Talking About Organizations Podcast

This month, we discuss Shoshana Zuboff’s "In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power" that examines several cases of organizations introducing information technologies in the workplace hoping to improve organizational performance, transparency, and collaboration but instead dehumanized the workplace and ushered in new ways of managerial surveillance. In Part 1, we discuss the ma...

Coming soon! We will discuss Shoshana Zuboff’s ethnographic study of how work changed with the introduction of information technologies in the 1980s. "In the Age of the Smart Machine" discusses how computers changed the meaning of work for both front line industrial workers and their managers, telling a rich cautionary tale about how these technologies upset the balance of power in the workplace a...

We conclude our discussion of Lupton’s "On the Shop Floor" by looking at both the importance of the study as a classic example of ethnography and the benefits of participant-observation, followed by the application of Lupton’s findings in the modern post-pandemic workplace. To what extent do contemporary concerns such as the “great resignation” or “quiet quitting” echo Lupton’s findings, and what...

This month, we discuss examine Lupton’s famous study of worker-management relations, On the Shop Floor: Two Studies of Workshop Organization and Output published in 1963. Tom Lupton spent 12 months as a factor worker in two different settings examining why workers intentionally worked at a level below management expectations. He found that social structures formed that protected workers from overu...

We will examine Lupton’s famous study of worker-management relations, On the Shop Floor: Two Studies of Workshop Organization and Output published in 1963. This significantly overlooked study examined social structures in the workplace that kept production levels below that expected by management and why they were permitted. His findings may provide some insights into similar challenges in the con...

We conclude our discussion of Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger’s "Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation," focusing on what occurred since the book’s publication. While communities of practice and their development and management have fueled active conversations, this was not necessary the intended direction of the book. In fact, the book raised more questions about situated learning tha...

This month, we discuss Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, published in 1991. This short but powerful book presents a new way of thinking about adult learning as a social activity in which experienced members of a group or community of practice share their knowledge with new members to perpetuate the group identity. They present five case studies –...

We will examine Lave & Wenger’s (1991) renowned book "Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation" that developed a novel theory of learning. This short but powerful book presents a new way of thinking about adult learning as a social activity in which experienced members of a group share their knowledge with new members to perpetuate the group identity. It became the foundation for the...

We conclude our presentation of this year’s professional development workshop (PDW) on key approaches to the study of work with a panel discussion. Presenters Steve Barley, Gina Dokko, Ingrid Erickson, and Davide Nicolini answer some challenging questions about work, its management, and related social issues. This PDW was held at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Seattle, Was...

We continue with two more presentations from this year’s professional development workshop (PDW) on key approaches to the study of work. Ingrid Erickson presents on the Computer Supported Collaborative Work tradition, and Davide Nicolini discusses the Tavistock Institute and associated socio-technical systems tradition. This PDW was held at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in S...

This year’s professional development workshop (PDW) on Classics of Organization and Management Theory explored key approaches to the study of work and was held at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Seattle, Washington in the U.S. It represents the fourth edition of a standing series showcasing the enduring relevance of early organizational research. Part 1 covers the first two...

We will present a recording of the presentations and panel discussion of a professional development workshop (PDW) on approaches to the study of work. This was held at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Seattle, Washington in the U.S.

We conclude our discussion of organizational secrecy using the Manhattan Project during World War II as a case study, focusing mostly on the aftermath. As the devastating effects of employing nuclear weapons is realized, key scientists from the Manhattan Project hoped that they would be banned. Instead, the Cold War ensued and proliferation became a global concern. What therefore are the longer te...

We are examining organizational secrecy using the Manhattan Project during World War II as a case study. The Manhattan Project came about following the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 and the understanding that Nazi Germany was trying to develop a powerful weapon that could change the course of the war. Naturally, the American effort had to be kept secret to hide both the existence of the pro...

We will examine organizational secrecy using the Manhattan Project during World War II as a case study. The Manhattan Project was an effort to devise, develop, and test the world’s first nuclear weapons, an effort whose public disclosure could have been devastating. From the case, we will examine what organizations decide needs to be kept from outside observation, why, how they accomplish it, and...

We conclude our discussion of Follett’s Dynamic Administration with a look at contemporary issues. The COVID-19 pandemic arguably made pragmatists of many of us as we navigated the challenges and shifted to different modes of working! But as the pandemic recedes to an uncertain new normal, now what? Can we sustain and grow ‘power-with’ and avoid falling back to old forms of competition and ‘power-...

We return to the works of Mary Parker Follett and expand upon “The Law of the Situation” that we covered in Chapter 5. In this episode, we revisit Dynamic Administration with a look at the first five chapters as a whole – focusing on Chapter 1 (“Constuctive Conflict”), Chapter 3 (“Business as an Integrative Unity”), Chapter 4 (“Power”), and Chapter 5 (“How Must Business Management Develop in order...

We return to the works of Mary Parker Follett and explore her ideas on professionalizing business. Expanding on our examination of her “law of the situation” in Episode 5, we look at constructive conflict, organizational integration, and power. Together, these ideas represent a pragmatic approach to business where collaboration is the norm and channels competition toward the good of the organizati...

As we conclude our discussion of James D. Thompson’s Organizations in Action, we focus on the final chapters where Thompson proposes his theory of administration whose basic function is proposed as co-alignment. This meant that organizations had to synthesize the needs and perspectives of individual members with the many streams of institutionalized action performed by the organization. What would...

We examine James D. Thompson’s Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory from 1967 that established a new direction in organization studies. Beginning with a recapitulation of the theoretical work of the time, Thompson expanded the dominant rational model of organizing with the emerging ideas about human behaviour, complexity, and the relation between organizations and...

We will examine James D. Thompson’s Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory from 1967 that proposed a new theory of administration based on a synthesis of rational and natural models of organization and ushered management into an open-systems paradigm. A class of administrative science that still informs organizational research today!

In the conclusion of our examination of Herbert Kaufman’s “The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior,” published in 1960, we bring the results of the study to contemporary times and look at how public sector organizations have evolved in the past six decades. As Kaufman would explain in an afterword in the revised version of his book, even the Forest Service face difficulties as civil...

This month’s episode examines a classic study in public administration, Herbert Kaufman’s “The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior,” published in 1960. The U.S. Forest Service was a widely distributed organization with its many Rangers individually assigned to manage large tracts of public land. It would have been easy for the Forest Service to lose control and fragment, but it did n...

This month’s release is on Herbert Kaufman’s study of forest rangers in the 1950s, looking at how the Forest Service worked to keep hundreds of Rangers scattered around the country unified under a common purpose and vision. The study is a classic of public administration and organizational behavior, showing various techniques that public sector organizations can use to hone a well-oiled bureaucrac...

In the conclusion of our examination of Isabel Menzies’ “A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety,” we discuss more contemporary sources of anxiety and the various individual and collective methods used to defend against it. We generally found that what produces stress and how we cope with it may change, but the nature of anxiety and its natural presence in or...