Episodes

78: Patterns of Bureaucracy — Alvin Gouldner

July 13, 2021 Pedro Monteiro
We discuss a classic 1954 book by Alvin Gouldner titled, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. This describes the results of an ethnographic study conducted at a gypsum processing plant that included both a mine and a production line for construction materials. Gouldner and his team uncovered three distinct patterns of bureaucratic rules based on the acceptance and compliance of bureaucratic rules by workers and management – patterns still relevant today.

77: Job Design – Hackman & Oldham

June 8, 2021 Pedro Monteiro
We discuss a 1975 article by J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham in the Journal of Applied Psychology titled, “Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey.” The purpose of the instrument was to help managers increase the motivational potential of jobs. They developed the JDS through the studies of existing jobs to determine what makes a job motivating and also how to improve the motivating potential of jobs from how they are defined and described. It remains a seminal reading in job design today. With Special Guest Lisa Cohen from McGill University.

76: Comparative Analysis of Organizations – Charles Perrow

May 11, 2021 Pedro Monteiro
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.

75: Institutionalization – Philip Selznick

April 13, 2021 Maikel Waardenburg
Philip Selznick seeded the origins of institutional theory in organization studies. He brought attention to the symbolic aspects of administration, such as when organizational tools and processes assume an importance beyond their concrete technical value—what he labelled institutionalization. In this episode, we discuss one of his classic works from 1949, TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization that contributed to his theory of organization through an examination of the Tennessee Valley Authority -- was formed to foster recovery from the Great Depression.

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,

73: Organizing Innovation — Michael Tushman

February 16, 2021 Pedro Monteiro
Discusses an important work from Michael Tushman about how innovation benefits from individuals who communicate across boundaries. With special guest Hila Lifshitz-Assaf who has collaborated with Tushman and did her own dissertation on boundary spanning in the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

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.

71: Managerial Behavior — Melville Dalton

December 15, 2020 Greetje Corporaal
2020 ushered in a full year of major change and renewed a lot of conversations about how we work, live, and cooperate in organizations and societies. In that spirit, we discuss Melville Dalton's classic 1959 book "Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration." The study provided an intimate look at how men (as these were all men at the time) entered into the managerial culture of a firm, how the separations between managers are workers were structured and maintained, and how managers felt about their standing -- which ranged from secure to tenuous. In Part 1, we focus on the study itself, which is still very relevant not only for understanding what happens within the circle of managers but also how the boundaries can exclude others, particularly along gender lines.

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

November 10, 2020 Pedro Monteiro
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.

69: Our 5th Anniversary Special!

October 13, 2020 Dmitrijs Kravcenko
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!