Methodology

103: Bringing Work Back In — Barley & Kunda

July 11, 2023 Catherine Jackson 0:03:54
In their 2001 Organization Science article “Bringing Work Back In,” Steven Barley and Gideon Kunda lamented how the study of work, its organization, and its performance shifted after the 1950s. Work was the center of attention among the classic era of organization studies beginning with Frederic Taylor, but afterward, the focus shifted to post-bureaucratic concepts such as boundaryless organizations and networks. Barley and Kunda argues that these new ideas are not grounded in rigorous studies of how people perform work in such new organizations.

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.

38: Socialization and Occupational Communities – Van Maanen

February 4, 2018 Pedro Monteiro
In this episode, we examine John Van Maanen's classic ethnographic study of police recruits from an urban police department in the U.S. "Police socialization: A longitudinal examination of job attitudes in an urban police department," published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1975, presents Van Maanen's study on the socialization process of new police officers from their training and indoctrination at the police academy to their early months on the beat.

21: Small Research, Big Issues with Brian Pentland and Katharina Dittrich LIVE

December 17, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
What a treat! Joining us for this Special Episode from the fascinating 'Connections in Action' workshop at the University of Warwick are Katharina Dittrich and Brian Pentland (aka Doctor Decade)! To our great delight, Doctor Decade provided the live intro music for this episode and even performed one of his songs! 

15: Doing Interesting Research with Jorgen Sandberg LIVE

August 9, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
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. 

12: On the Value of Conferences — Emma Bell and Paul Duguid LIVE

June 7, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
Dmitrijs and Ralph are joined by Professors Paul Duguid and Emma Bell to talk about the value and form of conferences in promoting, disseminating and facilitating knowledge. The four of us shared some personal conference-attending experiences, considered the current format and emergent alternatives, and pondered on the nature of knowledge as such.