Talking About Organizations Podcast

Alvin Gouldner wrote the article, “Cosmopolitans and locals: Toward an analysis of latent social roles” in 1957 to propose that through the 1950s latent roles had been seriously overlooked by scholars. Manifest roles , described as those roles and role identities that are directly related to one’s defined position in the organizational structure, had been the sole focus. Latent roles comprised the...

We will discuss a two-part article by Alvin Gouldner titled “Cosmopolitans and Locals: Toward an Analysis of Latent Social Roles.” Before 1957, studies on work roles focused solely on manifest roles that emerged directly from the positions held. The hidden or unstated work roles had not been studies. Gouldner’s article argued that this was a major research gap and proposed six latent roles exhibit...

We conclude our discussion of Arthur L. Stinchcombe’s book chapter, “Social Structure and Organizations,” by looking at the present-day impacts. As a foundational text, Stinchcombe’s work has influenced numerous subsequent studies and has been cited tens of thousands of times. In this second part, we discuss how while Stinchcombe’s primary focus was on how societies influenced organizations, socia...

In a famous chapter in James G. March’s 1965 book, Handbook of Organizations , Arthur L. Stinchcombe laid out a case for expanding the study of organizations outward to include social structure bringing attention to innovation as well as imprinting and inertia. He posited that societies had significant effects on how organizations emerge and operate and that organizations, in turn, impact relation...

We will discuss the 1965 pathbreaking essay “Social Structure and Organizations” by Arthur L. Stinchcombe, where he articulated how societies had significant effects on organizations and that organizations in turn had effects on society. Listen to this discussion on a foundational text in organization studies.

We conclude our discussion of Barley & Kunda’s article in Organization Science titled “Bringing Work Back In.” We ask ourselves to what extent are the author’s argument still valid (in short, they certainly are) and how much more urgency there is to understand the work context given the rapid shifts in technology and the reweaving of the social fabric that has changed the meaning of work-life...

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 organizatio...

Coming soon! We will discuss Steven Barley and Gideon Kunda’s critique about how the study of work, its organization, and its performance were no longer the focus of organization studies and call for a renewed focus on work in current research.

We conclude our discussion of Alfred Sloan’s “My Years at General Motors” with a look at the post-war automotive boom to the present day and the introductions of electric cars, foreign manufacturers establishing operations within the US, and the future of transportation. We also discuss how newer emerging technologies and lean manufacturing initiatives have changed the ways that corporations opera...

Alfred Sloan was President, Chairman, and CEO of General Motors from 1923 to 1956. His memoir “My Years at General Motors” tells his story about how he took a corporation consisting of several disparate and competing companies and shaped them into division that manufactured cars tailored to different segments of society. He constantly pursued and integrated new technologies into the automobiles th...

Coming soon! We will dive into the history of the automotive industry with a look at Alfred Sloan’s famous memoir, “My Years at General Motors.” The book chronicles the growth of General Motors and the industry from the 1920s through the 1950s and how the corporation overcame economic crises, World War II, and the post-war automobile boom. A terrific story about executive leadership in an emerging...

We conclude our discussion of Frederick Herzberg’s book “The Motivation to Work” and the Two-Factor theory of job satisfaction it presents. What are the implications for contemporary managers and workers? To what extent do employers default to dealing with environmental issues to stem complaints rather than takes steps to improve performance and reward achievement?

Frederick Herzberg’s “The Motivation to Work” presents the results of over 200 interviews with engineers and accountants working in the Pittsburgh area regarding what satisfied and dissatisfied them on the job. They would find that factors leading to satisfaction, such as achievement and performance, were very different than those leading to dissatisfaction, such as company policies or relationshi...

Coming soon! We will discuss the studies that led to Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory of job satisfaction, published in the book “The Motivation to Work” with colleagues Bernard Mausner and Barbara Snyderman. The studies included interviews with over 200 engineers and accountants regarding what satisfied and dissatisfied them on the job.

We conclude our discussion of Joan Acker’s article “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations,” from 1990 and bring the ideas of feminist theories of organization to contemporary times. From economic difficulties to the effects of the pandemic, workers are increasingly having to balance work with the need to provide care to their families, but global competitive pressures are c...

Joan Acker’s 1990 article “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations” was a significant work in feminist theories of organizations. She charged that prior feminist research had wrongly assumed that organizational structures were gender neutral. Instead, everything about organizations from structures to symbols are inherently gendered, and until that was acknowledged and studied...

We will discuss Joan Acker’s article “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations,” from 1990. This article signaled a clarion call to change the direction of organizational research to acknowledge the inherent gendering built into processes and structures in the workplace. This would allow for the development of organizations that would be more democratic and humane.

We conclude our discussion of the classic book The Management of Innovation from Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker with a look at contemporary myths of innovation, such as the idea that innovation can or should be outsourced to small “start-up” style firms or that innovators or the process of innovation should be separated from the rest of the organization. We also look at the roles of “manager director...

Why do firms seemingly have difficulties converting new ideas into goods or services? The answer is in the classic book The Management of Innovation from Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker that explored the difficulties that firms, industries, and even nations had in innovating due to the disruptions that it brings to power structures and social fabric in organizations. They also explored key misundersta...

Coming soon! We will discuss The Management of Innovation from Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker, a classic of innovation theory and the source of an important theoretical construct – the mechanistic and organic systems of management. Their aim was to understand the fit of these systems with different conditions and the conflict and barriers that organizations face as they attempt to change how they ope...

We conclude our discussion of Invictus by looking through an organizational perspective at sports, social change, and the ways leaders manage organizations to build inclusive cultures. While sports can unite people, we also discuss how sports can also create or exacerbate tensions. How does one reap the possible benefits of sport and connect it to social change for higher purposes?

The 2009 film Invictus tells the story of how the first post-Apartheid President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, used sports as a unifying force to overcome lingering and bitter racial divides in the nation. The movie and the real-life events that inspired it are powerful. We will look at it through an organizational lens and discuss insights related to leadership, team building, change and other...

We go to the movies – looking at the 2009 film Invictus through an organizational lens. It tells the story of Nelson Mandela from the time of assuming the Presidency of South Africa to the nation’s hosting of the 1995 Rugby World Cup. How did Mandela use sport to unite a bitterly divided nation and what insights does this story provide for management theory and practice?

We conclude our discussion of Zuboff’s "In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power" by projecting her conclusions to the present day. On the one hand, many of her findings about the creative ways that management reasserts its authority are still relevant today, but she had also offered strategies for integrating new technologies in ways that would improve both work performance a...