Leonardo Melo Lins

102: Executive Leadership — Sloan’s “My Years at General Motors”

June 13, 2023 Leonardo Melo Lins 0:04:52
Alfred Sloan was President, Chairman, and CEO of General Motors from 1923 to 1956. His memoir “My Years at General Motors” 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.Read More

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98: Managing Innovation — Burns & Stalker

February 14, 2023 Leonardo Melo Lins 0:04:01
Why 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. Read More

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85: Carnegie-Mellon Series #6 — Organizations

January 11, 2022 Leonardo Melo Lins 0:07:21
In this episode, we discuss the second edition of James March and Herbert Simon’s 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 “classic” 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.Read More

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83: Organizational Design — Jay Galbraith

November 9, 2021 Leonardo Melo Lins
We 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 organization’s purpose and strategy. This episode begins with a focus on one of Jay Galbraith’s earlier publications, an article titled, “Organizational Design: An Information Processing View” for designing organizations to make better decisions in times of high uncertainty, and then brings in his more recent works promoting his five-point “Star Model,” a design tool for use by managers. Read More

75: Institutionalization – Philip Selznick

April 13, 2021 Leonardo Melo Lins
Philip 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 value—what 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.Read More

74: Emergence of Middle Management — Alfred Chandler

March 9, 2021 Leonardo Melo Lins
Alfred Chandler’s 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,Read More

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

November 10, 2020 Leonardo Melo Lins
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

69: Our 5th Anniversary Special!

October 13, 2020 Leonardo Melo Lins
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. Five years later and we are still here! Come celebrate our first five years with retrospective looks at how we plan and put on the show, talks with some of our past guests, and responses to questions sent in by our listeners!Read More

68: Globalization and Culture Clashes — “American Factory” (Documentary)

September 8, 2020 Leonardo Melo Lins
For this episode, we cover a documentary that presents a compelling picture about culture clashes in the workplace. 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. Read More

66: Workplace Isolation – Forester

July 16, 2020 Leonardo Melo Lins
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