Talking About Organizations Podcast

What is power and influence? Although power appears as a multilevel concept, the early organizational literature tended to view it as wielded by people--measured as skills, traits, or competencies. This would change in the 1980s, in large part to a classic empirical study providing evidence that one's position within an organizational structure was more likely to translate into one's source of power. Dan Brass' article, "Being in the Right Place: A Structural Analysis of Individual Influence in an Organization" from Administrative Science Quarterly is the subject of this episode. In Part 1, we focus on where this article fits in the broader context of power and influence in organization studies. Joining us in the studio for this episode is Sarah Otner, a junior research fellow at the Imperial College in London.

Part 2 of our discussion of Joan Woodward's classic work on contingency theory, technology, and organization.

Joan Woodward was a pioneer in organization theory, and in this episode we explore her seminal work Industrial Organization: Theory and Practice, originally published in 1965. The book presents the results of an extensive longitudinal study of the technologies, processes, and systems used by over one hundred industrial firms concentrated in southeast England over a ten year period. The studies produced a finding that successful firms did not follow a single ‘best way’ to manage the firm, but that each had an optimal way based on the congruence or alignment between the technologies and the processes & systems to manage them. This included differences among firms regarding the dominance of marketing, research and development, and production; variations in status of employees among various roles, and variations in how success is measured. Follow-on studies examined how firms underwent transformational change from one form of industry to another, largely confirming the prior results.

Join us as we conclude talking about one of the most known theories in management and organisational behaviour! Are you theory X or theory Y? Or is there even meaning to such a distinction? What are the normative and political assumptions behind this typology? Tune in to find out more!

In this episode, we examine Douglas McGregor’s most famous work, The Human Side of Enterprise, that proposed two “theories” encapsulating management assumptions about human behavior. His Theory X described the dominant thinking of the 1950s, where managers held a dim view of employees, who were assumed to be disinclined to work and had to be coerced into doing so. McGregor felt that Theory X led to adversarial relationships between managers and workers, resulting in poorer performance and an unhealthy environment. His Theory Y saw employees as wishing to be challenged and fulfilled if properly empowered and engaged.The book has become a staple of management literature. Numerous studies of organizations have confirmed the benefits of Theory Y assumptions serving as the foundation for performance appraisals, reward systems, working in teams, and building worker commitment to the organization. The Annotated Edition of the book, published in 2006, includes dozens of additional callouts and citations of research and vignettes of management experience, demonstrated the continued relevance of this master work.

In the 2019 workshop at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, we paid particular attention to the European(/UK) tradition as this is usually overlooked in our area (especially the work of the Tavistock Institute). We selected authors and groups representing different aspects of this approach with presentations by Sarah Kaplan (on Joan Woodward), Signe Vikkelsø (on the Tavistock Institute and Socio-Technical Systems), and Gino Cattani (on James D. Thompson). This was followed by roundtables mediated by the speakers and a plenary discussion.The episode begins with the presentation of some “postcards” — notes sent to us from several prominent scholars who applaud the attention we are giving to the contingency approach. You can view the postcards in the gallery below. Enjoy!This PDW represents the second edition of what we hope to be a standing series showcasing the enduring relevance of earlier organizational research and raise interest for it. We believe that paying attention to the classics of our field may complement the strong emphasis (at AOM and beyond) on new/disruptive ideas, enable cumulative insights, and promote the value of research committed to theorizing core organizational dynamics.

Join Tom, Ella, Maikel and Frithjof as they examine criticisms of the article, particularly Richard Boettger and Charles Greer’s rejoinder “On the Wisdom of Rewarding A While Hoping for B,” published in Organization Science in 1994.

Why do organizations espouse one thing but do another? This is essentially what Steven Kerr asks in his popular 1975 article in the Academy of Management Journal, “On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B,” on reward systems. Using examples ranging from politics and war to business and public sector settings, Kerr found a common pattern: that the organization’s goals are too often not supported by the things they actually reward and encourage. The context and relationships among actors may differ, but the result is too commonplace to ignore.In Part 1 of this episode, we break down Kerr’s examples (which in some cases were peculiar to 1975) and consider how generalizable they really are. We also address key differences in the 1995 update, published in the Academy of Management Executive.

Conclusion of conversation about C.C. Spauilding. His ideas are also distinctive as they reflect some form of ‘African management’ principles, the most salient being the emphasis on cooperation, echoing the African idea on cooperation (Ubuntu) and doing business also for the good of communities. The latter was important as African-Americans were/are a particularly vulnerable and discriminated minority. Spaulding also evoked a religious or spiritual dimension in his work, and some of his practices mirrored those exercised in African-American churches. Thus, one can attribute to him the practice of workplace spirituality before this concept was adopted in contemporary works. Spaulding’s work also displayed social entrepreneurship, which echoes the work of contemporary researchers like Dr. Nevena Radoynovska on how entrepreneurship can play a vital role in vulnerable populations.Joining us for this episode are two scholars of African-American Management History — Leon Prieto of Clayton State University and Simone Phipps of Middle Georgia State University.

In this episode, we acknowledge the extraordinary contributions of Charles Clinton Spaulding, an important management thought leader who, like many African-Americans prior to the U.S. civil rights movement, has been sadly overlooked in the management canon. From 1923 until 1952, Spaulding served as the President of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the largest company in the U.S. owned exclusively by African-Americans, with over $40 million in assets at the time of his death.Joining us for this episode are two scholars of African-American Management History — Leon Prieto of Clayton State University and Simone Phipps of Middle Georgia State University. Together, they authored a 2016 paper that the Academy of Management called groundbreaking, “Rediscovering Charles Clinton Spaulding’s ‘The Administration of Big Business’: Insight into early 20th Century African-American Management Thought,” and have authored several other papers bringing important attention to Spaulding and other African-American management leaders whose works deserve much wider attention!