Ella Hafermalz

66: Workplace Isolation – Forester

July 16, 2020 Ella Hafermalz
In 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.Read More

57: Reward Systems – Steven Kerr

October 21, 2019 Ella Hafermalz
Why 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 a common pattern: that the organization's goals are too often not supported by the things they actually reward and encourage.Read More

53: Taylorism in Motion — Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times

March 14, 2019 Ella Hafermalz
We 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.Read More

51: The Tyranny of Light — Hari Tsoukas

December 6, 2018 Ella Hafermalz
Haridimos 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. But Tsoukas foresaw many dangers -- have they come to pass?Read More

50: Celebrating 50 Episodes! What Have We Learned?

November 27, 2018 Ella Hafermalz
This is our first "milestone" release, celebrating our 50th episode and providing an opportunity for us to gather all the cast members to reflect on what the podcast has meant to us and how much we have accomplished.Read More

49: Engineered Culture and Normative Control – Gideon Kunda

October 30, 2018 Ella Hafermalz
Originally 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, it began indoctrinating its tried-and-true hard-work formula in aggressive and unhelpful ways.Read More

41: Images of Organization – Gareth Morgan

April 3, 2018 Ella Hafermalz
We tackle Gareth Morgan’s 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 way of understanding the existence and  dynamics of organizations, their members, and their interactions with the environment.Read More

35: The Managed Heart – Arlie Hochschild

October 24, 2017 Ella Hafermalz 0:39:33
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.Read More

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31: Process Studies, PROS and Institutional Theory LIVE

August 15, 2017 Ella Hafermalz
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. PROS is an annual event, organized in conjunction with the annual series Perspectives on Process Organization Studies published by Oxford University Press, and it takes place in a Greek island, in June every year.Read More

28: Organizations as Rhetoric — Mats Alvesson

May 16, 2017 Ella Hafermalz 0:16:06
Our 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.Read More

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