Tom Galvin

100: Special Episode — The State of Organization Studies

April 18, 2023 Tom Galvin 1:07:27
For our 100th episode, we look outward toward the various fields of study that have fed into our podcast – organization studies, organization theory, management science, and others – and ask how strong or healthy those fields are. The disciple has, after all, gotten very big with thousands of scholars around the world doing important field work, research, and consultancy projects. But it has also become more fragmented and is experiencing the stresses and strains of a mature profession. So in this one-part reflection, we think about what we have learned so far in 100 episodes stretching over 7-1/2 years and where we might like to see the field go in the coming years.Read More

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99: Gendering in Organizations — Joan Acker

March 14, 2023 Tom Galvin 0:04:14
Joan Acker’s 1990 article “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations” was a significant work in feminist theories of organizations. She charged that prior feminist research had wrongly assumed that organizational structures were gender neutral. Instead, everything about organizations from structures to symbols are inherently gendered, and until that was acknowledged and studied, organizations would continue to reinforce long-standing gender inequalities. The article is significant for its synthesis of a growing body of research that questioned the claims of gender neutrality in organizational practices that creates and sustains barriers to women’s equality in the workplace.Read More

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98: Managing Innovation — Burns & Stalker

February 14, 2023 Tom Galvin 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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97: Social Change and Organization – Invictus (2009 movie)

January 24, 2023 Tom Galvin 0:04:15
The 2009 film Invictus tells the story of how the first post-Apartheid President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, used sports as a unifying force to overcome lingering and bitter racial divides in the nation. The movie and the real-life events that inspired it are powerful. We will look at it through an organizational lens and discuss insights related to leadership, team building, change and other management topics.Read More

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96: Informating at Work – Shoshana Zuboff

December 6, 2022 Tom Galvin 0:04:58
We discuss Shoshana Zuboff’s "In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power" that examines several cases of organizations introducing information technologies in the workplace hoping to improve organizational performance, transparency, and collaboration but instead dehumanized the workplace and ushered in new ways of managerial surveillance. In Part 1, we discuss the major themes of the book, her telling of the histories of both blue- and white-collar work, and her incredible case studies.Read More

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95: Labor-Management Relations – Tom Lupton

November 8, 2022 Tom Galvin 0:04:39
This month, we discuss examine Lupton’s famous study of worker-management relations, "On the Shop Floor: Two Studies of Workshop Organization and Output" published in 1963. Tom Lupton spent 12 months as a factor worker in two different settings examining why workers intentionally worked at a level below management expectations. He found that social structures formed that protected workers from overuse or abuse by management and ensured a stable pay. These structures discouraged workers from working too hard or not hard enough. In Part 1, we will examine the cases in depth and present Lupton’s findings.Read More

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94: Situated Learning – Lave & Wenger

October 11, 2022 Tom Galvin 0:05:14
This month, we discuss Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, published in 1991. This short but powerful book presents a new way of thinking about adult learning as a social activity in which experienced members of a group or community of practice share their knowledge with new members to perpetuate the group identity. They present five case studies – one by Lave herself with four from other researchers – to help broaden the perspective of how situated learning works social involvement in which newer members are initiated through the exercise of low-risk or controlled tasks. Read More

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92: Organizational Secrecy — Case of the Manhattan Project

August 9, 2022 Tom Galvin 0:05:21
We are examining organizational secrecy using the Manhattan Project during World War II as a case study. 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. How did they do it and what challenges did they face? What could we learn about maintaining secrets in contemporary organizations?Read More

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91: Constructive Conflict – Mary Parker Follett

July 12, 2022 Tom Galvin 0:04:13
We return to the works of Mary Parker Follett and expand upon “The Law of the Situation” that we covered in Chapter 5. In this episode, we revisit Dynamic Administration with a look at the first five chapters as a whole – focusing on Chapter 1 (“Constuctive Conflict”), Chapter 3 (“Business as an Integrative Unity”), Chapter 4 (“Power”), and Chapter 5 (“How Must Business Management Develop in order to Possess the Essentials of a Profession”) that introduced Follett’s conception of professionalizing business.Read More

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90: Organizations in Action – James Thompson

June 14, 2022 Tom Galvin 0:05:01
We will examine James D. Thompson’s "Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory" from 1967 that established a new direction in organization studies. Beginning with a recapitulation of the theoretical work of the time, Thompson expanded the dominant rational model of organizing with the emerging ideas about human behaviour, complexity, and the relation between organizations and their environments. The result was a proposed theory of administration that remains relevant to this day.Read More

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