloquium of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS), hosted virtually in July 2021 by the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam, was âOrganizing for an inclusive society: Meanings, motivations, and mechanisms.â In this special episode, we offer the keynote address of that colloquium by Mirjam van Praag, âThe Value (Drivers) of Diversity: A Perspective from Research and Management Practice.â She provides insights from her research on the added value and imperative of sustaining diversity in the workplace.
- 80: Management Theory & Practice — Sumantra GhoshalWe discuss a critique of business education — Sumantra Ghoshalâs article from the Academy of Management Learning and Education, âBad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices.â He describes a feedback loop between schools and practitioners that has led to theories based on a âpretense of knowledgeâ that assumes causality and predictability of the business environment and a âgloomy visionâ 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!
- 79: Labor Relations â Jane AddamsWe discuss a famous speech by Jane Addams titled, A Modern Lear, her reflections on the events leading to and during the infamous Pullman Railway Strike of 1894. Using ideas drawn from the emergence of classic pragmatism and Shakespeareâs King Lear as an analogy, Addams took both the ownership and workers to task for the violence and provides a way to avoid a recurrence of such a tragedy. What insights are applicable to todayâs contemporary situation? Can pragmatism provide a way forward?
- 78: Patterns of Bureaucracy — Alvin GouldnerWe 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 â patterns still relevant today.
- 77: Job Design – Hackman & OldhamWe discuss a 1975 article by J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham in the Journal of Applied Psychology titled, âDevelopment of the Job Diagnostic Survey.â The purpose of the instrument was to help managers increase the motivational potential of jobs. They developed the JDS through the studies of existing jobs to determine what makes a job motivating and also how to improve the motivating potential of jobs from how they are defined and described. It remains a seminal reading in job design today. With Special Guest Lisa Cohen from McGill University.
- 76: Comparative Analysis of Organizations â Charles PerrowWe discuss a 1967 article from Charles Perrow, âA Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations.â Perrow proposed a framework for comparing organizations, largely around âtechnologyâ 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.
- 75: Institutionalization â Philip SelznickPhilip Selznick seeded the origins of institutional theory in organization studies. He brought attention to the symbolic aspects of administration, such as when organizational tools and processes assume an importance beyond their concrete technical valueâwhat he labelled institutionalization. In this episode, we discuss one of his classic works from 1949, TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization that contributed to his theory of organization through an examination of the Tennessee Valley Authority — was formed to foster recovery from the Great Depression.
- 74: Emergence of Middle Management — Alfred ChandlerAlfred Chandlerâs award-winning book, “The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business” provides an excellent summary of the history of American commerce from the pre-industrial era to the mid-20th century, and how new technologies and a changing society led to the creation of the modern industrial enterprise. The “visible hand” refers to the transparency and prominence of this new class of manager who coordinated and controlled these growing enterprises,
- 73: Organizing Innovation — Michael TushmanDiscusses an important work from Michael Tushman about how innovation benefits from individuals who communicate across boundaries. With special guest Hila Lifshitz-Assaf who has collaborated with Tushman and did her own dissertation on boundary spanning in the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
- 72: Organizational Diagnosis — Marvin WeisbordBusiness literature is now loaded with models and frameworks designed to help organizations identify, analyze, and fix their problems. But it wasn’t always this way, and in fact a half century ago there were few general-purpose models available that were well-suited for the task. Enter Marvin Weisbord who in the 1970s developed and promoted a simple framework and associated suite of tools designed for anyone to investigate what was going wrong. In this episode, we discuss one of his articles — “Organizational Diagnosis: Six Places to Look for Trouble With or Without a Theory,” published in 1976 in the journal Group and Organization Management — that introduced his Six-Box Model of organizational diagnosis.
- 71: Managerial Behavior — Melville Dalton2020 ushered in a full year of major change and renewed a lot of conversations about how we work, live, and cooperate in organizations and societies. In that spirit, we discuss Melville Dalton’s classic 1959 book “Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration.” The study provided an intimate look at how men (as these were all men at the time) entered into the managerial culture of a firm, how the separations between managers are workers were structured and maintained, and how managers felt about their standing — which ranged from secure to tenuous. In Part 1, we focus on the study itself, which is still very relevant not only for understanding what happens within the circle of managers but also how the boundaries can exclude others, particularly along gender lines.
- 70: Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America – Eduardo Ibarra-ColadoWith Special Guest Samantha Ortiz In Episode 56, we opened a window to the world of African-American studies in management studies when we discussed the work of Charles Clinton Spaulding. 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…
- 69: Our 5th Anniversary Special!Celebrate five years of the Talking About Organizations Podcast with us!!! 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…
- 68: Globalization and Culture Clashes — “American Factory” (Documentary)American Factory is an important and powerful documentary, telling the story of cultural clashes and labor-management relations as a Chinese firm re-opened and re-purposed a close automotive plant in Ohio. Six years earlier, in 2008, General Motors (GM) shuttered its Moraine, Ohio automotive plant, rendering thousands of workers unemployed. Then in 2014, China’s Fuyao Glass…
- Announcement! Updates to “Reflections on Management with Tom Galvin”With the growing success of the Reflections on Management podcast, part of the Talking About Organizations Network, we invited host Tom Galvin to provide an update on big changes coming to the program and website for the fall 2020 season! Reflections now has over 40 episodes of content related to or inspired by the classics…
- 67: Professions & Professionalism — Andrew AbbottThe work of certain groups of specialists in society is a crucial theme for those interested in organizations. And it became particularly relevant in light of the COVID-19 pandemic as debates emerge on whether “experts” got things wrong or how decision-makers have decided (or not) to listen to the professionals. But who exactly are the…
- 66: Workplace Isolation – ForesterIn this episode (which took place in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic), we explore the social and emotional impacts to the worker on having to work from home. For some workers, the concept of telework is hardly new. But many other vocations place great value on regular social contact with clients and customers. These include teachers, doctors, lawyers, public servants, and many others. The sudden thrust to teleworking for an unknown period of time has raised questions as to how these workers are coping with the new normal.
- 65: Organizational Structure — The Aston SchoolWith Special Guest Bob Hinings The Aston Group was based in the United Kingdom and played a major role in the early development of organization theory and management science. Starting in the 1960s, they carried out a program of research that departed from the comparative study of work organizations in the Birmingham area in the UK and…
- 64: Disasters and Crisis Management – Powley and WeickCrises and disasters are regular occurrences in organizational life, putting leaders into the spotlight and organizations under tremendous pressure to respond appropriately — whether it is to preserve life or salvage reputations. With the COVID-19 pandemic ongoing, we wanted to discuss some important texts on organizational crises and their management, and in this episode we present…
- The Do’s and Don’ts of Academic-ing at a DistanceWith so much teaching never designed to be delivered via distance learning being delivered via distance learning, we wanted to chip in and offer some of our experience amassed during 64 episodes of (distance) recording the podcast. Granted, while these are more applicable to asynchronous teaching than synchronous Zoom-lecturing, we nonetheless hope that there might…
- 63: Remote Operations — The Hudson’s Bay CompanyFor this episode we discuss the history of a classic firm which exercised remote operations as a matter of course and faced multiple pandemics during its early existence. The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was chartered in 1670 by King Charles II at a time when the French monopolized fur trading with Native Americans in modern-day Canada. From then, the English would establish its own robust fur trading industry, establishing hundreds of posts from the western shores of Hudson Bay all across modern western Canada. The case is exceptional in demonstrating the historical challenges of remote operations where communications were limited to letters sent annually with the fur shipments across the Atlantic. How could London possibly maintain oversight and exercise control under such conditions?
- 62: Consumerism & Meaning at Work — WALL-EAs we demonstrated in previous episodes about “Twelve Angry Men” and “Modern Times,” movies can be effective tools for discussing concepts, ideas, and experiences about organizations and management. Add to this the ‘instant’ classic film WALL-E, released in 2008 by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. WALL-E is the story of a robot…
- 61: Power & Influence in Organizations — Dan BrassWith Special Guest Sarah Otner What is power and influence? Although power appears as a multilevel concept, the early organizational literature tended to view it as wielded by people–measured as skills, traits, or competencies. This would change in the 1980s, in large part to a classic empirical study providing evidence that one’s position within an…
- 60: Contingency Theory — Joan WoodwardJoan Woodward was a pioneer in organization theory, and in this episode we explore her seminal work Industrial Organization: Theory and Practice, originally published in 1965. The book presents the results of an extensive longitudinal study of the technologies, processes, and systems used by over one hundred industrial firms concentrated in southeast England over a…
- 59: Theory X and Y – Douglas McGregorIn this episode, we examine Douglas McGregor’s most famous work, The Human Side of Enterprise, that proposed two “theories” encapsulating management assumptions about human behavior. His Theory X described the dominant thinking of the 1950s, where managers held a dim view of employees, who were assumed to be disinclined to work and had to be…
- 58: Contingency Approach – AOM 2019 Workshop LIVEWith Speakers Sarah Kaplan, Signe Vikkelsø, and Gino Cattani This PDW represents the second edition of what we hope to be a standing series showcasing the enduring relevance of earlier organizational research and raise interest for it. We believe that paying attention to the classics of our field may complement the strong emphasis (at AOM…
- 57: Reward Systems – Steven KerrWhy do organizations espouse one thing but do another? This is essentially what Steven Kerr asks in his popular 1975 article in the Academy of Management Journal, “On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B,” on reward systems. Using examples ranging from politics and war to business and public sector settings, Kerr found…
- 56: Cooperative Advantage – Charles Clinton SpauldingIn this episode, we acknowledge the extraordinary contributions of Charles Clinton Spaulding, an important management thought leader who, like many African-Americans prior to the U.S. civil rights movement, has been sadly overlooked in the management canon. In 1927, with the U.S. in recession, Spaulding wrote a reflection of his experiences as a business leader in the Pittsburgh Courier, a widely-read newspaper, hoping to help fellow African-American business leaders overcome the economic downturn.
- 55: Group Dynamics and Foundations of Organizational Change – Kurt LewinWe discuss Kurt Lewin’s article, “Frontiers in Group Dynamics,” that makes a strong case for treating the social sciences on the same level with the natural sciences–previously, social science was considered neither rigorous nor valid. Using metaphors from physics, Lewin explains social phenomena in tangible, physical terms and explains how individuals within a social space interact in ways that could be measured similarly to physical or chemical phenomenon.
- 54: Measuring Organizational Cultures – HofstedeFresh off a study that identified key factors for comparing national cultures, organizational psychologist Geert Hofstede and his team set off to determine whether similar constructs could be deduced for organizational cultures. The success of this research is detailed in Hofstede’s classic 1990 paper, “Measuring Organizational Cultures: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study Across Twenty Cases,”…
- 53: Taylorism in Motion — Charlie Chaplin’s Modern TimesWe discuss Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film “Modern Times” balances great physical comedy with powerful social commentary. Chaplin portrayed a hapless Worker on an assembly line who is tormented both by supervisors and the work itself. After being subjected to a humiliating experiment intended to improve the line’s efficiency, the Worker runs through a series of rotating jobs, stints in jail, and other misadventures as he tries to find his purpose in life.
- 52: Management in Practice – Rosemary StewartWith Special Guest Maja Korica from the Warwick Business School, UK! So what do managers do in practice? How do they spend their time (or put another way, how does their time spend them)? Are there differences in the demands of managers in different positions, or withiin different organizations? These were the questions that famed…
- 51: The Tyranny of Light — Hari TsoukasHaridimos Tsoukas‘ 1997 article “The Tyranny of Light” was a bold article that challenged conventional wisdom about the oncoming information society. The Internet, personal computers, and the dot-com boom were still new and exciting. With information technologies advancing at an incredible pace, the sky (and the capacity of silicon) was the limit. Internet start-ups…
- 50: Celebrating 50 Episodes! What Have We Learned?Talking about organizations has reached 50 episodes! Pedro and the mythical signed poster! Ralph and Miranda in BIrmingham, UK around the time of Episode 15 Brian Pentland performing live on Episode 21 Dmitrijs and Pedro working hard at the TAOP Symposium To mark this occasion, we gathered all seven of us hosts to…
- 49: Engineered Culture and Normative Control – Gideon KundaOriginally 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 from a modest…
- 48: Stratified Systems Theory — Elliott JaquesAs 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…
- 47: Organizational Identity — Albert & Whetten“Who are we?” The pursuit of an answer to this tantalizingly simple question began with a book chapter written in 1985 by organization theorists Stuart Albert and David Whetten. “Organizational Identity” established the construct of identity at the organizational level and described it as the sum of three types of claims — claims of an…
- 46: Classics of Management and Organization Theory – AoM 2018 Workshop LIVEWith Speakers Paul Adler, Silvia Dorado, Siobhan O’Mahony, and Marc Ventresca 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…
- 45: Fate of Whistleblowers – C. Fred AlfordWe 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 â whistleblowers. But historically, the experiences of many other whistleblowers are discouraging â 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.
- 44: Transaction Costs and Boundaries of the Firm – Williamson and MaloneFollowing on a theme from the previous episode, we explore an important reading that bridges organization theory with economics. This was the explicit aim of Oliver E. Williamsonâs famous article, âThe Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach,â published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1981. The article begins with a statement that the assumption of…
- Reflections on the “Human Capital Hoax”Inspired by Episode 36. THE HUMAN CAPITAL HOAX – EMPLOYMENT IN THE GIG ECONOMY By Benoit Gautier Thanks to Talking About Organizations Podcast, I have been Reading P. Fleming’s ‘The Human Capital Hoax’ (Episode 36). The basic claim of the paper is that human capital theory has opened the gates for the ‘uberization’ of the workforce….
- Centralization and the Inefficient Quest for EfficiencyInspired by Episode 43. THE CENTRALIZATION/DECENTRALIZATION DEBATE – THE FEDERALIST PAPERS By Tom Galvin Listen to Tom’s sidecast here: Greetings, and I hope you enjoyed listening to us debate the merits of centralization and decentralization in organizations on Episode 43, where we framed the debate using as lenses Federalist Papers #9 and #10, authored…
- 43: Centralization/Decentralization Debate – The Federalist PapersThe 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!
- 42: Carnegie Mellon Series #5 – Organizational LearningWe discuss Barbara Levitt and James G. Marchâs article âOrganizational Learning,â published in the 1988 edition of the Annual Review of Sociology. Although the authors hailed from Stanford University in California, we have included this episode in our Carnegie-Mellon Series because of James Marchâs involvement and perspectives on organization that clearly influenced the article. This work was a literature review across various streams in organizational learning up through the 1980s. Topics include learning from experience, organizational memory, ecologies of learning, and organizational intelligence. Of particular interest is how organizational learning was defined as not an outcome but a process of translating the cumulative experiences of individuals and codifying them as routines within the organization. From this, the authors applied the brain metaphor â such as memory and intelligence â to explain the phenomenon.
- Milton Hershey and an Organization’s Commitment to its MembersInspired by Episode 41. IMAGES OF ORGANIZATION – GARETH MORGAN By Tom Galvin Listen to Tom’s sidecast here: Near the end of Episode 41, we discussed the themes of member commitment to the organization and an organizationâs commitment to its individual members. This arose in the context of our continuing discussions of the gig economy…
- 41: Images of Organization – Gareth MorganWe conclude Season 4 with one of our most ambitious efforts, tackling Gareth Morganâs 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…
- 40: Symposium on the Gig Economy LIVEA SPECIAL EPISODE FROM OUR VERY FIRST EVENT! 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…
- The Value of Simple Exploratory Models for Explaining Complex BehaviorsInspired by Episode 39. CARNEGIE-MELLON SERIES No. 4 — ORGANIZATIONAL CHOICE By Tom Galvin Listen to Tom’s sidecast here: In past seasons, we discussed the extent to which publication practices valuing journal articles above books limit our understanding of organizational phenomena. We also debated how the peer-review process and its current emphasis on âtheoretical…
- 39: Carnegie Mellon Series #4 – Organizational ChoiceThe podcasters discuss a fascinating article, âA Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice,â 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…
- 38: Socialization and Occupational Communities – Van MaanenIn this episode, we examine John Van Maanen’s classic ethnographic study of police recruits from an urban police department in the U.S. “Police socialization: A longitudinal examination of job attitudes in an urban police department,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1975, presents Van Maanen’s study on the socialization process of new police officers from…
- 37: Socrates on Management – Oeconomicus by XenophonThis 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 EconomyEpisode 36 represents a momentary break from older seminal readings to a very recent essay covering a timely topic â the negative effects of âUberizationâ and the gig economy on the economic and social fabric. While the text and the phenomena are quite recent, the author analyzes these matters by re-reading a classic approach in…
- 35: The Managed Heart – Arlie HochschildThe 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 oneâs duties. The importance of emotional labour is made clear in Dr. Hochschildâs 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 oneâs personal identity and private life, differentiated (and often unfair) gender roles, miscommunication between supervisors and workers or workers and clients, and others.
- 34: Sociotechnical Systems – Trist and BamforthWe discuss important article by Eric Trist and Ken Bamforth, âSome Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting,â published in the journal Human Relations in 1951. Eric Trist was a British social scientist best known for his contributions to the field of organization development and one of the founders of the Tavistock Institute. Ken Bamforth was a miner and industrial fellow of the Tavistock Institute. The articleâs subtitle is an examination of the psychological situation and defences of a work group in relation to the social structure and technological content of the work system, and explores how a technological change in the coal-mining industry tore apart the social structure of the workers who were supposed to have benefitted from the change. The technological change in question was the mechanization of the process of mining and extracting coal along a very long face, as opposed to the previous âhand-gotâ methods where small teams would dig out coal from smaller faces.
- Reflections on WieliczkaInspired by Episode 34. ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE – TRIST AND BAMFORTH By Tom Galvin In my preparations for Episode 34 (Trist & Bamforth, 1951), I was reminded of a bus tour I took back in the summer of 2001 from Heidelberg, Germany to Krakow, Poland. Part of the tour included a guided visit to the Wieliczka Salt…
- 33: Foreman – Master and Victim of DoubletalkTo open Season 4, this episode covered Fritz J. Roethlisbergerâs classic 1945 article from Harvard Business Review (HBR), âThe FOREMAN: Master and Victim of Double Talk.â 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…
- 32: Organizational Stupidity with Mats Alvesson and Bjorn Erik Mork LIVEWith Special Guests Mats Alvesson and 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 AndrĂŠ Spicer, with Mats Alvesson (keynote speaker) and Bjørn Erik Mørk…
- 31: Process Studies, PROS and Institutional Theory LIVEWith Special Guests Trish Reay, Tammar Zilber, Hari Tsoukas, and Ann Langley Please join us for the first of two fascinating special episodes recorded from the International Process Symposium 2017. The aim of the Symposium is to consolidate, integrate, and further develop ongoing efforts to advance a sophisticated process perspective in organization and management studies….
- 30: Corporate CulturalismHugh Willmott Strength is Ignorance; Slavery is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations was Hugh Willmottâs critique of corporate culturalism, a dominant theme in management studies in the 1980s. In 1993, when the paper appeared in the Journal of Management Studies, strengthening corporate culture was seen as a way to improve organizational performance. But instead of an academic response, Willmott used George Orwellâs classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to explain his objections.
- 29: Carnegie Mellon Series #3 – Designing Business Schools, by Herb SimonWe discuss Herbert Simonâs article âThe Business School: A Problem in Organizational Design,â published in 1967. This was written at a time when the business school enterprise was facing difficulties and wrestling over its identity. The paper framed these challenges as a design problem relating to a business school’s purpose, what the business school should teach to its students, and what type of faculty would be needed to fulfill the purpose.
- 28: Organizations as RhetoricOur next episode in the JMS classics series covers Mats Alvesson’s “, Organizations as Rhetoric: Knowledge-Intensive Firms and the Struggle with Ambiguity” from 1993 that concluded with the idea that organizations are best understood as ‘systems of persuasion’ where actors use their agency to engage in discourse on behalf of the organization.
- 27: Context and Action in the Transformation of the FirmWe discuss Andrew Pettigrew’s classic JMS article, “Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm,â that introduced Pettigrew’s triangle of context, content, and process into the discourse on change management though his study of change in an UK chemical firm.
- 26: Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis SituationsWe discuss another JMS classic, Karl Weick’s “Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations,” that examines how that the central mechanisms behind failure and incidents is given by the interaction between humans and technology (and not by technology in itself). Weick’s study examined the the Bophal Disaster, a gas leak incident that took place in 1984 in India and shows how individuals enacted rather than encountered the events.
- 25: Competitive Groups as Cognitive CommunitiesWe discuss another JMS classic, âCompetitive Groups as Cognitive Communities the case of Scottish Knitwear Manufacturersâ by Porac, Thomas, and Baden-Fuller from 1989. Employing an approach based on the âinterpretiveâ side of organizations, the Authors propose that a key mechanism in competition and strategy is given by the âmental models used by key decision-makers to interpret the task environment of their organizationâ. These, in turn, emerge out of material and cognitive exchanges among customers, suppliers, and producers.
- 24: Learning by Knowledge-Intensive FirmsWe discuss another of the classics from the Journal of Management Studies, a paper from 1992 by William Starbuck, entitled âLearning by knowledge-intensive firmsâ. 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 economistsâ notions of capital and labour intensive firms, and which are defined as those firms where âknowledge has more importance than other inputsâ (p.715).
- Reflections on the “Process and Practice Perspectivesâ Workshop at the University of Queensland Business SchoolInspired by Episode 21. “SMALL RESEARCH, BIG ISSUES” By Ella Hafermalz “Process and practice perspectivesâ are piquing the interest of a range of organisational scholars. The group that gathered at the University of Queensland Business School workshop last week represented the diversity of scholars interested in these approaches. Faculties of Management, Information Systems, Advertising and…
- 23: Influence of Institutions and Factor MarketsThis 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 SuchmanWe discuss Lucy Suchmanâs book âHuman-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actionâ 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 usersâ behavior, more specifically, due to the idea that humansâ actions are based on the following of plans, which she refutes.
- 21: Small Research, Big Issues with Brian Pentland and Katharina Dittrich LIVEFrom the ‘Connections in Action’ workshop held by the IKON Research Unit at the University of Warwick, 5-6 December 2016 What a treat! Joining us for this Special Episode from the fascinating ‘Connections in Action’ workshop at the University of Warwick are Katharina Dittrich and Brian Pentland (aka Doctor Decade)! To our great delight, Doctor Decade…