Ralph Soule

52: Management in Practice – Rosemary Stewart

February 5, 2019 Ralph Soule
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 management theorist Rosemary Stewart set out to uncover in her research back in the 1960s, resulting in the first edition of this episode's subject--her book Managers and Their Jobs: A Study of the Similarities and Differences in the Ways Managers Spend Their Time.

50: Celebrating 50 Episodes! What Have We Learned?

November 27, 2018 Ralph Soule

Talking about organizations has reached 50 episodes!

 To mark this occasion, we gathered all seven of us hosts to discuss what we like (and perhaps not) about the podcast and podcasting, what our favorite or most remembered episodes were, and what we have learned along the way. 

Turns out, one of the key things we learned was how much such a small number of dedicated scholars and practitioners can do with a lot of motivation and energy. As we discuss, there were many in the beginning who scoffed at the idea of podcasting on classic and emerging organization theories and concepts of management science. But with over 12,000 active listeners worldwide, Talking About Organizations has proven to be useful and entertaining all at once.

We hope you enjoy this brief retrospective. Also, click on the below graphic to view all the places where we have podcasted from in our many travels — sometimes having to find unique and interesting places to record to avoid noise and other problems!

Some photos from our first recordings and meetings!

Did you know THAT…

  • the podcast grew out of intellectually fertile soil of the Innovation, Knowledge and Organisational Networks Research Centre at the Warwick Business School. Thank you Jacky Swan, Davide Nicolini, Dawn Coton and many others for your early support and feedback!
  • while TAOP is no longer the sole academic podcast of its kind in management and organization studies, it is by far the largest one? Enjoyed by over 12000 regular listeners, Talking About Organizations is a reminder to all of us of the value of conversations to intellectual development and of the interest that our community has in foundational texts.
  • by the 50th episode we have had the pleasure of welcoming 25 guests on the show 27 times? And this is excluding guests and keynote speakers for our special events!
  • Speaking of special events, December 2017 marked the very first time we independently hosted an event – the Symposium on the Continuities and Disruptions of Management in the Gig Economy, featuring a whole bunch of wonderful people! Also big thanks to Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and University of Sussex for providing the resources that made it possible!
  • Katharina Dittrich (E4 and E21) and Mats Alvesson (E28 and E32) are the only two guests to make more than a single appearance on the show? Katharina also holds the honor of being our very first guest!
  • the podcast has been referenced in two peer-reviewed journals? See du Gay and Vikkelso (2018) and Bridgman, Cummings and Ballard (2018) for examples of two articles showing exceptionally good taste in their choice of sources.
  • there is a myth that rare collectable artefacts from the early days of the podcast exist scattered throughout the land… these range from the five original coffee mugs to a unique signed poster from the time of E21. Rest assured – we don’t know where most of these are either.

49: Engineered Culture and Normative Control – Gideon Kunda

October 30, 2018 Ralph Soule
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.

48: Stratified Systems Theory — Elliott Jaques

October 11, 2018 Ralph Soule
As 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 Jaques, co-founder of the Tavistock Institute and later the author of the renowned book Requisite Organization that combined social theories with theories of organization.

47: Organizational Identity — Albert & Whetten

September 18, 2018 Ralph Soule
"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 organization's central character, claims of its distinctiveness from other organizations, and claims of temporal continuity that tie the present organization to its history.

45: Fate of Whistleblowers – C. Fred Alford

August 2, 2018 Ralph Soule
We 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 – whistleblowers. But historically, the experiences of many other whistleblowers are discouraging – 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 Malone

July 16, 2018 Ralph Soule
We explore an important reading that bridges organization theory with economics -- Oliver E. Williamson’s article, “The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach,” where he asserts that the assumption of firms operating on a profit motive has not helped organization theorists understand and explain the behaviors of firms. He thus argued that transactions, not the products or services the firm provides, is a better unit of analysis.

43: Centralization/Decentralization Debate – The Federalist Papers

May 30, 2018 Ralph Soule
The 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 Learning

May 3, 2018 Ralph Soule
We discuss Barbara Levitt and James G. March’s article “Organizational Learning,” 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 March’s 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 – such as memory and intelligence – to explain the phenomenon.

41: Images of Organization – Gareth Morgan

April 3, 2018 Ralph Soule
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.