Talking About Organizations Podcast

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

This month’s episode examines war and how principles derived from it are presently applied to other organizational and management contexts. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is an ancient text that emerged from the Warring States period that lasted from the 5th through 3rd centuries B.C. and engulfed most of modern mainland China. It embraced the complexity of the environment of war, which therefore has allowed it to be adapted for navigating other forms of complexity such as business competition. We examine the text in its original context to understand its purpose and utility.

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

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

We conclude our examination of Granovetter’s 1973 article, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” by looking at how social networking has grown and changed in the last fifty years. Considering the emergence of information technologies and the different means available to connect with each other, along with the disruptive character of the pandemic, we discuss what has been learned over time and what it means going forward. Are we connecting better? If not, what could we be doing differently?

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. The article was very successful, and whole new fields of study on social networks has emerged as a result.

This is a teaser for Episode 86, where we will examine Mark Granovetter’s “The Strength of Weak Ties” from 1973 that significantly changed the way researchers looked at interpersonal networks. How we connect with one other and for what purposes has taken on new meaning in the last few years. We will therefore give this classic article a fresh look and tackle the questions it raised as they apply to today.

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

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.

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