Talking About Organizations Podcast

Explore the virtues of centralization vs. de-centralization in organizations. Examine the evolving definition of efficiency as an organizational goal. Learn about the efficiency movement during industrialization and its impact on companies. Understand the concept of overhead costs and challenges of measuring their benefits. Delve into the concept of allocative efficiency and the tensions it brings. Discover the hidden costs of pursuing efficiency and the impact of the BYOD policy.

The hosts discuss the centralization-decentralization debate and their own perspectives. They explore the synthesis between centralization and decentralization in organizations. They examine the evolution of national identity in the United States and compare it to Europe. They also discuss the challenges of centralization and technology's impact on conformity and diversity. Lastly, they explore the challenges of reconciling worker autonomy with centralized views and the role of technology in shaping work.

The debate continues with question N2: "Why do organizations oscillate between centralization and decentralization, and is there a golden mean?". Join in as we shift the context to more contemporary matters. What are the benefits and risks of centralizing or de-centralizing organizations in modern times?

How exciting! The podcasters engaging in debate over whether centralizing is better or should organizations de-centralize? Learn about how this tension shaped the early days of the United States while Ralph and Pedro face off against Dmitrijs and Tom! A special Thank You also goes out to Todd Bridgman and Stephen Cummings who set the tone and questions for this very first TAOP debate!

Episode 42 concludes as the podcasters discuss unlearning, present their takeaways and budding research questions based on Levitt & March's review of "Organizational Learning," our fifth episode in the Carnegie-Mellon series. What would it take for organizations to learn 'better'? How might we find out? Where does collective intelligence come in?Also see: Episode 4 on Organizational Routines, Episode 19 on Organizational Learning, Episode 29 on Business School Design, Episode 39 on Organizational Choice, and our Series Introduction.

Episode 42 continues as we debate the gaps and lingering questions in Levitt & March's review of "Organizational Learning," our fifth episode in the Carnegie-Mellon series. What did we think about the author's views on organizational memory? What about the levels of analysis used in the text? Find out our take on these and other questions.

Please join us for the fifth episode in our Carnegie-Mellon School series as we discuss Barbara Levitt and James G. March’s brilliant literature review of “Organizational Learning,” published in the Annual Review of Sociology in 1988. This work surveyed the literature across various streams in organizational learning up through the 1980s. Topics include learning from experience, organizational memory, ecologies of learning, and organizational intelligence. Of particular interest is how organizational learning was defined as not an outcome but a process of translating the cumulative experiences of individuals and codifying them as routines within the organization. But an important question remains three decades later – do organizations really learn? Tune in as we wrestle with this question, and with many others!

Near the end of Episode 41, we discussed the themes of member commitment to the organization and an organization’s commitment to its individual members. This arose in the context of our continuing discussions of the gig economy and its impact on our understandings of organization. The ‘gig economy’ was the subject of several previous episodes (such as Episode 18 on algorithmic management and Episode 36 on human capital) and was the primary focus of our first symposium, presented in three parts as Episode 40 including a keynote address and panels on defining and researching the gig economy and related phenomena. Without revisiting those discussions, suffice to say that our dialogue raised lots of questions and concerns about the gig economy.

Our discussion of Gareth Morgan's classic 'Images of Organization' concludes as we discuss the modern-day implications of these metaphors. How can we use metaphor to better understand the interactions of organizations in the environment, and of organization and member commitment to each other? We also discuss possible areas of future research.

Our discussion of Gareth Morgan's Images of Organization continues as we explore the individual metaphors and compare them. What makes some metaphors better understood than others? How do they describe the positive and negative aspects of organizing?