Tom Galvin

48: Stratified Systems Theory — Elliott Jaques

October 11, 2018 Tom Galvin
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. Read More

47: Organizational Identity — Albert & Whetten

September 18, 2018 Tom Galvin
"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.Read More

45: Fate of Whistleblowers – C. Fred Alford

August 2, 2018 Tom Galvin
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.Read More

44: Transaction Costs and Boundaries of the Firm – Williamson and Malone

July 16, 2018 Tom Galvin
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.Read More

Centralization and the Inefficient Quest for Efficiency

May 31, 2018 Tom Galvin 0:27:52
In this sidecast inspired by the debate on the Federalist Papers, Tom talks about the topic of efficiency and its many meanings. Read More

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43: Centralization/Decentralization Debate – The Federalist Papers

May 30, 2018 Tom Galvin
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!Read More

42: Carnegie Mellon Series #5 – Organizational Learning

May 3, 2018 Tom Galvin
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.Read More

Milton Hershey and an Organization’s Commitment to its Members

April 11, 2018 Tom Galvin 0:11:21
As a contrast to the gig economy discussions of recent episodes, Tom offers an example of an organization and its leader who exercised high organizational commitment to its members. This is the story of Milton Hershey, the founder of both the Hershey Chocolate Factory and the small town that grew from it, then located in a rather remote spot east of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.Read More

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41: Images of Organization – Gareth Morgan

April 3, 2018 Tom Galvin
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.Read More

The Value of Simple Exploratory Models for Explaining Complex Behaviors

February 9, 2018 Tom Galvin 0:18:27
Modeling was an uncommon method of conducting research in organization studies back during the classic period. The inclusion of a model (complete with FORTRAN source code) in Cohen et al.'s garbage can model article was therefore very exciting. Could Tom replicate the results in a modern programming language?Read More

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