Talking About Organizations Podcast

Talking About Organizations
  • 4.6 (13)
  • MANAGEMENT
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Talking About Organizations Podcast

Talking About Organizations is a conversational podcast where we talk about one book, journal article or idea per episode and try to understand it, its purpose and its impact. By joining us as we collectively tackle classic readings on organization theory, management science, organizational behavior, industrial psychology, organizational learning, culture, climate, leadership, public administration, and so many more! Subscribe to our feed and begin Talking About Organizations as we take on great management thinkers of past and present!

  1. 120: Institutional Isomorphism -- DiMaggio & Powell (Part 2)

    12/11/2024

    120: Institutional Isomorphism -- DiMaggio & Powell (Part 2)

    In Part 2 on DiMaggio & Powell’s “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizations,” we revisit the revisitation. 40 years following the article finds the world in the midst of the information age, while the article was still written in industrial times. Do the ideas still hold up, and might we consider isomorphism as more or less prevalent?

    47 min
  2. 120: Institutional Isomorphism -- DiMaggio & Powell (Part 1)

    12/03/2024

    120: Institutional Isomorphism -- DiMaggio & Powell (Part 1)

    In this episode, we discuss “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizations,” a ground breaking article by sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell in 1983. The authors argued that the traditional views of why organizations tended to assimilate one another was not explained by the pursuit of rationality or efficiency. Rather, they did so in response to many other stimuli such as regulatory pressures, professional norms, and the need to reduce uncertainty. But why “the iron cage revisited”? The article was inspired by Weber’s use of the metaphor to describe how bureaucratization was destined to enslave humanity. That it did not (at least not to the extent anticipated) spurred the question of why else do organizations model themselves after others in their fields.

    47 min

  3. TRAILER

    120: Institutional Isomorphism -- DiMaggio & Powell (Summary of Episode)

    Coming soon! We will tackle “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizations,” a ground breaking article by sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell in 1983. They argued that the traditional views of why organizations tended to assimilate one another was not explained by the pursuit of rationality or efficiency. Rather, they did so in response to many other stimuli such as regulatory pressures, professional norms, and the need to reduce uncertainty.

    4 min
  4. 119: Management & the Worker -- Roethlisberger & Dickson (Part 2)

    11/19/2024

    119: Management & the Worker -- Roethlisberger & Dickson (Part 2)

    The episode on Roethlisberger and Dickson concludes with a discussion of the contemporary meanings and importance of the Hawthorne studies. The authors concluded the book with the idea that executives should establish dedicated positions of leadership for mastering the human dimension of work in their firms and become experts in solving human problems so to maintain morale and optimize productivity. But was this heeded? Is it time to revisit this finding?

    34 min
  5. 119: Management & the Worker -- Roethlisberger & Dickson (Part 1)

    11/12/2024

    119: Management & the Worker -- Roethlisberger & Dickson (Part 1)

    We return for another look at the Hawthorne Studies through Fritz Roethlisberger and William Dickson’s 1939 book Management and the Worker. The work chronicles five years of experiments that initially sought the optimal conditions for increased worker performance but evolved into an examination of the social controls that worker exercise over themselves for self-preservation against managerial decisions. It also includes an introspective look into the researchers themselves as they had to design new experiments to make sense of the surprising and contradictory findings. The book is incredibly detailed and laid the foundation for the development of the Human Relations tradition in organization studies.

    44 min

  6. TRAILER

    119: Management & the Worker -- Roethlisberger & Dickson (Summary of Episode)

    We return for another look at the Hawthorne Studies through Fritz Roethlisberger and William Dickson’s 1939 book Management and the Worker. The work chronicles five years of experiments that initially sought the optimal conditions for increased worker performance but evolved into an examination of the social controls that worker exercise over themselves for self-preservation against managerial decisions. It also includes an introspective look into the researchers themselves as they had to design new experiments to make sense of the surprising and contradictory findings. The book is incredibly detailed and laid the foundation for the development of the Human Relations tradition in organization studies.

    5 min
  7. 118: Organizational Structures & Digital Technologies -- AoM 2024 Symposium (Part 2)

    10/22/2024

    118: Organizational Structures & Digital Technologies -- AoM 2024 Symposium (Part 2)

    This is the second half of our presentation of a symposium titled “Design Choices: Examining the Interplay of Organizational Structure and Digital Technologies” from the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. Here we will present an edited version of the question and answer session.

    33 min
  8. 118: Organizational Structures & Digital Technologies – AoM 2024 Symposium (Part 1)

    10/15/2024

    118: Organizational Structures & Digital Technologies – AoM 2024 Symposium (Part 1)

    This month we present a recording of a symposium titled “Design Choices: Examining the Interplay of Organizational Structure and Digital Technologies” from the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. Digital technologies now underpin the very fabric of the workplace; how tasks are assigned, bundled, and monitored partially hinges on the design of such technologies. Four panelists discuss various perspectives on the matter including design thinking, disparities of structures and norms that the same technologies generate among different nations, and the need to formally differentiate design research from design practice.

    50 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Talking About Organizations is a conversational podcast where we talk about one book, journal article or idea per episode and try to understand it, its purpose and its impact. By joining us as we collectively tackle classic readings on organization theory, management science, organizational behavior, industrial psychology, organizational learning, culture, climate, leadership, public administration, and so many more! Subscribe to our feed and begin Talking About Organizations as we take on great management thinkers of past and present!

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