With special guest Rohin Borpujari, London Business School
J. Robert Oppenheimer
As part of a broad goal of examining foundational ideas in organization and management, we occasionally look at significant historical events that illustrate key ideas in this field. For this episode, we elected to look at organizational secrecy – what organizations decide needs to be kept from outside observation, why, how they accomplish it, and to what extent they succeed. An exemplary case of organizational secrecy was the story of the Manhattan Project during World War II that devised, developed, and tested the world’s first nuclear weapons before their employment in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
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. For this reason, the Project’s locations were remote. Physical isolation was maintained through barbed-wire fences. Yet, of greater note, were the professional and social barriers erected to keep the scientists and support workers firmly within the narrow scope of their duties, informed mainly on a need-to-know basis. That was not a given. The scientists who worked in the project were accustomed to open collaboration within professional channels.
We learned about this case by watching two documentaries. The first was The Day After Trinity, a film released in 1980 that tells the story of the Manhattan Project largely through the perspective of its leading scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer. The title refers to the Trinity site in New Mexico where the first nuclear test occurred, and Oppenheimer’s response to a question posed to him twenty years later about the need to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to which Oppenheimer responded, “It’s 20 years too late. It should have been done the day after Trinity.” The second was Los Alamos from Below, in which a 1975 lecture by Richard Feynman is overlaid with pictures from Los Alamos and its key figures. Feynman provided a humorous look at the attempts at secrecy and the various ways some (including him) got around them in this site of the project where most of the scientific work took place.
We welcome Rohin Borpujari, a Ph.D. candidate from the London Business School. Rohin’s dissertation includes a case study of the Manhattan Project where he examines the organization of secretive knowledge work.
Part 1. A secret project that changed the course of history (released 9 August 2022)
Part 2. At the intersection of science, organization, and politics (released 16 August 2022)
Read with us:
Else, J. H. (1981). The day after Trinity [Video]. KTEH San Jose. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vja83KLQXZs
Feynman, R. (1975). Los Alamos from below: Reminiscences 1943-1945. University of California at Santa Barbara. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY-u1qyRM5w
To Learn More:
Shapin, S. (2021, November 4). Loose talk. London Review of Books, 43(21). https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n21/steven-shapin/loose-talk
Wellerstein, A. (1959). Restricted data: The history of nuclear secrecy in the United States. Chicago.
Other Talking About Organizations Podcast episodes referenced:
Episode 79. Labor Relations — Jane Addams (covering the Pullman Railroad Strike)
Episode 63. Remote Operations — The Hudson’s Bay Company
Title and Portrait Image Credits: U.S. Department of Energy / Teaser Image Credit: U.S. Army
