Episodes

8: The Ends of Men – Chester Barnard

March 29, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko 0:10:47
Continuing with our discussion of Chester Barnard's master work - The Functions of The Executive (1938) - we look at parts III & IV of the book. Here he is going into more depth on a number of organizational aspects and on the process of management. Specifically, Barnard talks about the parts that make up an organization in Part III and, finally, the functions of the executive in Part IV.

7: Phases of Cooperation – Chester Barnard

March 1, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko 0:10:47
This is the first of two episodes devoted to The Functions of the Executive. For this episode we are reading Parts I and II of the book, where Barnard outlines his understanding of the individual, of why individuals would form organizations, and of the basic principles of the formal organization.

6: Bureaucracy – Max Weber

February 16, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko 0:13:02
We discuss two chapters of Max Weber's 1922 book Economy and Society. Weber was most interested in bureaucracy. He believed that bureaucratic coordination of activities is a hallmark of the modern and civilized society. This was not least because bureaucracies are organized according to rational principles, and rationality is an ongoing intellectual effort that is subject to education and discipline. In a bureaucratic organization offices are ranked in a hierarchical order and their operations are characterized by impersonal rules.

5: The Law of the Situation – Mary Parker Follett

January 26, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko 0:21:27
This episode is a review of one of Mary Parker Follett’s great lectures, "The Giving of Orders," contained in a collection of Follett’s lectures and writings that was assembled by Lyndall Urwick at the end of her life in an effort to preserve her ideas for others. Follett believed that exploring “the science of the situation” involved both management and workers studying the situation together.

4: Carnegie Mellon Series #1 – Organizational Routines

December 21, 2015 Dmitrijs Kravcenko 0:08:10
In our first episode on the Carnegie-Mellon School, we examine selected passages from March & Simon's book Organizations and Cyert & March's book A Behavioral Theory of the Firm to address the rise of scholarly thought on matters of organizational routines

3: Theory of Human Motivation – Abraham Maslow

December 1, 2015 Dmitrijs Kravcenko 0:06:51
We discuss "A Theory of Human Motivation" by Abraham H. Maslow, one of the most famous psychology articles ever written. Originally published in 1943, it was in this landmark paper that Maslow presented his first detailed representation of Self-Actualization - the desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming - at the pinnacle of a hierarchy of human needs. What Maslow is most famous for, however, is the pyramid of human needs.

2: General and Industrial Management – H. Fayol’s Theory of Administration

November 10, 2015 Dmitrijs Kravcenko 0:12:34
For this episode, we are reading part of Henri Fayol's central 1916 work, General and Industrial Management (first translated into English in 1929, but not published in the United States until 1949). In this work Fayol clearly outlined the five distinct elements of management and the fourteen principles that he believed should guide managers in administering those elements.

1: Principles of Scientific Management – F.W. Taylor’s One Best Way

October 12, 2015 Dmitrijs Kravcenko 0:09:31
Presents the seminal text that defined Taylorism and scientific management, a ‘scientific’ approach to managing people and work process design. The ‘Principles of Scientific Management’ proposed a ‘scientific’ approach to managing people and work process design. Taylor decried the waste of effort and resources that resulted from inefficient management practices, and thus proposed a science-based way of analyzing and reorganizing both the work and the management of it.