Talking About Organizations Podcast

In part 2 we continue to discuss “The Human Capital Hoax: Work, Debt, and Insecurity in the Era of Uberization,” by Peter Fleming. The article raised a number of pressing issues, such as the nature and character of modern workplace resistance and the implications of Fleming's thesis on managers and leaders.

Please join us as the podcasters engage on a timely and relevant article, “The Human Capital Hoax: Work, Debt, and Insecurity in the Era of Uberization,” by Peter Fleming. The article is a treatise and pointed critique of the emergence, development, implementation, and negative effects of Human Capital theory, which Fleming presents as having created numerous professional, economic, and social pro...

Episode 35 concludes with the podcasters presenting their takeaways and possible areas of further research. What did they learn from the readings and dialogue? Where directions might theory and practice follow now, thirty-plus years later?

In the second part of the Episode we continue discussing implications of Hochschild's seminal work on management of emotions. What do football players, military officers and uber drivers have in common? Tune in to find out!

Tune in as we tackle a seminal work on the uses of emotion as part of one’s job, and the social and psychological implications this has on one’s role as a producer of products or provider of services. The Managed Heart,” by Dr. Arlie Hochschild, introduced the concept of emotional labour as a counterpart to the physical and mental labour performed in the scope of one’s duties. You will never look...

Join Tom as he provides a detailed summary of the discussion we held in Episode 34 on Trist and Bamforth’s work on the effects and consequences that introduction of new organizational technology may have on individual employees. This is a very important piece of research that ties into a number of foundational themes we discussed in other episodes and thus a must read (or listen!). Enjoy!

Join us as we finish discussing technological change in the coal-mining industry and how it tore apart the social structure of the workers who were supposed to have benefited from the change.

Please join us as we discuss Eric Trist’s and Ken Bamforth’s 1951 article, “Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting,” published in the journal Human Relations. The article explores how a technological change in the coal-mining industry tore apart the social structure of the workers who were supposed to have benefited from the change. We talk about the stor...

Tune in to this Summary of Episode 33 for an overview of Roethlisberger's "The Foreman" and for a summary of our discusssion!

Please join us for Part 2 of this fascinating discussion of Roethlisberger's classic 1945 work on the challenges and environment faced by the foreman in the organization. In this part we go through the rest of the article and discuss the four 'visions' proposed by the author!

Please join us as we open Season 4 with a discussion about Fritz J. Roethlisberger’s classic Harvard Business Review article “The FOREMAN: Master and Victim of Double Talk.” Written in 1945, the article details the challenges that industry foremen faced under intense pressures to perform despite significant technological and social changes that whittled away at their autonomy. The result? Increasi...

Join Ralph as he sits down with Professors Mats Alvesson (also guest on E28) and Bjorn Erik Mork during the OLKC 2017 Conference in Valladolid, Spain to discuss Mats's keynote speech (and book!) on organizational stupidity. As always is the case with episodes such as these, expect more than a few anecdotes, insightful comments, and interesting stories! Thank you OLKC organising committee and Mats...

Don't miss this conversation that Dmitrijs and Ella had with Professors Hari Tsoukas and Ann Langley at the wonderful PROS 2017 Conference! In the second special from this symposium, we talk about process view in general and PROS, as an academic congregation, in particular. At the end of the episode, Hari and Ann say a few words about the next conference, its theme and the motivation behind it.

Please join us for the first of two fascinating special episodes recorded from the International Process Symposium 2017. In the first instalment, Dmitrijs and Ella sit down to talk to Professors Trish Reay (University of Alberta) and Tammar Zilber (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) about institutional theory.

Please join us for the final instalment of Episode 30 and Season 3 where we discuss the relationship between George Orwell's classic 1984 and Corporate Culturalism as discussed by Hugh Willmott and Peter Fleming in their JMS Classics. Specifically, we talk about such things as newspeak and technology, as well as the inherent paradox of independence/autonomy critiqued in the articles!

Please join us for this (much delayed) conversation about Hugh Willmott's extraordinarily interesting critique of corporate culturalism - a movement within management thought that sees organizational culture and normative control as the primary means of organizing a workforce! In the first part of the episode we work on developing a common footing and a deeper understanding of what corporate cultu...

oin Tom for a summary of our conversation with the wonderful Denise Rousseau about Herbert Simon's JMS Classic on Business Schools! Make sure to listen to this one if you don't have the time to get through the main episode just yet as the discussion about management education and the many underlying factors that we have had with Denise is really key!

In this part of the conversation with the wonderful Denise Rousseau we plunge into the deep end of what business schools are for, what are the moral foundations for management education, the role and value of authority, and the dichotomy between individual vs environmental interpretation of a person. We also discuss the relationship of business schools with actual businesses and talk about coachin...

Please join us for this very interesting conversation with the fascinating Denise Rousseau about Herbert Simon's JMS Classic - The Business School: A Problem in Organizational Design (1967). In this episode we touch upon the now pervasive issues of managerial education, the value of teaching administration, as well as the origins of how management became an institutionalized profession. Also, get...

Join us for a brief summary of Episode 28, where we were joined by Mats Alvesson to discuss his JMS Classic "Organizations as Rhetoric". This is a synopsis of the conversation, covering a number of aspects related to epistemology, types and purpose of rhetoric, and adjacent concepts such as organizational memory and functional (as well as generic) stupidity.

In this concluding part of Episode 28 we further delve into the relationship between rhetoric and knowledge, touching upon such aspects of it as collective memory, the roles people play, fads and fashions, as well as functional stupidity.

For our sixth Journal of Management Studies Classic episode we discussed a set of articles by Professor Mats Alvesson on Organizations as Rhetoric. Focusing on the original work published in 1993, we were very pleased to welcome Mats himself as a guest on this episode! In this paper, Mats made a series of critical claims to highlight ‘the politics and rhetoric of professions’, as opposed to an ‘es...

Please join Tom as he summarizes our conversation with Andrew Pettigrew and introduces the key concepts from the reading! What a great way to refresh memory about one of the critical process-based studies in management or to introduce new scholars to the works of Andrew Pettigrew!

Join us for the second part of the conversation about Journal of Management Studies Classic article - 'Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm' - with Andrew Pettigrew. In this part we go into more depth in discussing management, transformational leadership and the role and nature of context. Andrew is a wonderful guest with much to say so make sure to listen to this one!

Join us for this episode as we sit down (literally, this time!) with Professor Andrew Pettigrew to discuss his discipline-shaping work on context and action in organizations. There is so much in this work! Not only is the article we are discussing a product of a very long-term study conducted in ethnographic tradition, but it is also one of the key sparks that ignited the engine of organizational...