Talking About Organizations Podcast

The conversation delves into the myths surrounding innovation, like the misconception that it can be outsourced to startups. It emphasizes the vital role of CEOs in steering innovation and the political dynamics in managerial relationships that can stifle creativity. The podcast also tackles the importance of direct communication between top management and lower-level employees, which enhances decision-making. Additionally, it discusses the need for collaboration across departments to foster organizational innovation and adapt to evolving work dynamics.

Pedro Monteiro, a speaker based in Copenhagen, dives into the fascinating world of innovation management. He discusses the insights from Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker's classic work, revealing why organizations struggle to turn ideas into products. The conversation touches on the complexities of power dynamics and common misunderstandings about bureaucratic structures. Monteiro highlights the shift toward collaborative innovation post-World War II, emphasizing the importance of adaptive management systems and effective communication for successful innovation.

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

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

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

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

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

This month, we discuss Shoshana Zuboff’s "In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power" that examines several cases of organizations introducing information technologies in the workplace hoping to improve organizational performance, transparency, and collaboration but instead dehumanized the workplace and ushered in new ways of managerial surveillance. In Part 1, we discuss the major themes of the book, her telling of the histories of both blue- and white-collar work, and her incredible case studies.

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

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