For Episodes 23-30, we teamed up with the Journal of Management Studies to create a series around their Classic Articles.  The Journal of Management Studies is a leading outlet in the field of management, having published some of the most lasting and influential research that shaped the field of management studies and continues to influence new generations of scholars. 

In this series, we wanted to focus on the authors as much as on their writing, so every episode (except the last one) features as a special guest either the original author or the author of a commentary article. Uniquely, because we committed to doing JMS Classics series in its entirety, this was also a journey of discovery for us as some of the articles here out of our traditional envelope! That being said, there are some truly fascinating episodes here that shed light both on the thinking process of the authors, their motivations for writing these works, and their reflections over the years, as well as on the opinions and thoughts of the authors of the commentary articles. If you ever wondered what Bill Starbuck or Andrew Pettigrew thought about when writing some of their most cited work, this series is definitely for you!

Available episodes in this series:

23: Influence of Institutions and Factor Markets — Mike Wright - This is an episode in our special series of Classics in the Journal of Management Studies. Mike Wright co-authored "Emerging multinationals from mid-range economies: the influence of institutions and factor markets" in 2013 that looked at the variety in the development of emerging economies and, through institution theory, increased understanding of competition between multinational economies and the respective national ones. Continue Reading

24: Learning by Knowledge-Intensive Firms — Bill Starbuck - We discuss another of the classics from the Journal of Management Studies, a paper from 1992 by William Starbuck, entitled “Learning by knowledge-intensive firms”. This time, we are very happy to be joined by the author of the work, Professor William Starbuck, one of the leading experts in Organization Theory, whose research covers an incredible number of areas of expertise, as shown in his biography. This paper is the first to discuss knowledge intensive firms,… Continue Reading

25: Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities — Joseph Porac - We discuss another JMS classic, “Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities the case of Scottish Knitwear Manufacturers” by Porac, Thomas, and Baden-Fuller from 1989. Employing an approach based on the ‘interpretive’ side of organizations, the Authors propose that a key mechanism in competition and strategy is given by the “mental models used by key decision-makers to interpret the task environment of their organization”. These, in turn, emerge out of material and cognitive exchanges among customers, suppliers,… Continue Reading

26: Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations — Karl Weick - We discuss another JMS classic, Karl Weick's "Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations," that examines how that the central mechanisms behind failure and incidents is given by the interaction between humans and technology (and not by technology in itself). Weick's study examined the the Bophal Disaster, a gas leak incident that took place in 1984 in India and shows how individuals enacted rather than encountered the events. Continue Reading

27: Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm — Andrew Pettigrew - We discuss Andrew Pettigrew's classic JMS article, "Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm,” that introduced Pettigrew's triangle of context, content, and process into the discourse on change management though his study of change in an UK chemical firm. Continue Reading

28: Organizations as Rhetoric — Mats Alvesson - Our next episode in the JMS classics series covers Mats Alvesson's ", Organizations as Rhetoric: Knowledge-Intensive Firms and the Struggle with Ambiguity" from 1993 that concluded with the idea that organizations are best understood as 'systems of persuasion' where actors use their agency to engage in discourse on behalf of the organization. Continue Reading

29: Carnegie Mellon Series #3 – Designing Business Schools — Herb Simon - We discuss Herbert Simon’s article “The Business School: A Problem in Organizational Design,” published in 1967. This was written at a time when the business school enterprise was facing difficulties and wrestling over its identity. The paper framed these challenges as a design problem relating to a business school's purpose, what the business school should teach to its students, and what type of faculty would be needed to fulfill the purpose. Continue Reading

30: Corporate Culturalism — Hugh Willmott - Hugh Willmott Strength is Ignorance; Slavery is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations was Hugh Willmott’s critique of corporate culturalism, a dominant theme in management studies in the 1980s. In 1993, when the paper appeared in the Journal of Management Studies, strengthening corporate culture was seen as a way to improve organizational performance. But instead of an academic response, Willmott used George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to explain his objections. Continue Reading