Miranda Lewis

22: Human-Machine Reconfigurations – Lucy Suchman

January 17, 2017 Miranda Lewis
We discuss Lucy Suchman’s book “Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action” 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 users’ behavior, more specifically, due to the idea that humans’ actions are based on the following of plans, which she refutes.

19: Carnegie Mellon Series #2 – Exploration and Exploitation of Knowledge

November 8, 2016 Miranda Lewis 0:11:35
In this episode, we read James March's widely cited article, “Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning,” published in 1991 in the journal Organization Science. In the paper, March considered the relationships between exploration of new ways of doing things and the exploitation of accepted, standard practices for organizational learning.

15: Doing Interesting Research with Jorgen Sandberg LIVE

August 9, 2016 Miranda Lewis
What is it about research that makes it interesting? Or, rather, at which point does a study become interesting? We invited Mats Alvesson to discuss his 2013 book - Constructing Research Questions: Doing interesting research (co-authored with Jorgen Sandberg) who proposes that the focal point of what contributes to something being interesting is found way before any results or implications. The focal point of what makes a research interesting has to do with the assumptions that go into the design of that research. 

14: Simply Managing, by Henry Mintzberg

August 2, 2016 Miranda Lewis 0:11:18
The book we analyzed in this episode, Simply Managing (2013), is an updated study of managers conducted by Henry Mintzberg based on observing 29 managers at all levels of organizations across a range of industries and organizational structures: business, government, healthcare, and pluralistic organizations such as museums and non-governmental organizations.

10: Twelve Angry Men (1957) – Directed by Sidney Lumet

May 10, 2016 Miranda Lewis 0:10:25
12 Angry Men, directed by Sidney Lumet, is one of the major milestones of film history. It dates back to 1957 and tells the story of a jury, the twelve angry men of the title, and how they decide on the innocence or guilt of a young boy accused of murder. The entire film takes place in the jury room, with the exception of a few scenes, namely those in the courthouse and in the bathroom. We use this story as a lens to discuss themes in organizational theory such as decision making and consensus building among groups.

9: Hawthorne Studies – Elton Mayo

April 19, 2016 Miranda Lewis 0:09:41
The Hawthorne studies take their name from the Hawthorne works, a factory near Chicago which belonged to Western Electric. Even though these studies are traditionally solely associated with Mayo’s name, most of the experimental work was carried out by Fritz Roethlisberger (his graduate assistant) and William Dickson (head of the department of employee relations at Western Electric). The experiments took place between 1924 and 1932 and were commissioned because the company wanted to understand which was the optimal level of lighting to increase workers’ productivity. Mayo’s work "The Social problems of an Industrial Civilization" (1945) is the text we are reading for this episode. In this book, Mayo reports on a number of his research projects – including the studies in the Textile Mill in Philadelphia and the Hawthorne Studies previously mentioned – and provides an ambitious social commentary on industrial society.

8: The Ends of Men – Chester Barnard

March 29, 2016 Miranda Lewis 0:10:47
Continuing with our discussion of Chester Barnard's master work - The Functions of The Executive (1938) - we look at parts III & IV of the book. Here he is going into more depth on a number of organizational aspects and on the process of management. Specifically, Barnard talks about the parts that make up an organization in Part III and, finally, the functions of the executive in Part IV.

7: Phases of Cooperation – Chester Barnard

March 1, 2016 Miranda Lewis 0:10:47
This is the first of two episodes devoted to The Functions of the Executive. For this episode we are reading Parts I and II of the book, where Barnard outlines his understanding of the individual, of why individuals would form organizations, and of the basic principles of the formal organization.

6: Bureaucracy – Max Weber

February 16, 2016 Miranda Lewis 0:13:02
We discuss two chapters of Max Weber's 1922 book Economy and Society. Weber was most interested in bureaucracy. He believed that bureaucratic coordination of activities is a hallmark of the modern and civilized society. This was not least because bureaucracies are organized according to rational principles, and rationality is an ongoing intellectual effort that is subject to education and discipline. In a bureaucratic organization offices are ranked in a hierarchical order and their operations are characterized by impersonal rules.

5: The Law of the Situation – Mary Parker Follett

January 26, 2016 Miranda Lewis 0:21:27
This episode is a review of one of Mary Parker Follett’s great lectures, "The Giving of Orders," contained in a collection of Follett’s lectures and writings that was assembled by Lyndall Urwick at the end of her life in an effort to preserve her ideas for others. Follett believed that exploring “the science of the situation” involved both management and workers studying the situation together.