Talking About Organizations Podcast: Recent Episodes
Talking About Organizations Podcast
Our attention this month returns to economic sociology where we examine a different, more recent literature stream that emerged in the beginning of the 21st century as an alternative to the economic models that dominated the field. We start with a 2012 book chapter by Viviana Zelizer titled, “How I became a relational economic sociologist and what does that mean?” where the term relational work was coined to encompass the marriage of economic transactions with social relationships and medias of exchange, applying in cases where the parties to a transaction are intimately involved with each other.
Viviana ZelizerThe results are economic transactions that differ in character from what a purely economic view would predict. For example, a family managing a budget is likely to make decisions about major purchases to the needs of family members very differently than how a business may view similar investments. The breadwinner of the family may divide the budget (“earmarking” different slices of money) based not only on utility of the good or service purchased but also on maintaining harmony within the family. If one child receives too much benefit, there may be arguments among other siblings about unfairness. If the father was a pure rational economist, the budgetary decision would likely be made on the value of the good being considered without concerns over which family member would benefit most or whether the risk of disappointment and resentment.
In a seminal review article in 2020, Nina Bandelj published “Relational Work in the Economy” that directly contrasts relational work from the embeddedness perspective which we covered in Episode 127 on the works of Granovetter. In that perspective, the “structure of relations [influences] economic outcomes. In contrast, relational work [predicts] whether an economic transaction is accomplished and how depends on the viable matches of relation, transactions, meanings, and medias of exchange” (Zelizer, 2012: 255). Within the relational perspective, economic actors make distinctions about classes of money (sometimes referred to as “colors of money”) that determine social and cognitive ways that money is utilized. Sometimes, the exchange may be disreputable or morally objectionable, such as for the purchases of vices or illegal goods, in which cases the exchange may occur in a hidden (“obfuscated”) fashion such as bundled with other legitimate purchase or brokered through third parties. Emotions are also important as some actors try to influence the mind of the other party to make (or not make) a purchase, such as how real estate agents or used car salespersons attempt the hard sell – invoking the client or customer’s emotional responses to convince them that they want to buy that house or car even when it is not in their best interests to do so.
Nina BandeljWe also include a discussion of another article from Bandelj on the state of competition between the embeddedness and relational perspectives. The former has remained as the dominant perspective in economic sociology despite increasing evidence that the relational perspective has much more explanatory power and a more robust research agenda. Bandelj proposed several reasons why this is the case including that embeddedness scholarship is deeply institutionalized and continued across generations of senior faculty mentors and their protégés (academic familism), that established economists dominated the initial field of economic sociology and therefore biased the newer field (“spillover prestige”), and that gender segregation has played a significant role with women (who are more likely to be relational scholars) remaining severely underrepresented. We offer another perspective that despite the shortcomings of the embeddedness approach, it remains dominant in part due to its utility in modeling decision spaces and plans of action, whereas these capabilities do not yet appear to have emerged from the relational work perspective.
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Part 1. What is relational work in economic sociology?Summary of Episode 138You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Zelizer, V. A. (2012). How I became a relational economic sociologist and what does that mean?. Politics & Society, 40(2), 145-174
Bandelj, N. (2020). Relational work in the economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 46(1), 251-272.
Bandelj, N. (2019). Academic familism, spillover prestige and gender segregation in sociology subfields: the trajectory of economic sociology. The American Sociologist, 50(4), 488-508.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:Episode 127. The problem of embeddedness — Mark Granovetter
Episode 123. Markets as politics — Neil Fligstein
Episode 117. Economic sociology & valuation — Marion Fourcade
Episode 44. Transaction costs & boundaries of the firm — Williamson & Malone
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We once again turn to Max Weber and look at one of his most important and noteworthy speeches, “Science as a Vocation,” delivered in 1917 at Munich University. This speech may be seen as a text assigned to rising graduate students in many fields, owing to its exhortations to go beyond researching and writing about important knowledge and consider the ethical and moral implications of that research.
Max WeberThe speech was originally crafted in response to a question about whether science is a vocation. Weber does not answer the question directly but begins with an illustration of what working in the sciences as a junior academic is like between the German and US systems. The contrast was striking regarding the levels of autonomy over one’s teaching and scholarship loads, how their pay was determined (if they got any at all), and how one progresses until ultimately achieving full professor or washing out. The result are institutions that were becoming more and more bureaucratic and thus the fates of junior academics were increasingly subject to chance as much as merit. This is in part because “no amount of such enthusiasm [that a scientists would devote to their field] … can compel a problem to yield scientific results” and that results that do appear are often wrongly attributed to the scientists who made it public and not all those others who delivered the important precursor findings that made the latest result possible.
Weber then proceeds to dispel as sorts of motivations for science and scientists that would argue for science being a vocation. It is a way to know the true being? Weber says no. A way to true art? Again, no. The way to true nature, finding God, or happiness? No, no, and no. Instead, he argues that science is itself meaningless unless there is something else incorporated that argues the knowledge is worth being known. Medicine can produce all sorts of new cures, but society must social construct the rules, ethics, or morals to decide whether those cures are “good”. Does the risk of harm outweigh the benefits of overcoming a disease or condition?
He also devotes attention to the importance of teaching and the roles of the teacher, what it is and what it is not. He specifically argues that the teacher must be objective, or offering information that has been scientifically validated and mastered by the teacher. Philosophers and demagogues – in other words, those who impart their own subjective views – should have no place on the platform.
The speech has incredible enduring value as it touches on a number of themes still relevant to academia today, which we will explore in our discussion.
Part 1. Does one see science as a divine summons?Part 2. Where has science gone astray and what can we do?Summary of Episode 137You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Weber. M. (1946/1918). Wissenschaft als Beruf[Science as a vocation]. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociology, trans. Gerth, H. H. & Mills, C. W., CA: University of California Press. Available at University of Pennsylvania website.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:Episode 135. Boundary Work in Science — Thomas Gieryn
Episode 130. History and Philosophy of Science — Thomas Kuhn
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In this episode, we continue our series of discussions on the sociology of science and cover a seminal article This is the second of our “revisits” of old episodes where we re-release an edited version of the episode and then add a new perspective to the conversation. For this revisit, we elected to go back to Episode 6 on Max Weber’s “Bureaucracy,” a chapter from the book Economy and Society from 1922.
Max WeberWhile the original episode focused on bureaucracy as a form of organizing that was right for modern civilized societies, we elected to re-examine the chapter through an institutional lens. To recap the original episode, Weber believed that rational principles were key to a functioning society whereby operations (especially in the public sector) were characterized by impersonal rules that allowed for fairness and equality of treatment. Duties and responsibilities were well-defined and the intention was that the bureaucrat (using the term in a positive sense) should be educated and trained to perform the assigned tasks efficiently, authorities to make decisions would be clearly delineated, and the success of the bureaucratic operation was measured not in technical efficiency (faster, better, cheaper) but in overall productive efficiency (reliable, stable, predictable).
Since publication, especially in the 1990s, the field of institutional logics emerged that characterized economic behaviors driving how organizations function. The bureaucratic logic and the market logic that bureaucracy was intended to combat were but two recognized logics. Other became recognized and studied such as professional logics (Friedson, 2001) and logics based on central figures such as family businesses, community organizations, and organizations under authoritarian or charismatic leaders. The below table summarizes the key differences.
| Differentiating Factor | Bureaucracy | Markets | Professionalism | Family / Community / Other Logics Based on Central Figure | | Source of Legitimacy | Legal-rational rules and formal positions. | Efficiency, profit, and market share. | Specialized knowledge and ethical codes. | Unquestioned power and personal loyalty. | | Source of Authority | Position in the hierarchy. | Shareholder value and consumer choice. | Peer recognition and professional expertise. | The Leader or a central ruling clique. | | Basis of Identity | One’s rank/job title within the organization. | Being a “player,” savvy investor, or consumer. | Membership in a guild or professional body. | Loyalty to the regime or the “Great Leader.” | | Basis of Norms | Standard operating procedures (SOPs). | Self-interest and competition. | Fiduciary duty and service to the client. | Obedience and ideological alignment. | | Control Mechanism | Administrative oversight and audits. | Financial incentives and price signals. | Peer review and socialization. | Coercion, surveillance, and patronage. | | Economic Logic | Budgetary allocation and stability. | Commodity exchange and profit maximization. | Fees for service and quality of work. | Resource extraction and wealth centralization. |
In our discussion, we found that Weber was prescient and accounted for stratifications between the general public and those in leadership with power and influence who escaped being held by the rules. Institutional logics overlaid on bureaucracy allow for better understanding of how bureaucracies should operate and why they are so often derided in contemporary culture given how they are influenced by markets, professions, and culture.
Part 1. Max Weber's Bureaucracy (original E6 Part 1)Part 2. Max Weber's Bureaucracy (original E6 Part 2)Part 3. Weber's Bureaucracy through an Institutional LensPart 4. Weber's Bureaucracy - Expanded SupplementSummary of Episode 136You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | SupplementRead with us:Weber. M. (1922) Economy and society. CA: University of California Press. Chapter XI: Bureaucracy.
To Know More:Friedland, R., & Alford, R. (1991). Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices, and institutional contradictions. The new institutionalism in organizational analysis, 232-263.
Freidson, E. (2001). Professionalism, the third logic: On the practice of knowledge. University of Chicago press.
Thornton, P. H., & Ocasio, W. (1999). Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry, 1958–1990. American journal of Sociology, 105(3), 801-843.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:Episode 112. Hierarchies & Promotion — The “Peter Principle”
Episode 109. Emergence of Mental Health Professions – Abbott
Episode 92. Organizational Secrecy — Case of the Manhattan Project
Episode 67. Professions & Professionalism — Andrew Abbott
Episode 40. Symposium on the Gig Economy LIVE
Episode 18. Gig Economy, Labor Relations, and Algorithmic Management
Episode 6. Bureaucracy — Max Weber
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In this episode, we continue our series of discussions on the sociology of science and cover a seminal article that is not uncommonly found as required reading in doctoral programs. This is Thomas Gieryn’s 1983 article “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists,” from the American Sociological Review.
Thomas GierynThe first sentence lays out the problem, of “how to identify unique and essential characteristics of science” that separate it from non-science or other “kinds of intellectual activities.” Drawing the lines around what is or should be considered scientific activity has been difficult and contentious, in part because of various historical and social factors that Gieryn identifies. The article responds to claims that the drawing of lines had effectively failed and commentators expressed concerns that such lines might not exist. Gieryn’s argument is that the establishment of the line should be thought of as contested, the result of continuous “boundary work” that reassesses and re-establishes the line.
He begins with a discussion of the sociological theories of ideology, of which ‘science’ would constitute one in comparison to ‘religion’ or ‘engineering,’ for example. He presented two abiding literature streams representing strain theories in which an ideology serves to resolve a conflict between competing ideas, and interest theories in which an ideology provides the basis for promoting a desired worldview (e.g., political, economic, or social interests). As broad examples, strain theories would view science as better than non-science because its rationalism allows for a more useful examination of the world, while interest theories would prefer science as it is easier to utilize for economic and social gain than another ideology (such as religion). While these streams have been traditionally separate and viewed as incompatible, Gieryn drew from Geertz and others that synthesis is possible, and that ideologies are better examined through both the interactions of strains and interests and the rhetoric used by scientific and non-scientific actors to explain and operationalize the ideologies.
He uses three historical cases that demonstrate these interactions. First was the ideological battle between scientists on the one hand and clergy and engineers (as not-science) on the other. The battle lines of science versus religion and science versus mechanics were fought differently as science — the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake – vied for attention and inclusion in university programs. The second case was also in the Victorian period, when phrenologists and anatomists fought bitterly over the right to be considered valid science. Rationality would allow the anatomists to win over their subjectivist and empirically weak competitors, and provide fodder for future discussions about the line between real science and fake or pseudo-science. Finally, national security and secrecy present the third case, as a US-based science academy strove to navigate the tensions between the scientific community’s culture of openness and transparency against the security implications of disclosing privileged (i.e., classified or sensitive) information.
The paper is short (only 12 pages of content) but rich, giving much for rising scholars to think about. Present-day concerns about the rejection of science or expertise may add new wrinkles to this old debate, but Gieryn’s work provides the tools for contemporary thinkers to step back and reason about what is going on. At a basic level, one can say that this is just another round of boundary work happening.
Part 1. The boundaries of science and not-sciencePart 2. The contemporary boundaries forming around the rejection of scienceSummary of Episode 135You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American sociological review, 48(6), 781-795.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:Episode 130. History and Philosophy of Science – Thomas Kuhn
Episode 115. Sociology of Science — Robert K. Merton
Episode 109. Emergence of Mental Health Professions – Abbott
Episode 92. Organizational Secrecy — Case of the Manhattan Project
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This is our second episode featuring the works of Charles Perrow, but which covers a wholly different topic from Episode 76’s “A framework for the comparative analysis of organizations.”
Charles PerrowPerrow’s 1999 book Normal accidents: Living with high-risk technologies is an instant classic that counters the common narrative that safety can be successfully engineered and risk eliminated in technological systems – including those that pose a “high risk” of catastrophe such as massive explosions, environmental cataclysms, widespread systemic failures, and so on. Perrow defines an accident as the type of event that causes damage to a system such that it cannot be used again, as opposed to an incident in which a system shutdown or other remedial action successfully preserves the system and is reversible such that routine operations can resume.
Technological systems of the late 20th century such as nuclear power plants, aerospace and maritime platforms, chemical factories, hydroelectric dams, and recombinant DNA research either had major accidents or fears among experts or the public have been expressed about the risks of accidents. To alleviate concerns, company owners and government officials have called for and largely gotten safety systems installed that should help identify problems proactively to allow for pre-emptive responses or to shut a system down to mitigate catastrophic effects. The trouble is, according to Perrow, that these safety systems add as much risk as they alleviate, making the potential for catastrophe more likely rather than less.
At the heart of the problem was a fundamental lack of understanding of what causes accidents in the first place. Correcting this required a monumental effort to study the detailed reports from major accidents across a number of industries, including the Three Mile Island disaster of 1979. Through this, Perrow identified two salient factors that were present to a degree in industries that seemed prone to such accidents – high systems complexity and tight coupling of system components. The coupling meant that a failure in one part of the system would contribute to the cascading of problems across other parts. Complexity meant that despite the presence of meters and indicators, it might not be possible for an operator or anyone else to properly decipher what was happening to the system, and therefore their corrective actions could inherently worsen the situation. From this, a number of other phenomena can be explained, such as tendencies for industries to dismiss accidents as the result of operator error rather than the inherent complexity of the system design itself.
This is why the book is titled Normal Accidents, based on Perrow’s contention that certain industries simply cannot avoid accidents. The question becomes to what extent do the effects of the accident either extent only to those on-site (i.e., workers) when it occurs or if the effects extend outside the site, whether the nearby town or across a much wider geographic region. While an informative read, this book is probably not going to make anyone feel good about the increasingly complex technologies that have been fielded in the years since the book’s publication.
Part 1. The inherent problem of accidents in high-risk systemsSummary of Episode 134You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Perrow, C. (1999). Normal accidents: Living with high-risk technologies, updated edition. Princeton University Press.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:Episode 76. Comparative Analysis of Organizations — Charles Perrow
Episode 64. Disasters and Crisis Management — Powley and Weick
Episode 20. High-Reliability in Practice — Tom Mercer, US Navy
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Henry Mintzberg’s career as a consultant and management researcher spans decades and has resulted in numerous works that provide critical perspectives on dominant schools of thought in organizational design, strategies, and planning. Although we hosted him as one of our earliest guests to discuss his book Simply Managing, we hadn’t gone back and discussed his original canon of work independently. But because it was so rich and choosing one best work to cover proved difficult, we decided on a divide-and-conquer approach where each of us in the episode read different works while one was the keeper of the whole canon.
Henry MintzbergThe five works we explored follow: (1) “Patterns in Strategy Formation,” 1978 article in Management Science; (2) “An Emerging Strategy in ‘Direct’ Research,” 1979 article in ASQ; (3) “Of strategies, deliberate and emergent,” 1985 article in SMJ; (4) “The design school: Reconsidering the basic premises of strategic management,” 1990 article in SMJ; and (5) the book The rise and fall of strategic planning, published by Prentice Hall in 2000. With the slight exception of the Direct Research article, all the works would converge on the 2000 book in which Mintzberg summarizes his overall concerns and criticisms about the unfulfilled promises of the theories and tools presented for strategic planning up to that time.
The overriding theme is that good strategies and plans were thought to be the way for organizations to move seamlessly into a more promising and prosperous future. Through clearly defined and executable planning methods, full appreciation and understanding of a firm’s past performance, and simple, effective tools for generating plans, managers could properly prioritize and distribute resources and organizational energy toward a desired outcome, one that could be easily described and explained to members and stakeholders alike. That despite the prevalence of such tools and numerous “studies” supposedly touting their benefits, the outcomes were unsatisfactory and the actual functions of plans and strategies were devolving toward merely means of managerial control. Mintzberg rightfully asks why.
What he deduces through his various works and then derives in the 2000 book are that strategic development and planning suffer from three broad fallacies. The first is the fallacy of predetermination, that a strategy based on a forecast of the future can be made into an executable plan without the plan becoming inflexible and thus driving the organization forward despite disruptions and shocks in the environment. This leads to a tendency for plans to become means of managerial control rather than paths to desired futures. The second is the fallacy of detachment in that the planning function is treated as separate from the line function and detached from day-to-day operations. This leads to plans that sound great but wind up being infeasible and too often nonsensical to those who would have to implement it. Third is the fallacy of formalization, or that “innovation can be institutionalized.” The belief that creativity can be harnessed and systematized has little real support, in Mintzberg’s view. Instead, true managerial creativity became squashed by checklists because of the ease of which checklists allow for ready measurement (even if the measures were bogus to begin with).
He does offer certain circumstances where this form of connecting strategies and plans does work, but these occur infrequently, and instead Mintzberg develops a set of general roles that planners and strategists should play in the course of bringing about needed organizational change toward better futures. His approach is less engineered and more iterative, which not all managers or stakeholders may like, but in his view puts the organization on firmer ground.
Part 1. Mintzberg’s take on strategic planningPart 2. Why the problems Mintzberg raised remain unsolvedSummary of Episode 133You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Mintzberg, H. (1978). Patterns in Strategy Formation. Management Science, 24(9), 934–948. https://doi.org/10.2307/2630633
Mintzberg, H. (1979). An Emerging Strategy of “Direct” Research. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(4), 582. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392364
Mintzberg, H. (1990). The design school: Reconsidering the basic premises of strategic management. Strategic Management Journal, 11(3), 171–195. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250110302
Mintzberg, H. (2000). The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Financial Times Prentice Hall. https://books.google.de/books?id=j7sXs_19dm8C
Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. A. (1985). Of strategies, deliberate and emergent. Strategic Management Journal, 6(3), 257–272. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250060306.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:Episode 14. Simply Managing — Henry Mintzberg
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This month we return to the works of Rosabeth Moss Kanter, whose study on tokenism we explored way back in Episode 17. This time, we will discuss one of her better known books Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective that examines the origins and life cycle of numerous communes that sprang up in the US from the mid-19th century to the 1960s. Written based on her dissertation study at a time when hippie communes were popular, she wondered what drove people to start or join these communes and what factors enabled the communes’ survival.
Rosabeth Moss KanterAt the heart of the study is the concept of utopia, an idealized community that a group of (supposedly) like-minded individuals aspire to create in order to escape from or avoid an imperfect regular society. The US became a magnet for the creation of such utopias since its early history due to the vast available terrain and the fact that many early Americans escaped religious persecution, economic oppression, ethnic conflict, and other difficulties. In the mid-19th century, the desires for new societies that operated under different rules and norms fueled the creation of communes, whereby groups of people who were either organized by a charismatic leaders or who collectively decided to withdraw from society, went out into the wilderness to start something new. Over the following 130 years or so, such utopian pursuits became a part of American culture, whether it was for religious, economic, or psychosocial aims.
Through examination of archival data, Kanter explained the appeal of joining such communes, what she refers to as utopian “ideals” – the pursuit of perfect societies that escape or fend off societies’ imperfections, the exercise of an orderly life in contrast to the chaos and unpredictability of the outside, a strong sense of brotherhood that brings the commune members together most strongly than the harsh external environment, and several other factors. She also formulated a conceptual framework to explain why some communes were successful and others were not, outlining one of the first theories on organizational commitment. Kanter explained commitment as based on individual’s instrumental, affective, and moral considerations. She also uncovered the organizational mechanisms that help develop each type of commitment—sacrifice, investment, renunciation, communion, mortification, and transcendence.
After examining the success or failure of 19th century communes, Kanter also provides an analysis of contemporary efforts—in the 1960s and 1970s—to revive utopian communities. She finds that contemporary communes tended to fall into two groups – what she called retreat communes and service communes. The former tended to fail because the commitment among members was largely based on escaping society without necessarily agreeing to or abiding by the rules and norms of the commune. Thus, such groups were fragile and more likely to experience conflict in times of crisis. On the other hand, service communes remained connected to society and often vowed to fix society’s problems, whether directly through service projects or simply by being an example to society through enacting its collective values. These tended to be more selective of who was allowed in and what projects they undertook and therefore sustained commitment of members for much longer periods of time.
However, there was also a dark side to the story in which some communes became very dangerous and threatening to both larger society and its members. As part of our discussion for applying Kanter’s ideas to contemporary Internet-enabled social movements and organizations, we will discuss the potential for creating dystopias instead and potential ways to identify and avoid them.
Part 1. Committing to the pursuit of utopiaPart 2. Contemporary utopias and dystopiasSummary of Episode 131You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementWatch with us:Kanter, R. M. (1972). Commitment and community: Communes and utopias in sociological perspective. Harvard Business Press.
To know more:Allen, N. J., & Meyer, J. P. (1990). The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8325.1990.tb00506.x
Becker, H. (1960). Notes on the Concept of Commitment. American Journal of Sociology, 66(1), 32–40. https://doi.org/10.1086/222820
Buchanan, B. (1974). Building Organizational Commitment: The Socialization of Managers in Work Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 19(4), 533. https://doi.org/10.2307/2391809
Gamson, W. A. (1991). Commitment and agency in social movements. Sociological Forum, 6(1), 27–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01112726
Kanter, R. M. (1968). Commitment and Social Organization: A Study of Commitment Mechanisms in Utopian Communities. American Sociological Review, 33(4), 499. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092438
Kanter, R. M. (1972). Commitment and the Internal Organization of Millennial Movements. American Behavioral Scientist, 16(2), 219–243. https://doi.org/10.1177/000276427201600205
Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14(2), 224–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-8791(79)90072-1
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:Episode 17. Tokenism – Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Episode 49. Engineered Culture and Normative Control – Gideon Kunda
Episode 82. Women of Organizational Scholarship — Classics AoM PDW Live
Episode 41X. Milton Hershey and Organizational Commitment to Members (Sidecast)
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For our 10th anniversary episode, we selected a modern classic that greatly informs science and research across many disciplines, including organization studies. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book often assigned to rising graduate students as a primer for entering the sciences. A culmination of Kuhn’s earlier works on the philosophy and history of science, Scientific Revolutions challenges the notion that science progresses along a predictable or linear path where discoveries are made at readily identified and verifiable times and the academic community embraces these advancements largely as they come.
Thomas S. KuhnHe shows that in reality progress is more punctuated, marked by small refinements within an established paradigm until the theories and models are found to have limitations or cannot explain some sort of novel finding. Rather than the theories and models adjusting, Kuhn shows that these anomalies, as he calls it, are often overlooked or set aside until further research accumulates that make these anomalies impossible to ignore or until a new theory is proposed that challenges and threatens to replace the paradigm. This process is highly disruptive as it calls into question not only the previously accepted theory but also all the research findings that the theory explained. In Kuhn’s view, a successful revolutions must see the old theory discredited and abandoned to some extent – even an integrated paradigm that invokes both new and old ideas must result in the displacement of the old paradigm standing alone.
As an introductory or foundational book, Scientific Revolutions is very useful. Students entering scientific fields are likely interested in pursing groundbreaking or relevant work, but may not fully understand that most research is constrained to a particular paradigm – a set of theories with a unique language and a dedicated yet semi-isolated community of like-minded or like-interested professionals. Kuhn’s portrayal of normal science is commensurate with many of our personal experiences – that the paradigm and the community (as colleagues, conference organizers, peer reviewers, editors, and so on) defines what is a valid research question and what constitutes a useful or interesting finding. Normal science by its nature does not naturally engender breakthroughs.
Although considered a classic, there is room for debating how well Kuhn’s concepts apply in the present day. His essay uses examples mostly from the natural sciences, and his concepts appear to apply to the social sciences as well. However, as we discuss in this episode, the structures of paradigms and the interrelationships among communities do appear to have some important differences. Also, in Kuhn’s time, science was generally seen to be a good thing and scientific progress translated into benefits for society writ large. Sixty-plus years later, science and scientists are not necessarily as highly regarded. What might that mean for the future of science?
Special. 10th Anniversary Episode!Part 1. The limitations of normal sciencePart 2. Science facing at once rapid change and rejectionSummary of Episode 130You may also download the audio files here: 10th Anniversary Special | Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Kuhn, Thomas S. (2012/1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. 50th anniversary edition. University of Chicago Press.
To know more:Davis, M. S. (1971). That’s interesting! Towards a phenomenology of sociology and a sociology of phenomenology. Philosophy of the social sciences, 1(2), 309-344.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:67: Professions & Professionalism — Andrew Abbott
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For this year’s movie episode, we elected to take on a video series used during World War II to help socialize US Army rules and procedures among forces either deployed or getting ready to deploy. Private SNAFU was a series of at least 26 black-and-white animated shorts of three to five minutes in length recounting various misadventures of the title character as he goes to war. The purpose of the training videos was to socialize and reinforce the importance of adherence existing Army policies and procedures and helping to introduce soldiers to potential hazards and challenges that they would face in combat.
Private SNAFU (from the Title Screen)Produced by Warner Bros. who used a Looney Tunes animation style, the shorts used comedy to get the points across. Private SNAFU was a clueless and reckless soldier prone to malingering, cutting corners, paying no attention to surroundings, or directly rebelling against and breaking rules. Each video put SNAFU in a common wartime situation where he would make the wrong decisions that risked the rest of SNAFU’s unit or the overall mission. In the end, he would either mend his ways or face dire consequences. The use of comedy helped make the content accessible to an audience that was dealing with a lot of fear and uncertainty in the wartime environment while facing a determined and resourceful enemy. Soldiers would learn to not want to be like SNAFU and instead see following the rules as necessary for surviving and getting home after the war was over.
The video series would be well-remembered although the films would disappear from public view for decades after the war, resurfacing through social media in the early 21st century. It serves as a good case study for socializing organizational policies and procedures more generally to a reluctant audience, after all, mandatory training is known for both its importance in organizational life but also as drudgery and a bane of the workplace environment. The Private SNAFU series may have succeeded in maintaining the soldiers’ attention, but some of the tactics used (sexist and racist tropes) would not be considered acceptable at workplaces today.
Which leads to important questions about what kinds of media and approaches would be most effective and most efficient, given the increasing breadth and complexity of workplace rules and policies that need to be socialized among the workforce? Training that appears to only satisfy a legal requirement and does not engage the workers may be resented. Training that only preaches the policy could be ignored and quickly forgotten. Training that emphasizes style over substance, on the other hand, could muddle the message. Finding the suitable balance thus is a major challenge for training material developers.
Part 1. A warning against breaking the rulesPart 2. How to best socialize policies among a reluctant audience?Summary of Episode 129You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementWatch with us:“Private SNAFU Collection,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqqqqZrD37h57uFAKgONMwT9gTZtqmihS
To know more:Kaufman, M. D. (2015, March 25). Ignorant armies: Private Snafu goes to war, Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/ignorant-armies-private-snafu-goes-to-war/
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:None.
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With special guest Andrew “Drew” Carton from the Wharton School of BusinessGiven algorithmic management and concerns over the degradation and deskilling of work, we felt it was worthwhile to look at a case study where the meaningfulness of work was enhanced through leaders actions. A frequently referred case was the solidarity felt among members of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the decade-long runup to the successful Apollo XI mission to the moon. This is exemplified by the apocryphal story of a NASA janitor approached by then-President John F. Kennedy who asked what he was doing. The janitor supposedly responded with, “I’m not mopping the floors, I’m putting a man on the moon!” A simple internet search will produce numerous memes capitalizing on this sentiment that the words and actions of leaders can magically inspire employees to connect their work with the organization’s highest purposes. (Side note: Did it really happen? Although there are sources claiming to know the name of the janitor, none originate near the date of the supposed 1962 incident, hence it is considered apocryphal).
Andrew CartonAs today’s article and its author (our very special guest) Drew Carton show, while the story of the janitor may not be true, it represents a time and place where everyone in the organization indeed felt something special about their work. Through an extensive review of thousands of archival documents, Carton was not only able to supply ample evidence of such unity of purpose and effort, he successfully laid out a framework that explains how the actions of President Kennedy and NASA leaders accomplished this. The award-winning 2018 article, “’I’m not mopping the floors: I’m putting a man on the moon’: How NASA leaders enhanced the meaningful of work by changing the meaning of work,” showed not only how difficult this was in practice, it also raises questions about how challenging it may be to replicate this success, contrary to the promises made in some popular business literature.
Carton’s framework is built on four sensegiving actions by President Kennedy that served as a blueprint for outlining the relationships between NASA’s goals and the daily work performed by individuals. This was followed by a series of five stages of the workers connecting their work to NASA’s ultimate purpose. Of note is that at times, the stages produced disconnection from NASA’s purpose that subsequent stages had to reverse. The paper provides details accounts of each sensegiving action and act of connection-building with dozens of examples drawn directly from primary sources. The implications are significant. It was not nearly so simple as the leader putting forth a vision that inspired everyone – President Kennedy had to simplify that vision around a single “ultimate aspiration” (of advancing science), develop a “concrete objective” (landing on the moon), communicate a limited but logical set of milestones (expressed through the sequential Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs), and finally construct the linkages between the milestones and everyone’s work. But the concreteness of the objective was easily understood because, as many within NASA would say, one could merely step outside the building at night and see the moon in the sky, beckoning them. To what extent contemporary leaders can leverage such inviting concrete symbols to their attempts at transforming their organizations now remains an open question.
It is worth noting also that the paper was also cited as a landmark example of archival research, a qualitative inquiry into large amounts of historical documents to conduct inductive analysis. While this form of research may be uncommon, the increased availability of archival records on the internet may make it more feasible as a qualitative approach for today’s researchers interested in examining past events.
Part 1. President Kennedy as an architect of meaning for NASA workersPart 2. How NASA workers connected their duties to the overall mission to the moonSummary of Episode 128You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Carton, A. M. (2018). “I’m not mopping the floors, I’m putting a man on the moon”: How NASA leaders enhanced the meaningfulness of work by changing the meaning of work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 63(2), 323-369.
To know more:So far, none. Suggestions welcome!
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:103: Bringing Work Back In – Barley & Kunda
40: TAOP Symposium on Algorithmic Management and the Gig Economy
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Mark Granovetter’s theory of embeddedness was groundbreaking because it challenged traditional economic views that treated market behaviors as purely rational and independent of social contexts. His 1985 paper, Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness, is the subject of this episode. In it, Granovetter argued that economic actions are deeply influenced by social relationships and networks, rather than occurring in isolation. This was in contrast to traditional economic theories, particularly neoclassical economics that assumed individuals act rationally and independently to maximize utility and treated markets as self-regulating systems.
Mark GranovetterGranovetter’s work provided a middle ground between two overly simplistic perspectives presented respectively by economists and sociologists. The former was referred to as the undersocialized view that treated individuals as isolated, purely rational agents whose decisions are guided solely by self-interest and utility maximization. This view, common in classical and neoclassical economics, abstracts away the rich tapestry of social relations. In contrast, the oversocialized perspective viewed individuals as enmeshed in social norms, values, and cultural frameworks such that their personal agency was limited.
Recognizing the limitations of both extremes, Granovetter introduced the concept of embeddedness. He argued that economic behavior is not the product of isolated rational calculations, nor is it fully determined by social norms. Instead, individuals are embedded in a complex network of relationships that simultaneously provides structure and allows for personal discretion. This integrated approach allowed social ties, trust, and networks to mediate economic transactions—reducing uncertainties, lowering transaction costs, and facilitating cooperation—without completely erasing individual agency. By emphasizing this interplay, Granovetter’s framework provides a more nuanced and realistic explanation of economic life, accounting for both the guiding influence of social contexts and the capacity of individuals to act independently when necessary.
His insights not only spawned significant research, they also have practical use in understanding organizational behaviors. Consider how embeddedness helps with job searches whereby personal referrals and word-of-mouth recommendations can have greater influence than the formal hiring process. Or, how family-run enterprises thrive on long-standing relationships built on generations rather than purely economic factors alone. In such cases, the trust and certainty that comes with such relationships supplement the economic or financial considerations and increase the comfort with which managers make tough decisions.
In all, Granovetter’s perspective has greatly influenced both economic sociology and organization studies, offering a much better understanding of economic behaviors within organizational settings.
Part 1. The over- and undersocialized views of economic activityPart 2. The effeciency of social relations in making decisionsSummary of Episode 127You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American journal of sociology, 91(3), 481-510.
To know more:So far, none. Suggestions welcome!
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:123: Markets as Politics — Neil Fligstein
117: Economic Sociology &Valuation — Marion Fourcade
86: Networks & Network Theory — Mark Granovetter
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With special guest Zach Tan from MIT Sloan School of BusinessHarry Braverman’s book Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the 20th Century is an important treatise on labor relations and the systematic ways that work is deskilled over time. Braverman identifies the root cause as monopoly capitalism, identified by Baran & Sweezy (1967) as the breakdown of competitive capitalism into conditions whereby ever-larger corporations monopolize economic activity, leading to downward pressures on costs (and therefore wages), mechanization of work, and increased economic surplus. Through hundreds of examples, Braverman shows that this move to monopoly capitalization had been underway in the US for a long time and the book was a clarion call for change.
Harry BravermanThe book not only takes aim at the economic system, Braverman was highly critical of many of the seminal authors and schools of thought that he felt enabled this shift. As one might expect, his first target was scientific management under Frederic Taylor, which he blamed for starting the move toward deskilling and degrading the human worker. But Braverman was also critical of the Human Relations school, the Hawthorne Studies, and Joan Woodward and other scholars and consultants for pursuing their work solely from the perspective of management and the pursuit of efficiency. From his perspective, their alternates of scientific management failed to account for their own dehumanizing effects and therefore perpetuated the worker’s plight rather than relieved it.
Braverman also presented a multilevel argument that also took the perspective of the idealized “capitalist” whose motivations were to increase the amount of capital and thereby increase the surplus. It would be incorrect to describe this perspective as merely cut costs and increase production, as Braverman showed (with plenty of evidence) that the capitalist also separates labor into two forms – productive and unproductive – which corresponds roughly to labor directly applied to the production of the surplus and all the services and support needed to enable that labor, which included middle management. Thus, the capitalist wishes to minimize the need for bureaucracy which diverts resources and cuts into the surplus and place them on the line.
Braverman wrote the book hoping that managers would come to understand the effects of their decisions on the state of work and the plight of the worker. The 1970s were a period of labor unrest and social upheaval, and Braverman was hoping to bring about needed change, which did not happen. Unfortunately, Braverman’s book does not offer an alternative system, and given globalization and the advent of algorithmic management and other trends, the question of what such an alternative that at a minimum restores competitive capitalism remains.
Part 1. The degradation of work in the 20th centuryPart 2. Why the desired revolution never cameSummary of Episode 126You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Braverman, H. (1998/1974). Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Monthly Review Press.
To know more:Baran, P. A. & Sweezy, P. M. (1968). Monopoly capital: An essay on the American economic and social order. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:49: Engineered Culture and Normative Control — Gideon Kunda
40: Symposium on the Gig Economy
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This is another episode following on from our Academy of Management Symposia on work and organizations and introduces us to one of the foundational works behind Steven Barley’s contributions to bridging institution theory and structuration theory.
Steven BarleyFor his dissertation, Barley studied the introduction of new technologies into established organizational settings to see how patterns of work changed. The sites of his studies were hospitals and the new technologies were CT scanners (computed tomography) that used X-rays and digital computing capabilities. CT scanners generate cross-sectional images of soft tissues in the body, allowing for better diagnosis of various conditions that X-rays alone were insufficient. Good for doctors and patients, to be sure, but what about the radiologists? Barley correctly presumed that the introduction of new computer-based skills and knowledge in the form of CT technologists would alter the institutionalized patterns of behaviors in radiology departments. The question was how this would occur and what new structures would result.
The one of several articles Barley produced in this area was an Administrative science quarterly article titled “Technology as an occasion for structuring: Evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments.” In this article, Barley presents a comparison of two hospitals, code-named Urban and Suburban, where the scanners were introduced and he captured the resulting episodes of cooperation, conflict, and reconciliation that the established radiologists and young technologists underwent. Barley took the important step of beginning his observations months prior to the arrivals of the scanners, allowing him to understand the behavior patterns already being enacted so to best capture the drama as the scanners and technologists disrupted the status quo. He noted how due to decisions made on how the scanners would be introduced, the stories unfolded very differently at the two hospitals. In Suburban, the technologists began with using their specialized knowledge to negotiate their relationships with the radiologists, but would soon usurp the radiologists’ superior positions and bring about a role reversal where the technologists were practically doing the diagnosis. In Urban, the result was similar but the path differed because they employed radiologists who already knew something about the technology. They would instead usurp the technologists and prevent them from exercising the same level of autonomy. However, this proved unsustainable and eventually the ignorance of the radiologists would cause them to yield to the technologists’ knowledge of the equipment.
Barley used these experiences to develop a generalized form of “script” that reflects how institutionalized patterns influenced actions undertaken, which in turn would cause changes to the institutionalized patterns. This continuous loop would over time cause deep institutional changes to occur. Barley further developed the script concept into a more generalized conceptual framework in a 1997 article with Pamela Tolbert.
Part 1. Effects of action and institution on structurePart 2. Application of Barley’s scripts to today’s work environmentsSummary of Episode 125You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Barley, S. (1986). Technology as an occasion for structuring: Evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments. Administrative science quarterly, 31(1), 78-108.
To know more:Barley, S. R., & Tolbert, P. S. (1997). Institutionalization and structuration: Studying the links between action and institution. Organization studies, 18(1), 93-117.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:118: Organizational Structures & Digital Transformation — AoM 2024 Symposium
103: Bringing Work Back In — Barley & Kunda
93: Approaches to the Study of Work — Classics AoM PDW Live
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With special guest Anupama Kondayya from the Indian Institute of Management, CalcuttaAnshuman Prasad was a leading scholar in the development of postcolonial theory and bringing it to the domain of management and organization studies. Integrating various sociological perspectives, it examines how “European” or “Western” worldviews came to dominate non-European and non-Western societies through colonialism—and how that domination continues to this day despite so many former colonies having achieved their political independence from their colonizers. The postcolonial project, as Prasad terms it in one of our readings, aimed to expose the problems and inequities that such colonialism produced and work to remove or diminish these lingering influences in their cultures.
Anshuman PrasadThe two readings we chose for our episode are among Prasad’s best known. The first is the 1997 article, “Provincializing Europe: Toward a post-colonial reconstruction: A critique of Baconian science as the last stand of imperialism.” Prasad’s explores how science, particularly as understood in colonial times through the work of Sir Francis Bacon, was used as an instrument of colonial expansion under the belief that “European” philosophies, epistemologies, the beliefs in the scientific method were conceptually and morally superior to those elsewhere in the world. Using the works of various European philosophers of the time, Prasad shows how European “universalism” justified colonization in the guise of civilizing other societies. Prasad critiques Baconian science as inherently linking knowledge to power and explains why colonial legacies persist in modern scientific thought.
Our second reading is Prasad’s opening chapter, “The gaze of the other: Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis” from the edited volume Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement published in 2003. The chapter provides a valuable overview of the contributions of key scholars like Edward Said, Ashis Nandy, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. Prasad remains cautious about presenting postcolonial thought as a unified and straightforward idea. In the latter part of the chapter, he summarizes some of the disagreements and debates, such as around the meaning of “post” in postcolonialism. He then introduces the volume’s goal of applying postcolonial perspectives to a better understanding of organizations, especially along cross-cultural contexts. This is relevant for examining many of the key topics we address in our Resource Center such as digitization where cultural dynamics have played great roles in both spread and rejection of such technologies.
Part 1. What motivated the development of postcolonial theory?Part 2. Applying the theory to the turbulent 21st centurySummary of Episode 124You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Prasad, A. (1997). Provincializing Europe: Towards a post-colonial reconstruction: A critique of Baconian science as the last stand of imperialism. Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, 3(1), 91-117.
Prasad, A. (2003). The gaze of the other: Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis. In Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement (pp. 3-43). New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.
To know more:Prasad, A. (2015). Toward decolonizing modern Western structures of knowledge: A postcolonial interrogation of (Critical) Management Studies. In The Routledge companion to critical management studies (pp. 161-199). Routledge.
Prasad, P., Mills, A. J., Elmes, M., & Prasad, A. (1997). Managing the organizational melting pot: Dilemmas of workplace diversity. Sage.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
Nandy, A. (1983). The intimate enemy: Loss and recovery of self under colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:70: Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America — Eduardo Ibarra-Colado
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Neil FligsteinEconomic sociology was once dominated by the neoclassical view of economics where, as Neil Fligstein describes, “markets select efficient forms which, over time, converge to a single form.” This view presumed markets were driven rationally, where efficiency alone would be sufficient to determine dominant forms of organizations that would become institutionalized.
Fligstein’s 1996 article, “Markets as politics: A political-cultural approach to market institutions,” opens with a challenge to this view, bolstered by emerging research that showed how the neoclassical view did not explain market behaviors in practice all that well. And so, he argues an alternative, “political-cultural” model that suggested that the formation of markets was part of “state building” and that processes within markets reflected two types of “political projects: the internal firm power struggles and the power struggles across firms to control markets.” Thus, the creation of market institutions was a cultural project that was composed of particular social institutions – property rights, governance structures, conceptions of control, and rules of exchange – all that were embedded in the state. Thus, states play vital roles in constructing market institutions, and Fligstein offers various proposals or provocations (labeled as “propositions,” but used differently than in present-day qualitative papers) that compose the model.
Because some of the propositions attempt to explain behaviors of states adopting capitalism, it is clear that the paper’s inspiration drew from the early 1990s’ experiences of former communist and post-colonial states looking to join the West after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For example, Proposition 1 says that newly capitalist states are pushed to develop the proper social institutions (property rights, etc.) in order to stabilize their markets as they convert from whatever previous economic model was exercised. As we find in our discussion, some propositions may have proven to be true, while others not so much. Which ones? We’ll let you, the listener, decide.
This article is but one of Fligstein’s major contributions to economic sociology. He has also published a book on field theory (note: a very different kind of field from what Kurt Lewin presented, per our discussion in Episode 55) that examines how actors create and maintain stable social arrangements and explains how collective action and institutional arrangements feed off each other.
Part 1. What does "markets as politics" mean?Part 2. So many provocations – did we agree with them?Summary of Episode 123You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Fligstein, N. (1996). Markets as politics: A political-cultural approach to market institutions. American Sociological Review, 61(4), 656-673.
To know more:Fligstein, N. & McAdam, D. (2012). A theory of fields. Oxford University Press.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:120: Institutional Isomorphism — DiMaggio & Powell
117: Economic Sociology and Valuation — Marian Fourcade
86: Networks and Network Theory — Mark Granovetter
Additional References:
Anthropic. (2024). Please explain Neil Fligstein’s field theory. Claude (March 2024 version) [Large Language Model].
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Mark ZbarackiThis month we explore a renowned multiple-case study commonly assigned as foundational readings in organization studies programs. Mark Zbaracki’s “The rhetoric and reality of Total Quality Management” chronicled the development and introduction of Total Quality Management (TQM) into the corporate environment, only to find that in many cases its implementation did not align with the promises made by leaders about process improvements nor did firms fully exercise all the practices and activities that TQM required. The question that Zbaracki posed was more than to what extent did this rhetoric-reality unfold, but why?
Zbaracki framed the problem as one of institution theory, drawing from DiMaggio & Powell (see Episode 120), whereby “the symbolic value of something supplants its technical value” (Zbaracki, 1998, p. 603). In this case, organizations claiming to use TQM did so because it conferred legitimacy to stakeholders and potential customers, even though TQM implementation was flagging. The central importance of legitimacy meant that stories of success were likely to be espoused and shared, while failures would be suppressed and hidden away from view. Thus, as time moved along, the rhetoric-reality gap widened to the point where workers in some firms studied had little idea of what TQM was, let alone to what extent it was being exercised.
The multiple-case study approach used was uncommon. Rather than examine a multitude of similar organizations to triangulate commonalities, Zbaracki sought cases of organizations that had little in common with each other apart from their adopting TQM. The five sites included both government and commercial organizations, different reasons for adopting TQM, different levels of on-site expertise and methods of training and integration, and who were at different points of implementation. Some were in the early stages while others were more mature but each were experiencing various challenges such as unmovable barriers, manager or executive turnover, or internal resistance.
Zbaracki used an evolutionary model of change to structure the study but departed from the typical “survival of the fittest” metaphor. Rather he used it more dramaturgically, to tell the stories of how cycles of variation, selection, and retention explains decisions made at each step to separately manage the rhetoric and reality. What resulted is a rich model that shows how legitimacy drove decision making, especially when it came to making the organization look good at the potential expense of the organization’s actual performance. A terrific study that has relevance for understanding how some new ideas can go wrong.
Part 1. The saga of Total Quality Management adoptionPart 2. How to mitigate gaps between rhetoric and realitySummary of Episode 121You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Zbaracki, M. (1998). The rhetoric and reality of Total Quality Management. Administrative Science Quarterly, 43(3), 602-636.
To know more:Nelson, R. R., & Winter, S. G. (1974). Neoclassical vs. evolutionary theories of economic growth: critique and prospectus. The Economic Journal, 84(336), 886-905.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:120: Institutional Isomorphism — DiMaggio & Powell
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Paul DiMaggio“The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizations” was a ground breaking article by sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell in 1983. In just a few short pages, they summarized the state of institution theory and a wide range of foundational works on institutionalization to offer an alternative explanation to Weber’s classic warning about rationalism. Weber was concerned that bureaucratization was becoming a way of efficiently and effectively controlling people such that there was no escape and no way to curb bureaucratic momentum. He referred to this as an “iron cage.”
In revisiting the iron cage, DiMaggio & Powell claimed that bureaucratization had been “achieved” (p. 147) and yet it did not explain fully why organizations found themselves looking more and more alike. Efficiency was far from the only reason why organizational forms appealed to others. Sometimes it was the exercise of control but other times it was a matter of adopting what seemed interesting or different just because it was not the status quo, or because experts or professionals promoted an idea or a way that they felt was better even when it was not fully tested or guaranteed to work. So what were these forces, or “mechanisms” of isomorphic change?
To answer this question, the authors begin with a definition of organizational fields – a collective of organizations that “in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life” (p. 148). This followed from previous work by DiMaggio whereby he offered that such fields exist only to the extent they are institutionally defined. They may be an industry but they may be something else such as a profession or a body of regulatory agencies over a similar domain. From this, two forms of isomorphism can be described – competitive in the sense that organizations within a field adopt each other’s practices to make themselves relevant and attractive to customers and client. Institutional isomorphism is about homogenizing for political power, legitimacy, or social fitness independent of effects on actual organizational performance.
Walter PowellThe remainder of the article explains institutional isomorphism as one of three types – coercive, mimetic, and normative. Coercive isomorphism is the result of external pressures on an organization to adopt a common standard based on expectations, government regulations or mandates, or perceptions of missing out or falling behind. Mimetic isomorphism draws from uncertainty and perceptions of risk. Organizations find themselves modeling others’ behaviors as an efficient or inexpensive way of mitigating uncertainty and avoiding sticking out in the wrong ways. Finally, normative isomorphism is explained as being rooted in professionalism, where formal education, professional networks, and other shared sources of expertise lead organizations to model what is perceived to be the state of the art or what a particular school or association is promoting as preferred approaches. This leads to a set of twelve “hypotheses” for further research built on these forms of isomorphism and their antecedents.
40 years later, and now organizations are entwined with the information age and new forms of isomorphic pressures around social media and like technologies abound. Is this the spirit of a new “iron cage”? We tackle this in Part 2 of the episode!
Part 1. The “iron cage revisited” – on institutional isomorphism and collective rationalityPart 2. Revisiting the iron cage in the information ageSummary of Episode 120You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American sociological review, 48(2), 147-160.
To know more:Powell, W. W., & DiMaggio, P. J. (2023). The iron cage redux: Looking back and forward. Organization Theory, 4(4), 26317877231221550.
Levitsky, S., & Murillo, M. V. (2009). Variation in institutional strength. Annual Review of Political Science, 12(1), 115-133.
Oliver, C. (1992). The antecedents of deinstitutionalization. Organization studies, 13(4), 563-588.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:116: Resource Dependence Perspective — Pfeffer & Salancik
107: Institutionalized Rules and Formal Structures — Meyer & Rowan
75: Institutionalization – Philip Selznick
6: Bureaucracy – Max Weber
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Fritz RoethlisbergerAs we covered way back in Episode 9, Fritz Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson worked in support of Elton Mayo’s famed Hawthorne Studies that began as an investigation into what lighting conditions that would increase worker productivity. When that particular aim proved unsuccessful, Roethlisberger and Dickson continued a long series of experiments that tried to uncover what variables could the Western Electric Company tweak to achieve the desired increase. While the studies did not produce the silver-bullet solution hoped for, it would uncover the informal structure of the organization within which workers sought to control their own work environments in ways that often opposed the company’s desires, and in theory at least even opposed the individual economic aspirations of the workers themselves.
Roethlisberger and Dickson chronicled the five years of study in the 1939 book Management and the Worker which contained five parts. Part I detailed the design, conduct, and findings of three studies where five female workers from a single department were moved into a test room performing the same tasks under observation. The experiments were phased such that new conditions were introduced each about 4-7 weeks apart – such as the numbers and durations of breaks and the shortening and lengthening of the work weeks. The results were deemed surprising, contradictory, and ultimately disappointing that once again no such optimal conditions could be found. Meanwhile, the isolation of the workers from their departments introduced interpersonal tensions that heightened over time.
Parts II and III were introspective of the research effort and constituted a re-examination of the data to understand what the workers were communicating to the researchers. The focus was on building conceptual frameworks to understand worker complaints and dissatisfactions and how to interpret them. This ultimately informed the design of the most complex study conducted, of the Bank Wiring Department, detailed in Part IV.
In this final set of studies, a cross-department team of wiremen, solderers, inspectors, truckers, and others was isolated in a separate room for observation, interviews, and experiments in adjusting piecework payment plans. It was here that the researchers explored the social controls that workers exercised over each other that resulted in norms whereby no one would work harder or produce more than what was considered among the workers to be an appropriate “day’s work,” even though this amount was below what management demanded. The researchers also realized that the participants were stratified into two “cliques” that were physically separated within the room, with the senior clique doing the easier jobs and located in the prominent positions in the front of the room. The junior clique handled the tougher jobs, thereby producing less, complained more, and were relegated to the back of the room.
In the end, the book concluded that there were three organizational forms in the plant – the formal structure, the informal structure, and the ideological structure that mirrors current three-pillared institution theories (e.g., the regulative, normative, and cognitive pillars of W. Richard Scott (2014)). The informal and ideological structures operated differently from management intentions and therefore needed to be understood by management if it were to set conditions for optimal work performance. Moreover, Roethlisberger and Dickson recommended that leaders establish managerial positions dedicated to mastering the human conditions of the plant in order to identify and correct problems that caused worker dissatisfaction and distress. Sadly, these last recommendations have not been heeded over time.
Despite its length, Management and the Worker is a fascinating and important work that explored both the meaning of work and the challenges of studying it. While some aspects of the setting and conditions may be dated, the tensions and sources of dissatisfactions found in the workplace climate remain relevant today.
Part 1. A detailed history of the Hawthorne Studies, 1927-1932Summary of Episode 119You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Roethlisberger, F. J. & Dickson, W. J. (1939). Management and the worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
To know more:Mayo, E. (1945). The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:9. Hawthorne Studies — Elton Mayo
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A Symposium of the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Academy of ManagementThis episode represents another edition of a standing series showcasing the enduring relevance of organizational research and management studies. This year we are presenting a recording of a panel symposium conducted at the AoM Annual Meeting in 2024, titled “Design Choices: Examining the Interplay of Organizational Structure and Digital Technologies.” The organizers were Adrienna Baer and Amanda Pratt from Stanford University and our own Pedro Monteiro, who also moderated the session.
There were a total of four presentations, of which one was virtual. Ileana Stigliani of the Imperial College of London opened with a brief recording on the importance of the topic given the ever-increasing digitalization of work. In her view, “organizational design is no longer confined to physical hierarchies but extends into the virtual realm.” Design thinking offers a way for organizations to navigate the complexities introduced by the tools presented.
Gerald Davis from the University of Michigan discussed his construct of the “institutional terroir” characterizing how the introduction of the same technology worldwide has led to vastly different organizational structures, institutionalized norms, and workplace cultures among different nations or localities. He focuses on the ways that contemporary digital technologies “militates in favor of markets over other organizational designs.”
The next presenter was Melissa Valentine from Stanford University who discussed how contemporary communication technologies enabled radical changes in organizational structures, “how work gets done …, how individuals interpret their roles and functions, and how these roles and functions get enacted.” She highlights how little attention has been paid to how the designs of digital technologies shape the formal and informal structures of organizations.
Finally, Elizabeth Gerber from the McCormick School of Engineering provides a practical perspectives on studying the design of digital tools through their use. She proposes a differentiating construct to separate “design research” from “design practice” and discusses the methodological differences between design research and other forms of research.
We are grateful to the speakers for their wonderful presentations and to the Academy of Management for the opportunity to conduct the workshop. We hope you enjoy this episode and help us continue the conversations on the impacts of digital technologies on the workplace!
Part 1. Design Choices: Examining the Interplay of Organizational Structure and Digital TechnologiesPart 2. Question and Answer Portion of SymposiumSupplement to Episode 118You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementTo Know More:Davis, G. F. 2016. What Might Replace the Modern Corporation? Uberization and the Web Page Enterprise. Seattle University Law Review, 39(2).
Davis, G. F. and Sinha, A. 2021. Varieties of Uberization: How technology and institutions change the organization(s) of late capitalism. Organization Theory, 2(1): 263178772199519.
Valentine, M. A. and Hinds, R. 2022. How Algorithms Change Occupational Expertise by Prompting Explicit Articulation and Testing of Experts’ Theories. Stanford University Working Paper.
Valentine, M. A., Retelny, D., To, A., Rahmati, N., Doshi, T., and Bernstein, M. S. 2017. Flash Organizations: Crowdsourcing Complex Work by Structuring Crowds As Organizations. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 3523–3537, Denver Colorado USA. ACM.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:52. Management in Practice — Rosemary Stewart
- Tokenism — Rosabeth Moss Kanter
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With Special Guest Georg Rilinger, MIT Sloan School of ManagementMarion FourcadeEconomic sociology bridges economics and sociology, exploring how social dynamics influence the creation and operation of markets. From the early works of Durkheim and Weber (Episode 6), economic sociology originally began as an examination of the interactions between institutions and society, particularly emanating from religious influences (e.g., the so-called “Protestant work ethic” presented by Weber (1905)). Contemporary streams of literature in this field are exploring the formation and exercise of markets, emergence of private sectors organizations such as small businesses to international corporations, and some of the constraints placed on those entities such as property rights, laws, and government regulations. Of particular interest for this episode, the question of how markets assign monetary value to intangible objects has much to do with how societies shaped the market in the first place.
This episode considers the subfield of economic valuation, in which researchers have been studying how the monetary worth of something is formed or constructed. One influential work is Marion Fourcade’s “Cents and Sensibility: Economic Valuation and the Nature of ‘Nature’,” published in the American Journal of Sociology in 2011. The article accomplishes two things. First, it explores the economic valuation of peculiar goods, things that are intangible or otherwise cannot be exchanged in a market yet have a social value that under certain circumstances is converted into a monetary value. Second, it presents a case study of the legal proceedings following oil spills in the US (the Exxon Valdez) and France (the Amoco Caldez) where the two lawsuits results in outcomes that were disproportionate to the amount of oil spilled.
The explanation shows how political, cultural, and professional dynamics shaped the very meaning of nature and monetary compensation in the two legal systems . For example, the US’s social narrative of manifest destiny and taming the wilderness, along with the strong Progressive-era in valuing nature (e.g., through its park system) led to nature being sanctified, whereas in France where there is no wilderness, the natural environment held less value by comparison. The legal frameworks also differ due to the presence of punitive damages in the US legal system which is nonexistent in the French. This led to two very different assignments of monetary values to the harm caused by the respective oil spills and therefore the awards granted to the plaintiffs.
The work has had a tremendous impact as contemporary societies continue to wrestle with how to properly assign value to intangible things such as non-fungible tokens and other cryptocurrencies.
Part 1. A subfield straddling economics and sociologyPart 2. How do we assign value to intangible things today?Summary of Episode 117You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Fourcade, M. (2011). Cents and sensibility: Economic valuation and the nature of “nature”. American journal of sociology, 116(6), 1721-1777.
To know more:Fourcade, M. & Healy K. (2024). The Ordinal Society. Harvard University Press.
Rilinger, G. (2024). Failure by Design. University of Chicago Press.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast:6. Bureaucracy — Max Weber
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Jeffrey PfefferResource Dependence Theory (RDT) represented a significant departure from extant literature on management and organization studies in the 1970s. Prior to the publication of Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald’s The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective in 1978, the social context and environment surrounding organizations were little studied. Rather, scholars were more interested in examining what was going on in the organization rather than what was happening outside of it. This despite the emergence of open systems (e.g., Katz & Kahn) and other theories that incorporated the environment into the organizational context and helped better explain managerial decisions. RDT took open systems to its logical conclusion – that organizations were dependent on the environment (especially for resources needed), that the environment often included social actors who sought control over organizations, and that managerial decisions sought in turn to mitigate or respond to that control.
The book was the culmination of years of collaboration between the authors whose earlier works included studies on the politics of organizational decision making, job attitudes, task design, executive selection and turnover, and information. The first nine chapters build their arguments in favor of a resource dependence perspective that the final chapter summarizes. In short, organizations require resources and therefore must engage with others who control those resources. The implications are that organizations constantly fight for survival through attempts to mitigate the degrees and manners of control that outsiders have over them. However, organizations and the social actors in the environment are heterogeneous and their perspectives and interests can conflict, creating uncertainty for the organization to deal with. Thus managerial decisions often reflect the organization’s desires to reduce those uncertainties and strive for the predictable and reliable flows of resources.
The implications are many and are detailed in the book. Among them are how organizations deal with the interdependence with other actors that naturally emerges from dependency on resources. These include how managers decide to perform mergers or diversify, outsource functions, or co-opt opponents into becoming members of boards of directors, for example. Another implication is the very meaning of management itself. Pfeffer & Salancik argued that scholars (and the social context more generally) had attributed too much of an organization’s tangible outcomes on the shoulders of executives. Instead, the executive’s primary purpose is symbolic, providing a mechanism for the organization to satisfy external demands. Thus, the executive is also a natural scapegoat when such demands cannot be met or that there simply needs to be a change in leadership when things are not going well.
RDT has since cast a long shadow and provides the foundation for studies on organizational power and other threads.
Part 1. Meaning of the resource dependence perspectivePart 2. Resource dependence theory and practiceSummary of Episode 116You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Pfeffer, J., Salancik, G. R. (1978). The external control of organizations: A Resource dependence perspective. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Network:90. Organizations in Action — Thompson
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Institutionalization — Philip Selznick
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Simply Managing — Mintzberg
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Robert K. MertonRobert K. Merton was a sociologist who founded the field of the sociology of science, the study of how acts of research influence and are influenced by the contexts being investigated. Two of his early essays exemplify this body of work whereby he and his research teams reflect on the challenges and difficulties of performing field work. In this episode, we examine two speeches delivered in 1947 that exemplify the effort to better understand how to study social change in organizations undergoing technological transformations.
The first, “The Machine, the Worker, and the Engineer,” follows a similar theme as Trist & Bamforth’s coal-getting study covered in Episodes 34 & 114. There, a major technological change was incorrectly assumed by management to lead to greater production but instead tore asunder the social fabric of the miners. Merton explores the more general pattern that a technological advance was seen as a “self-evident good” but managers never considered the work conditions (such as motivation, job satisfaction, professional development, and advancement) and social conditions that might be harmed. What Merton proceeds to do in this speech is present common perspectives that have emerged over years of empirical research regarding the purposes of the “machine” or technology, the situation of the worker employing the technology, and the engineering separately building the machines under management direction or their own curiosity, but not necessarily with the worker’s needs or conditions in mind. Although the aim was to provide a contemporary research agenda, Merton’s findings find ready application to questions regarding the advancement of capabilities in workplaces today.
The second speech is “Some problems of field work in the planned community,” which explores how relationships and tensions within the environment under study can lead to consequences for the researcher, the research itself, and the subjects of the study. This was a classic example of Merton’s sociology of science where the originating study itself was not discussed beyond disclosing that it was in a planned housing community and the subjects were from management and residents. Of interest instead were the various reactions and responses to the presence of the research team. For example, the tensions between management and residents complicated the way the research team had to enter the site so as to maintain objectivity and neutrality, and not to be seen as a tool of either management or the residents against the other party. Merton described various characteristics and motivations of “informants” of the study and under what conditions did they tend to be more cooperative. The result was a series of recommendations for academic sociologists aiming to collect data from “the field”, to increase cooperation and avoid alienating the participants.
Merton’s most famous work, on the “Matthew Effect” in science, extends upon these works with the notion of how the value of scientific publications tend to be perceived on the basis of factors other than quality. We may include an episode on this article in future.
Part 1. The machine, the worker, the engineer, and the anatomy of workPart 2. The potential snares and traps of doing field workSummary of EpisodeYou may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Merton, R. K. (1947). The machine, the worker, and the engineer. Science, 105(2717), 79-84.
Merton, R. K. (1947). Selected problems of field work in the planned community. American Sociological Review, 12(3), 304-312.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Network:Episode 114. Sociotechnical Systems — Trist & Bamforth (revisited) and Episode 34 (original)
Episode 100. Special Episode — The State of Organization Studies
Episode 92. Organization Secrecy — The Manhattan Project
Episode 86. Networks and Network Theory — Mark Granovetter
Episode 33. Foremen – Master and Victim of Doubletalk — Roethlisberger
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Eric TristWith over 110 episodes in our catalogue, we decided it was time to take a step back and revisit one of our earlier episodes that continues to come up time and again. Episode 34, covering Trist & Bamforth’s study on the longwall method of coal-getting, was referenced in sixteen (16) episodes since its release. That is more than any other episode!
We released that episode back in 2017, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies, and other developments have started reshaping social relations across the world since. So, we decided to go back and revisit both the episode and the study itself. This throwback provided us with a chance to re-examine our assumptions and understandings about what happened in the coal industry when a new work technology led to the disintegration of social structures keeping the communities together and the emergence of conflict between team members, thus reducing of worker performance and unexpectedly elevating workplace stress and turnover.
The resulting framework, that of sociotechnical systems, would become a cornerstone in much subsequent organization scholarship—as well as many of our episodes. These include discussions on hierarchies and promotion (112), neo-institutionalism (107), innovation (73 & 98), public administration (89), job design (71), emotions in the workplace (88), and power & influence at work (61). With such a broad legacy, Trist & Bamforth’s study remains one of the great classics of organization theory.This episode re-releases the original Parts 1 and 2 of the episode, supplemented with a new conversation between Pedro and Tom to advance the conversation seven years later. The supplement has been re-recorded and updated, and a new sidecast is available about using Trist & Bamforth as the basis for educating professionals.
Intro: A Conversation about Trist & Sociotechnical SystemsPart 1. Lessons on Organizational Change from Technological Change in Coal Mines (original)Part 2. Social-Technical Systems and Organizational Theory (original)Bonus: Using Trist & Bamforth's Study for Teaching Organizational ChangeSummary of Episode 114You may also download the audio files here: Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Bonus | Teaser
Read with us:Trist, E.L. and Bamforth, K.W., 1951. Some social and psychological consequences of the Longwall Method of coal-getting: An examination of the psychological situation and defences of a work group in relation to the social structure and technological content of the work system. Human relations, 4(1), 3-38.
To Learn More:Ziegenfuss, J. T. (2002). Organization and management problem solving: A systems and consulting approach. Sage.
Other Talking About Organizations Podcast episodes referenced:Episode 112. Hierarchies & Promotion — The “Peter Principle”
Episode 107. Institutionalized Rules and Formal Structure — Goffman
Episode 98. Managing Innovation — Burns & Stalker
Episode 89. Administrative Behavior in Public Sector — Herbert Kaufman
Episode 88. Social Defenses Against Anxiety — Isabel Menzies
Episode 73. Organizing Innovation — Michael Tushman
Episode 71. Managerial Behavior — Melville Dalton
Episode 61. Power & Influence in Organizations — Dan Brass
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Penny Marshall (director)The story and impact of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), 1943-1954, as portrayed in the 1992 film A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall and starring Geena Davis and Tom HanksThis episode is our annual foray into film, and this year’s edition features one of the great sports comedies of the late 20th century, A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall and starring Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, and an incredible ensemble cast. We chose this film not only because of its entertaining value but also because it lends itself to an organizational analysis around many topics, from the creation of novel organizations to the dynamics of institutionalized norms. Besides, it touches on the interplay of gender and organizations, a meaningful topic of contemporary research and public debate which has been covered by a few recent TAOP episodes.
While women athletes in some individual sports have garnered success both on- and off the field, until recently, women’s team sports in the USA have not gained the same levels of financial rewards or general interest among sports fans. A notable change is in the recent collegiate basketball championships, which saw the women’s championship earn greater numbers of viewers and an increasing status of players. Such a change yet is has its roots in history, and many contemporary women’s athletes have honored the legacy of past pioneers.
One of these is the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, or AAGPBL, a women’s baseball league from 1943 to 1954. Founded during WWII, the league was established out of fear that the war would damage the business of baseball due to the loss of players to military service. However, the ownership initially saw the league as a temporary stopgap, but success convinced them to keep the league going after the war.
The movie is heavily fictionalized, designed to offer a glimpse into the lived experiences of the players rather than present a documentary-style biopic (still, the lead characters were all based on real people). Besides, the setting and context were accurate: the players were chaperoned, had to wear make-up and uniforms ill-suited for baseball, and attend “charm school” to act more “ladylike” in public. Still, the experience was pioneering, and the players would stay closely connected for decades after the league folded.
Part 1. About the lived experience of women baseball players in WWIIE113: Summary of the EpisodeYou may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementWatch with us:Marshall, P. (Director). (1992). A league of their own [Film]. Parkway Productions.
To Learn More:Cohen, J. (2022). The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: Frontiers and femininity in America’s favorite pastime. Baseball Reseach Journal. https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-all-american-girls-professional-baseball-league-frontiers-and-femininity-in-americas-favorite-pastime/
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Network:Episode 112. Hierarchies & Promotion — The “Peter Principle”
Episode 74. Emergence of Middle Management — Alfred Chandler
Episode 67. Professions & Professionalism — Andrew Abbott
Episode 52. Management in Practice – Rosemary Stewart
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Lawrence J. PeterWhile not everyone has heard of the so-called “Peter Principle,” virtually everyone has experienced it as either a member of a hierarchical organization or as a customer or other observer of one. The Principle goes like this, “In a hierarchy, everyone rises to their level of incompetence.” The diligent administrative assistant moves up to supervisor but fails. The assembly line worker is promoted to foreman but cannot do the job. A teacher earns a deputy principal position in a school but falls flat on their face. Why is that? Why does this seem to happen over and over, across organizations?
In The Peter Principle, Lawrence J. Peter not only provides answers to these questions, he delves into all the possible implications. The 1969 book, co-authored with Raymond Hull, explains in a satirical way that this is a predestined result of hierarchy: the competent people who perform their job well are promoted until a new position exceeds their capacities or requires new skills heretofore not acquired. The result is someone who is stuck as a misfit in the wrong job, and there they will stay for the rest of their working lives. Peter explores the source and consequences of the principle as well as the ways people navigate hierarchy and try to get ahead. He posits that the simple desire to stay at a level of maximum competence is heartily punished – people must drive for higher status or risk being seen as complacent or without ambition. So, in what appears as one of the key messages in the book, he provides some tips for people to avoid falling trap of advancement for advancement sake – which may land them into an position they lack skills to do.
The book is satirical in form and substance but convincingly written using hundreds of vignettes based (whether faithfully or loosely is the left to the reader) on real life examples that Peter encountered as a consultant. Not only does he lampoon organizational life, he also targets academia with its penchant for its occasional tortuous vocabulary—the book contains an annex with the hundred or so terms invented in the text. It also speaks of a “new science” called hierarchiology, poking fun at how scholars create whole new fields that are not really new but declared as such for personal gain. Peter occasionally pokes at himself in the process of presenting this “science” by declaring that some chapters are completely without empirical support but true because he said so.
The satire works. The “peter principle” not only entered into the popular debate but scholars have also examined his assertions. It can also be considered a source of a lot of popular business literature and media—among them the comic strip series Dilbert, television series The Office (UK and US versions), and the movie Office Space. They all attack organization life in different ways but with one thing in common: the incompetent manager whose stupidity or lack of skills leads to never-ending strings of crises and disasters.
Part 1. Why do people rise to their level of incompetence?Part 2. Using satire as a scholarly method?Summary of Episode 112You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Peter, L. J. & Hull, R. (1969). The Peter Principle. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books.
To Learn More:Benson, A., Li, D., & Shue, K. (2018). Research: Do people really get promoted to their level of incompetence? Harvard Business Review, March 8, 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/03/research-do-people-really-get-promoted-to-their-level-of-incompetence
Benson, A., Li, D., & Shue, K. (2019). Promotions and the peter principle. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(4), 2085-2134.
Ferguson, A. J., Cohen, L. E., Burton, M. D., & Beckman, C. M. (2016). Misfit and milestones: Structural elaboration and capability reinforcement in the evolution of entrepreneurial top management teams. Academy of Management Journal, 59(4), 1430-1450.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). “Good” organizational reasons for “bad” clinic records. In Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 189-207). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Network:Episode 108. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life — Goffman
Episode 32. Organizational Stupidity — Mats Alvesson
Episode 6. Bureaucracy — Max Weber
Related episodes from other podcasts (no endorsement implied):Will getting rid of bosses improve the workplace? (2024, March 26).The Journal. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/the-journal/76h5zk4x/will-getting-rid-of-bosses-fix-the
How to get ahead without managing people, with Martin Wolf. (2024, March 26). Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/ff520173-fe56-493d-a608-2cf774bfbbfd
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Susan Leigh StarComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) began as a community of scholars focusing on work might change due to the introduction and employment of automated systems. According to Grudin & Poltrock (2014), the field initially focused on email which at the time was unreliable and not interoperable across computer systems. But as the power of information technologies became realized, scholars began examining how new capabilities for communication, information sharing, and coordination / cooperation could change how work is accomplished.
Enter Susan Leigh Star, who went even further on this idea and began investigating how CSCW would potentially change the very meaning of work. In this episode, we look at one of her better-known works, “Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work,” published in CSCW’s flagship journal, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, in 1999. The article actually deals very little directly with CSCW and focuses instead on the challenges and risks of automating work processes without due consideration of all the invisible work done in an organization that systems designers might overlook.
Star begins with a powerful point – “What counts as work is a matter of definition” – and proceeds to offer examples of “work” that may not count as work in the minds of some managers because of its intangible or taken-for-granted aspects. This could potentially lead to its omission when designing a collaborative work system, thereby causing the system to fail to achieve the expectations of those using it. Her particular concern was how corporate managers, in the drive for efficiencies, would overemphasize visible work – activities that could be observed, measured, and controlled – at the risk of willfully ignoring the background processes and informal relationships necessary to get work done. The problem is that the shift to the use of technology means that a larger portion of the work done is not through traditional physical activities, making it difficult to tell which of the people sitting at desks on computers are more productive than others.
The bulk of the article addresses several forms of negotiations that occur over what is visible and invisible through the shift to using CSCW systems. One is how the product of work is visible but the employee is not. The second is when the product is invisible but the worker is visible. The third is when both are invisible. Each are presented with relevant examples and their implications for software development.The impact of this article is tremendous. With almost 2000 citations, it has been referenced in many journals, books, and conferences regarding the connections among people, work, and technology.
Part 1. Examining the meanings of visible and invisible workPart 2. When invisible work is good and visible work is badSummary of the EpisodeYou may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Star, S. L., & Strauss, A. (1999). Layers of silence, arenas of voice: The ecology of visible and invisible work. Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) 8, 9-30.
To Learn More:Grudin, J. and Poltrock, S. (2014, January 1). Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Interaction Design Foundation – IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/computer-supported-cooperative-work
Related episodes from the Talking About Organizations Network:Episode 108. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life — Goffman
Episode 22. Human-Machine Reconfiguration — Lucy Suchman
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Lauren EdelmanLauren Edelman (May 11, 1955 – Feb 7, 2023) was an outstanding scholar of organizations and its interface with legal systems. To commemorate the one-year anniversary of her passing, we dedicated this month’s episode to two of her best-known works that studied how organizations in the US responded to the introduction of the Civil Rights Act and navigated its ambiguity in the course of operationalizing it through the availability of grievance procedures supporting those who have been discriminated against. Together, both articles laid the foundation for broader understandings of how organizations respond as new laws are enacted, particularly those that potentially impact the organizations’ market logics and conceptions of its efficiency.
The first article is “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law,” appearing in the American Journal of Sociology in 1992. The article’s thesis was that laws regulating the relationships between employees and their managers tend to be ambiguous, leaving open for interpretation how to operationalize the law. In the matter of the Civil Rights Act, the law established general direction that discrimination against persons according to their “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” was illegal, yet failed to clearly define “discrimination.” Thus, it was left to organizations to sort out the meaning of the term and measure compliance with the law.
More generally, Edelman established three factors that cause organizations to have to mediate new laws. In addition to the (a) ambiguities in the law, she also showed that laws that (b) constrain or dictate organizational procedures and (c) specify weak enforcement mechanisms are likely to leave organizations grappling with how to comply. As a consequence, organizational responses such as establishing new offices or positions to deal with the law and its consequences, may become institutionalized should they succeed in gaining legitimacy. For example, a response that withstands or avoids subsequent legal challenges are likely to be adopted by other organizations.
The second article explores this theme further through an examination of grievance procedures that organizations established to attempt to resolve matters of alleged discrimination from the inside. In “The Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance Procedures as Rational Myth” from 1999, Edelman and two co-authors looked at how myths and stories contributed to the development of what the organizations considered to be reasonable or appropriate responses to new legislation. This endogenous process complements the exogenous responses to new laws explored in the 1992 article. Her study uncovered various myths about how organizations sought to shield themselves from legal liability by having grievance procedures in place, independent of how effective such procedures were in reducing discrimination and independent of the overall aim of the original law to punish discriminatory actions. Moreover, these rational myths can be legitimized through the judicial process as courts may come to view the presence of such procedures as evidence of sufficient and reasonable efforts by the organization to comply. On the other hand, courts may also disagree with the myth and hold the organization liable for discrimination regardless, and the study uncovered various factors contributing to the judicial response. Thus, these works formed an important part of the foundation for research in the intersections of organizations and the legal systems in which they work.
Part 1. How organizations respond to and mediate new lawsPart 2. Negotiations between organizations and legal systemsSupplement to Episode 110You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Edelman, L. B. (1992). Legal ambiguity and symbolic structures: Organizational mediation of civil rights law. American journal of Sociology, 97(6), 1531-1576.
Edelman, L. B., Uggen, C., & Erlanger, H. S. (1999). The endogeneity of legal regulation: Grievance procedures as rational myth. American journal of Sociology, 105(2), 406-454.
To Learn More:Ahmed, S. (2021). Complaint!. Duke University Press.
Berrey, E., Nelson, R. L., & Nielsen, L. B. (2017). Rights on trial: How workplace discrimination law perpetuates inequality. University of Chicago Press.
Castilla, E. J., & Ranganathan, A. (2020). The production of merit: How managers understand and apply merit in the workplace. Organization Science, 31(4), 909-935.
Dobbin, F., & Kelly, E. L. (2007). How to stop harassment: Professional construction of legal compliance in organizations. American Journal of Sociology, 112(4), 1203-1243.
Reynolds, C. (2022). Repurposing Title IX: How sexual harassment became sex discrimination in American higher education. American Journal of Sociology, 128(2), 462-514.
Silbey, S. S. (2005). After legal consciousness. Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci., 1, 323-368.
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Andrew AbbottIn Episode 67, we explored how Andrew Abbott’s The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (1989) re-shaped the study of professions by bringing a systemic focus on how multiple groups vie for jurisdictional control of social problems. Besides offering a new paradigm and concepts for generations of scholars, the book also provides some case studies that showcase how these dynamics work out in practice. While the previous episode focused on the more conceptual aspects of the book, in this episode, we cover the third case study on the jurisdiction of “personal problems.” This is a timely conversation in light of the mental health crises that has gripped many nations during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.
In “The Construction of the Personal Problems Jurisdiction,” Abbott chronicles how social changes from the Industrial Revolution led to the ‘maladjustment’ and isolation felt by many individuals who could no longer reach back to the stable social structure from whence they came. As a result, several professions emerged and competed for jurisdiction over the diagnosis and treatment of such “personal problems.” Over the course of a century, some of these professions would dominate while others disappeared or withdrew.
Abbott’s examination covers initial competition between the clergy—who were ill equipped for professional work outside salvation—and the neurologists who slowly and haphazardly formed a variety of diagnoses and treatments. Then came the psychiatrists who migrated from state institutions for the insane and later the psychotherapists who operationalized Freud’s foundational work to build a whole profession backed by scientific discourse, academic institutions, growing numbers of clients, and public acceptance. Throughout, Abbott presents the story agnostically, trying to pay attention to the contingencies of the process. For example, he considers some of the (failed) attempts of other professions, including “gynecological neurology” and several later attempts by various clergical groups trying to reassert their perceived roles in helping people.
While the case examines these processes until the 1970s, professional competition both within the personal problems jurisdiction and around the social context (e.g., insurance standards and public funding) continued to shape the availability and quality of mental health care to the present day. In this changing landscape, social stigmas against those seeking mental health care seems to be have waned and the consequences of failing to identify and treat mental illness are recognized to be far greater. Still, the cost and lack of access to care has also led to alternative, mostly non-professional, approaches to dealing with personal problems. Grounded on Abbott’s work, we consider some of these dynamics in a time of technological changes and increasing challenges to professions and their expertise.
Part 1. How 1850s-era “American Nervousness” spawned many new professionsPart 2. The social and organizational landscape for mental health todaySupplement to Episode 109You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Abbott, A. (1989). The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labor. University of Chicago Press.
To Learn More:Eyal, G. (2019). The crisis of expertise. John Wiley & Sons.
Eyal, G. (2013). For a sociology of expertise: The social origins of the autism epidemic. American Journal of Sociology, 118(4), 863-907.
Fish, S. (1985). Anti-professionalism. Cardozo L. Rev., 7, 645.
Gorman, E. H., & Sandefur, R. L. (2011). “Golden age,” quiescence, and revival: how the sociology of professions became the study of knowledge-based work. Work and Occupations, 38(3), 275-302.
Pakarinen, P., & Huising, R. (2023). Relational Expertise: What Machines Can’t Know. Journal of Management Studies.
Other Episodes Referenced from Talking About Organizations:Episode 67. Professions and Professionalism — Andrew Abbott
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Erving GoffmanErving Goffman’s 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life was an important attempt at explaining both apparent and hidden human behaviors across social and organizational settings. The book begins as so (with pronouns changed):
When an individual enters the presence of other, they commonly seek to acquire information about them or to bring into play information about them already possessed. They will be interested in their general socio-economic status, their conception of self, their competence, their trustworthiness, etc. Although some of this information seems to be sought almost as an end in itself, there are usually quite practical reasons for acquiring it. Information about the individual helps to define the situation, enabling others to know in advance what they will expect of them and what they may expect of the person. Informed in these ways, the others will know how best to act in order to call forth a desired response from him.
Erving Goffman (1959)
Goffman thus proceeds to develop a comprehensive framework using theater as the primary metaphor. He describes the roles of people as performers and members of an audience. He establishes the situation as a two-part stage (as two “regions”) consisting of a front stage where people present their “performances” and a back stage where people return to being themselves and proceed to set conditions for the next performance. Performers are both individuals and teams, like a cast or emsemble, whereby shared understandings (expressed as scripts) serve to govern and constrain one’s performances in accordance with the underlying expected script. However, as people are indeed human, sometimes the performance is unsuccessful – someone acted outside expectations or the situation was ill-defined or incompletely understood, leading to embarrassment or shame. How do others respond both to the individual and among themselves to avoid a recurrence?
Goffman relies on many examples from contemporary studies, including his own extensive studies of crofters in the remote Shetland Islands, to justify this framework. In it, he not only explains how to analyze performances in of themselves but also the audiences’ reactions to them. He asserts that individuals try to define the situation and present themselves in as favorable light as possible in order to provoke a desired reaction from others. Meanwhile, the others seek to define the situation to suit their own needs and observe the performances around themselves carefully so to spot signs of inauthenticity, deception, or errors and miscalculations.
This is not the sort of book one reads and comes away with renewed faith in humanity. Indeed, it would be easy to interpret it as the product of a cynic, but the book is very practical and explains the human condition as one of constant competition to not only outperform each other but also to write the scripts, in essence setting the rules under which the situation (“setting”) is defined and enacted. It has also become a very important book from which numerous literature streams of organization behavior have flowed, despite the book not being about formal organizations.
Part 1. Goffman’s use of theater as a metaphor for human interactionsPart 2. Applying Goffman’s framework to today’s complicated environmentSummary of the EpisodeYou may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor.
To Learn More:Barley, S. R. (2020). Work and technological change. Oxford University Press, USA.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. New York: Doubleday.
Turco, C. J. (2016). The conversational firm: Rethinking bureaucracy in the age of social media. Columbia University Press.
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John MeyerIn 1977, prevailing theories of organization were based on a rational perspective that organizations established their formal structures to be as effective and efficient as possible. Redundancies and excess would be eliminated. However, John Meyer and Brian Rowan saw things differently – that “institutionalized products, services, techniques, policies, and programs function as powerful myths, and many organizations adopt them ceremonially” (p. 340), even if they result in organizations becoming less efficient or effective in their intended missions or purposes. In fact, these myths can become so powerful as to stigmatize organizations that reject them.
Examples abound in contemporary life. Legitimate fears over potential litigation has caused organizations to adopt structures to protect themselves against the threats of lawsuits, even if the possibility of successful lawsuits would be extremely low. Failure to establish formal positions dedicated to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility can result in members and stakeholders to question the organization’s promotion of human dignity and equality. The belief that organizations can always be more efficient (e.g., “do more with less”) has led to increased quantification of performance indicators, leading to more administrative and analytical positions lest the organization be seen as inefficient or wasteful of its resources.
Brian RowanMeyer and Rowan argued that conformity to these institutionalized rules is therefore necessary for organizations to survive. However, because they can detract from the organization’s purpose, organizations cope by, by enacting rituals to show that it is adhering to the “rules”, yet also using loose coupling to protect its central work activities from unnecessary and unhelpful intrusion and subverting or weakening inspection of observation of those activities. Thus, while the formal structure of the organization grows to accommodate new institutional rules, in theory the work proceeds with minimal interruption or intervention.
Meyer and Rowan’s theory of institutionalization came out roughly at the same time as other theories that questioned the true source of formal structures, such as population ecology. This article, however, provided a broad and actionable research agenda that continues to produce useful scholarship. The author’s proposed three streams of research, each bearing much fruit: (1) that more institutionalized rules leads to more formal organization; (2) that organizations adopting more rules compared to others are often more “legitimate, successful, and able to survive,” and (3) the extent to which organizational control leads to more ritualistic conformity.
Part 1. How institutionalized rules determine formal structuresPart 2. Is too much institutionalization weakening today’s organizations?Summary of the EpisodeYou may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | SupplementRead with us:Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American journal of sociology, 83(2), 340-363.
To Learn More:DiMaggio, P. J. & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American sociological review, 147-160.
Eriksson-Zetterquist, U. (2019). The (Re?) Emergence of New Ideas in the Field of Organizational Studies. In The Production of Managerial Knowledge and Organizational Theory: New Approaches to Writing, Producing and Consuming Theory (pp. 123-139). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Hudson, B. A., Okhuysen, G. A., & Creed, W. D. (2015). Power and institutions: Stones in the road and some yellow bricks. Journal of Management Inquiry, 24(3), 233-238.
Meyer, J. W. & Bromley, P. (2013). The worldwide expansion of “organization”. Sociological Theory, 31(4), 366-389.
Oliver, C. (1991). Strategic responses to institutional processes. Academy of management review, 16(1), 145-179.
Oliver, C. (1992). The antecedents of deinstitutionalization. Organization Studies, 13(4), 563-588.
Sherer, P. D. & Lee, K. (2002). Institutional change in large law firms: A resource dependency and institutional perspective. Academy of Management journal, 45(1), 102-119.
Suárez, D. F. & Bromley, P. (2016). Institutional theories and levels of analysis: History, diffusion, and translation. World culture re-contextualised: Meaning constellations and path-dependencies in comparative and international education research, 139-159.
Tolbert, P. S. & Zucker, L. G. (1983). Institutional sources of change in the formal structure of organizations: The diffusion of civil service reform, 1880-1935. Administrative science quarterly, 22-39.
Tolbert, P. S. & Zucker, L. G. (1999). The institutionalization of institutional theory. Studying organization. Theory & method, 1, 169-184.
Willmott, H. (2015). Why institutional theory cannot be critical. Journal of Management Inquiry, 24(1), 105-111.
Zucker, L. G. (1977). The role of institutionalization in cultural persistence. American sociological review, 726-743.
Zucker, L. G. (1987). Institutional theories of organization. Annual review of sociology, 13(1), 443-464.
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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 complementary roles that members made salient but were not officially recognized. Instead, managers might dismiss such roles as “irrelevant, inappropriate, or illegitimate” to recognize formally despite them being essential in the organization’s social fabric
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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 relations among groups in society. He presented his arguments in three parts. First, that social structures had an imprinting effect on the formation of new organizations, such that these initial forms often persisted despite efforts to change them. Thus, to the second point, each type of organization reflected the history of its creation both in terms of the organization and social structures that dominated at the time. Finally, organizations also reflect the social divisions in society, such as between higher and lower classes.
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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 organizations and networks. Barley and Kunda argues that these new ideas are not grounded in rigorous studies of how people perform work in such new organizations.
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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 themselves while also shaping the buying experience through the introductions of different styles, improved relations with dealings, and financial services that rivaled banks.
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Frederick HerzbergAs the 1950s progressed, interest in job satisfaction ballooned. Nearly 70 studies in that decade alone purported to examine the question of what made workers satisfied with their jobs. But a true answer proved elusive as these studies produced contradictory answers and individuals varied in their responses depending on their apparent moods at different times. The realization of the “Hawthorne effect” added to the confusion as the Hawthorne studies showed how difficult it is to pin down the salient factors that motivate workers. Personnel specialists would be told to ignore these irrational factors utterly and effectively tell the workers what they wanted.
Not satisfied with the state of knowledge in this matter, Frederick Herzberg and his colleagues Bernard Mauser and Barbara Snyderman undertook an extensive study including over 200 interviews with engineers and accountants working in the Pittsburgh area in the late 1950s. Through stories, what the researchers would call sequences, these professional workers would describe situations that affected their job commitment and the short- or long-term effects such as whether workers were happy or actively seeking greener pastures elsewhere.
They would find that factors leading to satisfaction were very different than those leading to dissatisfaction. The satisfiers were work-related, such as feelings of achievement, being recognized, or gaining in prestige and responsibility. Those factors that led to dissatisfaction were more likely related to the environment around the work such as relationships with colleagues or supervisors, company policies, work conditions, or in some cases wages and salary. But eliminating these dissatisfiers did not mean workers were happy – satisfaction was not assured. So employers and managers had to address two different sets of factors – one that truly motivates workers and those that prevented problems from arising. The result became known as Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory of Job Satisfaction, also known as the motivator-hygiene theory. Hygiene factors were so-named because they served a similar purpose as one’s preventative health measures – to keep the workplace environment free of problems and thus reduce the propensity for worker complaints.
Part 1. What do people want from their jobs?Part 2. Separating satisfying factors from the dissatisfyingTeaser for Episode 101You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Teaser
Read with us:Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. B. (1959). The motivation to work. New York: John Wiley.
To Learn More:Flanagan, J. C. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological bulletin, 51(4), 327.
Hersey, R. B. (1936). Emotional factors in accidents. Personnel Journal, 15, 59-65.
Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., Peterson, R. O., & Capwell, D. F. (1957). Job attitudes; review of research and opinion. Pittsburgh: Psychological Service of Pittsburgh.
Other Talking About Organizations Podcast episodes referenced:Episode 9. Hawthorne Studies — Elton Mayo
Title Image Credit: David Siglin via Unsplash, Creative Commons license.
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With Special Guest Summer Jackson, Harvard Business SchoolJoan Acker
By 1990, the first two waves of feminism had passed, but women continued to be marginalized in the workplace. While these waves succeeded in articulating and addressing gender inequalities, men and women were far from being on equitable terms in organizations. Part of the reason, as Joan Acker describes in the 1990 article “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations,” is 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, organizations would continue to reinforce long-standing gender inequality. Acker’s article exemplifies the shift in the gender discourse toward feminism’s “third wave,” where calls for reform the workplace were overtaken by calls to transform it.
Acker’s purpose was to issue a clarion call for new research into a “systematic theory of gender and organizations” that addresses the persistence of gender segregation through organizational practices, the resulting income and status inequalities as a result, and the inherent reproduction of these inequalities through symbols, norms, and structures. Her critique was not only leveled about organizations but also against scholarship which assumed gender neutral structures populated by workers. Furthermore, she pointed out to the limits of only considering questions of efficiency and performance in the study of organizations as it that prevented (feminist) inquiries into the humane treatment of members and improved participation in decision-making. In developing a feminist view of organizations, she hoped to make them more “democratic and more supportive of humane goals.”
Acker builds her case by examining the growing body of evidence from the 1970s and 1980s that gender is a constitutive element of organizations, not separate from it. She writes that “the structure of the labor market, relations in the workplace, the control of the work processes, and the underlying wage relation are always affected by symbols of gender, processes of gender identity, and material inequalities between women and men” (p.145). Among other processes, she explores how work divisions, ideal work behaviors, and images of success reinforce power and status differences based on gender. Moreover, the tendency to disembody the worker from the job and treat workers as interchangeable entities further exacerbates gender differences rather than resolves them.
Acker’s proposals are even more relevant as the pandemic and various economic downturns have highlighted the problems brought by looking at workers as disembodied and jobs as neutral structures. Such classic work thus raises timely questions around how competitive pressures may further push human approaches to work further away? And how some of the changes brought by the pandemic may be leveraged towards more democratic workplaces?
Part 1. A call for research on gender and organizations (released 14 March 2023)https://www.talkingaboutorganizations.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/TAOP-E99P1.mp3Part 2. The struggle towards more humane organizations (forthcoming 21 March 2023)Read with us:Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & society, 4(2), 139-158.
To Learn More:Kanter, R. M. (2008). Men and women of the corporation: New edition. Basic books.
Ray, V. (2019). A theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26-53.
Rivera, L. A. (2012). Hiring as cultural matching: The case of elite professional service firms. American sociological review, 77(6), 999-1022.
Turco, C. J. (2010). Cultural foundations of tokenism: Evidence from the leveraged buyout industry. American sociological review, 75(6), 894-913.
Other Talking About Organizations Podcast episodes referenced:Episode 82. Women of Organization Scholarship — Classics AoM PDW LIVE
Episode 68. Globalization and Culture Clashes — American Factory (Documentary)
Episode 35. The Managed Heart — Arlie Hochschild
Episode 17. Tokenism — Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Title Image Credit: U.S. Department of Defense photo of two “fingerprint center” workers who processed fingerprint cards for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation during WWII; public domain.
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Tom Burns
Why do firms continuously have difficulties to convert new ideas into goods or services? This question is at the heart of this month’s reading – The Management of Innovation, a book by Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker from 1961. The book begins with a discussion of how their initial studies on communities of people at work led the authors to a curious finding. At a rayon mill, everything seemed to be working fine – the mill was commercially successful and appeared to be running quite efficiently. But on closer examination, they found that the research and development laboratory, whose roles were to solve problems beyond the capacities of the workforce, was viewed with unusual levels of suspicion and hostility. They would find similar issues in a population of firms in England and Scotland. As the authors investigated the source of these problems they produced a cornerstone of management and organization studies.
The book famously reports the role of organization in innovation. At its heart is the fundamental construct that Burns & Stalker derived to explain two management systems – the mechanistic and the organic. The mechanistic system is akin to ordinary bureaucratic structures that seek predictability and reliability and are most effective in relatively stable situations. The organic system is better for changing conditions and reflects activities to redefine tasks, worker roles, and systems of development and production – in short, to operationalize change. They reflect two ends of a spectrum, and firms can shift along that spectrum at any given time. Importantly, Burns & Stalker’s helped develop ideas on how structural features and social patterns work together into a system and how such system fits different conditions, thus making a major contribution to the development of the contingency approach in organization studies.
Unlike the common misconception that mechanistic systems are necessarily bad for innovation and organic systems are better, Burns & Stalker show that both are equally useful, but that success or failure is both one of alignment with the situation and the successful management of the potential conflicts that innovation can bring.
As usually is the case in classics, the book packs many more insights than its reputation. One of them is their detailed analysis about political and social challenges faced by different organizations as they try to adjust to new conditions. They show that not only do the common challenges of resistance to change appear but also how innovations can threaten power structures and status how the management systems themselves can be a source of barriers to change.
The book also provides an anatomy of the sources of conflict that innovation can create between developers and assembly line, or between scientists and managers. And it shows that innovation is everyone’s responsibility, and that the ability to develop and produce new goods and services depends on being able to sustain them through the full life-cycle as has been acutely explored by subsequent innovation scholars such as Deborah Dougherty.
Part 1. How does organization matter for innovation? (released 14 February 2023)https://www.talkingaboutorganizations.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/TAOP-E98P1.mp3Part 2. The enduring questions about the value of work (forthcoming 21 February 2023)Read with us:Burns, T. & Stalker, G. M. (1961). The Management of Innovation. Tavistock Publications Limited.
To Learn More:Dougherty, D. (1992). Interpretive barriers to successful product innovation in large firms. Organization science, 3(2), 179-202.
Dougherty, D., & Hardy, C. (1996). Sustained product innovation in large, mature organizations: Overcoming innovation-to-organization problems. Academy of management journal, 39(5), 1120-1153.
Hargadon, A. & Douglas, Y. (2001). When innovations meet institutions: Edison and the design of the electric light. Administrative science quarterly, 46(3), 476-501.
Hargadon, A. & Sutton, R. I. (1997). Technology brokering and innovation in a product development firm. Administrative science quarterly, 42(4), 716-749.
Zammuto, R. F., Griffith, T. L., Majchrzak, A., Dougherty, D. J., & Faraj, S. (2007). Information technology and the changing fabric of organization. Organization science, 18(5), 749-762.
Other Talking About Organizations Podcast episodes referenced:Episode 73. Organizing Innovation — Michael Tushman
Episode 61. Power & Influence in Organizations — Dan Brass
Episode 25. Competitive Groups as Cognitive Communities
Title Image Credit: Unsplash.com; creative commons license.
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SPOILER ALERT! For those who have not seen the movie…
The story of Nelson Mandela’s presidency is one of the most compelling in modern history. He was an outspoken critic of apartheid in South Africa since the late 1940s, eventually being arrested and imprisoned for 27 years for attempting to overthrow the government. His reputation as a civil rights leader would only grow while in prison. And after being released, he was elected as the first post-apartheid President of South Africa. Yet he inherited a nation bitterly divided along racial lines where the whites remained affluent and powerful and blacks remained poor and marginalized.
It is at this point that the 2009 Clint Eastwood-directed movie Invictus begins. Mandela (Morgan Freedman) was being pushed by his supporters to remove all symbols of white supremacy and power, but Mandela chose a more conciliatory route. South Africa was due to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and Mandela recognized the role that sport could play in unifying the nation. The challenger however was that rugby was a white-dominated sport and the “Springboks,” the national team, symbolized apartheid in the minds of many blacks. As the movie depicts and as happened in real life, Mandela managed to embrace the Springboks by forging a direct relationship with their captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), and lead them on an outreach mission across the country. When South Africa surprised everyone and won the World Cup in a hard-fought final, Mandela famously walked onto the pitch in a Springbok jersey to hand the trophy to Pienaar.
Looking through an organizational lens, this story has many lessons which we explore in our discussion on change and resistance to it, team building, charismatic leadership and routinization of charisma, deinstitutionalization of racism and the practices that enable and inhibit it, and so much more!
Part 1. A true story of leadership and driving positive change (released 24 January 2023)https://www.talkingaboutorganizations.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/TAOP-E97P1.mp3Part 2. The enduring questions about the value of work (forthcoming 31 January 2023)Watch with us:Eastwood, C. (Director). (2009). Invictus [Film]. Spyglass Entertainment.
- Based on: Carlin, J. (2008). Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation. Penguin Books.
To Learn More:Dougherty, D. (2001). Reimagining the differentiation and integration of work for sustained product innovation. Organization science, 12(5), 612-631.
Kerr, S. (1975). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Academy of Management journal, 18(4), 769-783.
Mandela, N., & Cartwright, J. (1961). Long walk to freedom. Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind.
Oliver, C. (1992). The antecedents of deinstitutionalization. Organization studies, 13(4), 563-588.
Podolny, J. M. (2011). A conversation with James G. March on learning about leadership. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 10(3), 502-506.
Other Talking About Organizations Podcast episodes referenced:Episode 55. Group Dynamics and Foundations of Organizational Change — Kurt Lewin
Episode 57. Reward Systems — Steven Kerr
Episode 98. Managing Innovation — Burns & Stalker (forthcoming February)
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Shoshana Zuboff
In this episode, 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. The book was based on ten years of field study in multiple organizations from a variety of industries, but the themes were essential the same. The promises of such technologies were unfulfilled because of the changes they demanded of the organizational power structures.
The studies were done in the early 1980s as mainframe computers – machines that could fill a whole room and that only the largest companies could afford – gave way to the early desktop computers. Rapid advances in software promised opportunities to automate the management of industrial processes, hoping to make it easier to spot and correct troubles and creating records of organizational activity that could be examined and used for training and coaching. Workers could use the information to collaborate and work together better and satisfaction would improve.
Alas, in too many cases the results were the opposite. At first, workers may have benefited from the technologies, but too many quickly found themselves losing touch with the job. Moreover, managers found that the increased transparency and democratization of information threatened their sense of power and underlying assumptions behind managerial authority. Managers would soon undermine the benefits of such systems and instead cause their evolution into employee surveillance systems, hoping to increase worker efficiency and reasserting power distance between the supervisors and the supervised.
Fast forward to present day, and many of Zuboff’s findings ring true, as she shows in her follow-on work Surveillance Capitalism. But In the Age of the Smart Machine showed that the current day was far from pre-ordained, and in her conclusion she offered strategies for combating the reassertion of power structures and creating organizations that informate – that use the technology to its fullest to benefit workers, managers, and the organization. Could such strategies work even today?
Part 1. How information technologies changed the meaning of work(released 6 December 2022)https://www.talkingaboutorganizations.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/TAOP-E96P1.mp3Part 2. The enduring questions about the value of work (forthcoming 13 December 2022)Read with us:Zuboff, S. (1988). In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power. Basic Books.
Other Talking About Organizations Podcast episodes referenced:Episode 95. Labor-Management Relations — Tom Lupton
Title Image Credit: Unsplash.com; creative commons license.
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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 overuse or abuse by management and ensured a stable pay. These structures discouraged workers from working too hard or not hard enough. In Part 1, we will examine the cases in depth and present Lupton’s findings.
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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 – one by Lave herself with four from other researchers – to help broaden the perspective of how situated learning works social involvement in which newer members are initiated through the exercise of low-risk or controlled tasks.
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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. Steve Barley, Gina Dokko, Ingrid Erickson, and Davide Nicolini presented central insights on research traditions related to the study of work and related topics such as careers and technological change. They also addressed various ways that these insights can shed light on the changing nature of work.
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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 project and, failing that, any information about progress and potential employment. How did they do it and what challenges did they face? What could we learn about maintaining secrets in contemporary organizations?
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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 to Possess the Essentials of a Profession”) that introduced Follett’s conception of professionalizing business.
The post 91: Constructive Conflict – Mary Parker Follett appeared first on Talking About Organizations Podcast.
We will 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 their environments. The result was a proposed theory of administration that remains relevant to this day.
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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 not. Kaufman’s study showed how and why the various techniques used by the Forest Service kept the Rangers integrated under a common vision.
The post 89: Administrative Behavior in Public Sector — Herbert Kaufman appeared first on 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 attachment. Nursing students witnessing these methods in practice found them in violation of their expectations regarding care and their professional calling, and were quitting. What were these methods and why did they come about?
The post 88: Social Defenses Against Anxiety — Isabel Menzies appeared first on Talking About Organizations Podcast.
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 allowed it to be adapted for navigating other forms of complexity such as business competition. We examine the text in its original context to illustrate the need to understand the purpose and utility of classic texts.
The post 87: The Art of War (and Management?) — Sun Tzu appeared first on Talking About Organizations Podcast.
As we enter our seventh year, we recognize the treasure trove of material that we have collected in our podcast episodes. And so, we are actively looking for ways to turn our program and website into a sort of digital library open for anyone interested in organization theory and management science. Take part in our survey to tell us what is important to you, and you could win a prize!
The post What’s Coming for the Podcast in 2022! appeared first on Talking About Organizations Podcast.
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 researchers to connect micro-level interactions with macro-level patterns. Given how social networking has changed so much between social media and the pandemic, we decided to give this article a fresh look.
The post 86: Networks and Network Theory — Mark Granovetter appeared first on Talking About Organizations Podcast.
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 individuals or join, stay in, or leave organizations? What about the causes and effects of conflict? We explore all this and more.
The post 85: Carnegie-Mellon Series #6 — Organizations appeared first on Talking About Organizations Podcast.
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 supervision. A collection of his lectures entitled Business – A Profession expounds on these ideas, and he includes a number of case studies and illustrations to show both the human and financial potential of his professed forms of management where profit would not be the only measure of a business’ success.
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