Talking About Organizations Podcast

We will soon be launching a special part of our website where curated lists of readings on organization studies and management topics will be made available for all. In the meantime, we will be releasing some of the pages as a preview. This month's release is where it all began -- Taylorism and scientific management. We covered this topic in many of our earliest episodes and there were other related works that we haven't yet covered but might (our "to do" list is pretty long). For a quick 3-minute read, find out what scientific management was intended to be about and learn why it continues to have an important influence over organizational life today. Stay for more great conversations on organizational studies and more pages on classic topics of management science! #taop

Economic sociology bridges economics and sociology, exploring questions such as how social environments explain and influence economic activities. Of interest for this episode is 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 explores the economic valuation of peculiar goods, things that are intangible or otherwise cannot be exchanged in a market yet have a social value, and uses a case study of the legal proceedings following oil spills in the US and France to explain why the monetary awards were calculated so differently from each other. With special guest Georg Rilinger from the MIT Sloan School of Management! #taop #economicsociology #exxonvaldez #amococadiz

Coming soon! We enter the field of economic sociology and valuation through a comparative study by Marion Fourcade on the different legal outcomes of oil spills in the US and France. “Cents and Sensibility: Economic Valuation and the Nature of ‘Nature’,” published in the American Journal of Sociology in 2011, 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 resulted in surprisingly different monetary awards to the plaintiffs. Why? The answers lie in how the nations constructed the very meaning of nature and its ostensible value! #taop

Resource 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. In the book, Pfeffer & Salancik argued that the behaviors or organizations and their managers were driven by the context, because of the need for resources in order to survive. Thus, managerial decisions were based far more on how to manage interdependencies with external social actors than what would presumably lead to objectively better outcomes. They believe RDT explains more accurately the kinds of managerial behaviors observed and how organizations chose (and fired) their executives than other theories of the time. #taop #resourcedependencetheory #pfeffersalancik Part 1 was released today on our website and through Spotify -- Part 2 will be released on September 3rd.

Coming soon! We will Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald’s The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective. In this book, the authors introduce Resource Dependence Theory on how organizations were dependent on the environment for resources and survival, 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. A fascinating read and a conversation we are sure you will enjoy! #taop #resourcedependencetheory #pfeffersalancik

The Talking About Organizations Podcast is more than a conversation about classic texts of organization studies and management studies. We aim to be a resource for those new to these fields. We have in the past developed curated lists of readings on various topics but are now expanding that into a small but powerful library. In between our podcast releases, we will be releasing new and updated pages organized by level of analysis and subfield. Also included are links to relevant TAOP episodes. First up is a re-built page on emotions and emotional labor. The study of emotions in organizational contexts has garnered increasing attention from scholars and practitioners over the past few decades, but the classic foundational works remain very important and relevant. One of our favorite and popular episodes is our coverage of Arlie Hochschild's The Managed Heart (Episode 35, linked on this page). The main Library page will be released soon and we'll announce the release of new pages as they come. #taop #emotions #emotionallabor

👉 Calling all PhD students considering a post-doc and current post-docs! Join us for a OMT Post-Doc Information Session 🤩🔭   Post-docs are becoming an increasingly common #career phase for organization and management scholars. Yet, information on how to secure and navigate such a position is patchy and unclear. This session aims to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of being a #postdoc. The panelists reflect various #academic experiences and backgrounds. Three of them have recently completed post-docs and moved into a new career stage (Alice, Elena, and Tom), while two more senior faculty members (Marta and Sara) have experience working with and guiding postdocs. The session will be structured as an informal discussion where the panellists will share their experiences and answer questions from the audience. Panelists ·       Alice Mascena Barbosa (EADA Business School) ·       Elena Bruni (Luiss Business School) ·       Thomas Fewer, PhD (Rutgers University) ·       Marta Elvira (IESE Business School) ·       Sara Soderstrom (University of Michigan)   Moderator Pedro Monteiro (Copenhagen Business School, OMT rep-at-large) 👯 For whom: PhD candidates considering pursuing a post-doc + current post-docs navigating the transition to the next career stage. 🗓️ Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6th from 4 PM to 5 PM CEST (3-4 PM BST, 10-11 AM EDT, 9-10 AM CDT, 7-8 PDT) 👉🏾 Register here: https://lnkd.in/dcS5znya

Robert K. Merton was a sociologist who founded the study of the sociology of science, how acts of research influence and are influenced by the contexts being studied. 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 – “The Machine, the Worker, and the Engineer” and “Selected Problems of Field Work in the Planned Community” – that exemplifies the effort to better understand how to study social change in organizations due to technology change. #taop #robertmerton #sociology Update 30 July -- Part 2 is now out -- same link (it is available in the playlist).

Coming soon! We will explore two of the early works of renowned sociologist Robert K. Merton whose interests included studying the processes of field work in order to improve the quality and rigor of field studies. What are the challenges and difficulties of doing research in environments rife with conflict and tension? #taop #sociologyofscience #merton

With 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. 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. This re-release includes a new supplement further the conversation to contemporary issues and a sidecast on the use of this study as a cautionary tale for professional education. The episode is available here: https://lnkd.in/dSeTzY7r #taop #sociotechnicalsystems