Talking About Organizations Podcast

This month’s episode examines one of the classic studies from the Tavistock Institute, Isabel Menzies’ “A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety.” This famous study of how a teaching hospital developed odd and somewhat dysfunctional methods for protecting its nurses from anxiety and stress by effectively isolating nurses from the patients to prevent emotional...

This month return to one of the classic studies from the Tavistock Institute, Isabel Menzies’ famous study of how a teaching hospital developed odd and somewhat dysfunctional methods for protecting its nurses from anxiety and stress. Listen here for a quick summary of the episode.

In the conclusion of our examination of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, we look more closely at how the text and its central ideas have been adopted in popular literature covering everything from business competition to personal relationships! But how does one judge whether or not an adaptation is suitable or if it is merely leveraged an ancient name to validate some pre-conceived notions?

This month’s episode examines war and how principles derived from it are presently applied to other organizational and management contexts. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is an ancient text that emerged from the Warring States period that lasted from the 5th through 3rd centuries B.C. and engulfed most of modern mainland China. It embraced the complexity of the environment of war, which therefore has al...

Now released! In our History & Culture series, we will examine Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. War is often used as a metaphor for other forms of competition, such as business and there are plenty of books in popular literature that appropriate Sun Tzu’s ideas for other purposes. But what does the text itself say and what insights in the nature and competition can we glean?

We are expanding our program and website! Opportunities to help us make TAOP a go-to resource for org. theory and management science! Find out here what we will be doing, and you might win a copy of March & Simon's Organizations! The survey is available here and is open until 13 March 2022: https://forms.gle/GXSAp294rAYNpUhW8

We conclude our examination of Granovetter’s 1973 article, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” by looking at how social networking has grown and changed in the last fifty years. Considering the emergence of information technologies and the different means available to connect with each other, along with the disruptive character of the pandemic, we discuss what has been learned over time and what it means...

Granovetter’s 1973 article, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” introduced whole new ways of thinking about seemingly simple and straightforward topics and changed the direction of social research. He showed how “weak” ties, occasional connections between individuals among different networks, were powerful means for providing opportunities and new ideas not otherwise available. He also charted a way for...

This is a teaser for Episode 86, where we will examine Mark Granovetter’s “The Strength of Weak Ties” from 1973 that significantly changed the way researchers looked at interpersonal networks. How we connect with one other and for what purposes has taken on new meaning in the last few years. We will therefore give this classic article a fresh look and tackle the questions it raised as they apply t...

We conclude our discussion of March and Simon’s Organizations with a look to the present day to see how well the book’s ideas have withstood the test of time. Are they helpful for explaining “novel” phenomena or ways of organizing? Have today’s qualitative methods made it feasible for researchers to study the more untestable propositions? How can one use the book to analyze practical problems of o...

In this episode, we discuss the second edition of James March and Herbert Simon’s classic text Organizations. In addition to the well-known concepts such as bounded rationality and satisficing, the book introduces an important critique of the mechanistic view that “classic” organization theory to that point approached organizations and its members. How do decisions get made? What causes individual...

This is a teaser for Episode 85, on James March and Herbert Simon’s 1958 book "Organizations." It is one of the most-cited texts in organization studies, but apart from the ideas of bounded rationality and satisficing, much of the book is overlooked. In our next episode of the Talking About Organizations Podcast, we will tackle the full text and all of its propositions, many of which still ring tr...

We conclude our discussion of Louis Brandeis’ “Business – A Profession” by looking at the contemporary situation, greatly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. We consider the effects of stakeholder capitalism, increased worker dissatisfaction and willingness to leave their jobs, and other challenges , and ask ourselves to what extent might Brandeis’ ideas apply today?

What do the terms “Taylorism” or “scientific management” bring to mind? Difficult work environments? Managers push workers to their limits? Do more with less? But these were not the original intentions. The real intentions were to help workers conserve energy and complete their tasks more safely and efficiently. In an upcoming episode we will present the works of Louis Brandeis who coined the term...

We discuss the life and works of Louis Brandeis who originated the term ‘scientific management’ that aimed at conserving effort and making work life more predictable, reducing worker stress and increasing satisfaction. He also advocated for a more altruistic and professionalized form of business leadership that served both the needs of customers or clients and those of the workers under their supe...

We conclude our discussion of Jay Galbraith’s portfolio of books and articles focusing on organizational design with a look at contemporary challenges facing managers. We raise common misconceptions about design, including those also found in Galbraith’s own work. In the process of revisiting the meaning of design, we consider how managers can leverage it to make their organizations better.

We discuss several works by Jay Galbraith on the theory and practice of organizational design, which is about creating organizations to provide better outcomes and serve the organization’s purpose and strategy. This episode begins with a focus on one of Jay Galbraith’s earlier publications, an article titled, “Organizational Design: An Information Processing View” for designing organizations to ma...

Concludes the presentation of a professional development workshop hosted at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management on female scholars whose works are often overlooked. Includes presentations Maja Korica on Rosemary Stewart, Maria José Tonelli on Isabel Menzies Lyth, and Lisa Cohen on Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

Presents a professional development workshop we hosted at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. It sheds light on the foundational texts of female scholars for the field of organization and management theory but whose work is often overlooked. Part 1 includes presentations by Emmanuelle Vaast on Jean Lave, Marta Calás on Edith Penrose, and Martha Feldman on Susan Leigh Star.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on societies and the workspace have demonstrated the importance of open conversations on matters of diversity and inclusion. The theme for the 37th Colloquium of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS), hosted virtually in July 2021 by the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam, was “Organizing for an inclusive society: Meanings, motivations, and me...

We conclude our discussion of Sumantra Ghoshal’s article, “Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices,” with a further exploration of the purposes of business schools and the question of what exactly is a “good” management practice? If we are to break the feedback loop that Ghoshal is critiquing, where do we begin and what is required?

We discuss a critique of business education -- Sumantra Ghoshal’s article from the Academy of Management Learning and Education, “Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices.” He describes a feedback loop between schools and practitioners that has led to theories based on a “pretense of knowledge” that assumes causality and predictability of the business environment and a “glo...

We continue our discussion of Jane Addams’ "A Modern Lear" and asked ourselves the same questions she asked. How can one approach a difficult, complex, or dynamic situation and avoid the conflagrations that engulfed the Pullman situation? To what extent can pragmatism contribute to a suitable approach for contemporary labor relations challenges?

We discuss a famous speech by Jane Addams, titled "A Modern Lear," her reflections on the events leading to and during the infamous Pullman Railway Strike of 1894. Using ideas drawn from the emergence of classic pragmatism and Shakespeare’s King Lear as an analogy, Addams took both the ownership and workers to task for the violence and provides a way to avoid a recurrence of such a tragedy. In Par...

We continue our discussion of a classic 1954 book by Alvin Gouldner titled, 'Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy.' We asked ourselves to what extent do the patterns that Gouldner and his research team uncovered still apply today, and how much do certain patterns seem to emerge more readily than others.