Talking About Organizations Podcast

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.

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

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

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.

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

We discuss several works by Jay Galbraith on the theory and practice of organizational design, which is about creating organizations to provide better outcomes and serve the organization’s purpose and strategy. This episode begins with a focus on one of Jay Galbraith’s earlier publications, an article titled, “Organizational Design: An Information Processing View” for designing organizations to make better decisions in times of high uncertainty, and then brings in his more recent works promoting his five-point “Star Model,” a design tool for use by managers.

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