Tom Galvin

76: Comparative Analysis of Organizations – Charles Perrow

May 11, 2021 Tom Galvin
We discuss a 1967 article from Charles Perrow, “A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations.” Perrow proposed a framework for comparing organizations, largely around “technology” which in contemporary times would be taken to mean the work to be performed. The framework allows analysis of the character of the work being done, nature of the raw material (e.g., tangible objects or intangible symbols), and associated task and social structures.Read More

74: Emergence of Middle Management — Alfred Chandler

March 9, 2021 Tom Galvin
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

72: Organizational Diagnosis — Marvin Weisbord

January 12, 2021 Tom Galvin
Business literature is now loaded with models and frameworks designed to help organizations identify, analyze, and fix their problems. But it wasn't always this way, and in fact a half century ago there were few general-purpose models available that were well-suited for the task. Enter Marvin Weisbord who in the 1970s developed and promoted a simple framework and associated suite of tools designed for anyone to investigate what was going wrong. In this episode, we discuss one of his articles -- "Organizational Diagnosis: Six Places to Look for Trouble With or Without a Theory," published in 1976 in the journal Group and Organization Management -- that introduced his Six-Box Model of organizational diagnosis.Read More

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

November 10, 2020 Tom Galvin
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 Tom Galvin
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 Tom Galvin
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

67: Professions & Professionalism — Andrew Abbott

August 11, 2020 Tom Galvin
The text for this episode is Andrew Abbott's 1989 book The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. This book is a watershed in our understanding of professions and their work. While previous literature had a focus on distinctive occupational groups and their professionalization projects, Abbott invited us to think more systemically about the interdependencies and how professions compete with each other over "jurisdictions," claims of ownership and responsibility over expert knowledge and its applications.Read More

65: Organizational Structure — The Aston School

June 9, 2020 Tom Galvin
The Aston Group was based in the United Kingdom and played a major role in the early development of organization theory and management science. Starting in the 1960s, they carried out a program of research that departed from the comparative study of work organizations in the Birmingham area in the UK and contributed landmark works on organizational structure and the development of contingency approach.Read More

63: Remote Operations — The Hudson’s Bay Company

April 14, 2020 Tom Galvin
For this episode we discuss the history of a classic firm which exercised remote operations as a matter of course and faced multiple pandemics during its early existence. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) was chartered in 1670 by King Charles II at a time when the French monopolized fur trading with Native Americans in modern-day Canada. From then, the English would establish its own robust fur trading industry, establishing hundreds of posts from the western shores of Hudson Bay all across modern western Canada. The case is exceptional in demonstrating the historical challenges of remote operations where communications were limited to letters sent annually with the fur shipments across the Atlantic. How could London possibly maintain oversight and exercise control under such conditions?Read More

62: Consumerism & Meaning at Work — WALL-E

March 17, 2020 Tom Galvin
This is another episode where we look at organizations through the medium of film. WALL-E, a 2008 animated film from Pixar, is the story of a robot who at one time was part of a massive clean-up effort on Earth while all the humans left to live on cruise ships in space. In this episode, we talk about the setting and the story for clues about organizational behavior and management. Read More