Talking About Organizations Podcast

In Part 2 of our episode on Prasad, we shift our attention to his 2003 book chapter titled “The gaze of the other: Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis” that synthesizes the foundational works of postcolonial theory and tie it to cross-cultural challenges faced by contemporary organizations. We also discuss the implications of the theory in the two decades that followed given the significant global changes that have occurred. How well does the theory hold up given that some of its premises might have shifted?

Anshuman Prasad (1954-2023) was a leading scholar and development of postcolonial theory and bringing it to the domain of management and organization studies. The theory strove to explain the significance influences and impacts that Western colonialism had on non-Western cultures and its implications for organizations located in non-Western settings. We are reading two of his many works, one about the specific use of science as a tool of colonialism and the other is a book chapter that summarizes the works of the early postcolonial theorists.

Coming soon! We will cover the works of Anshuman Prasad and his development of postcolonial theory and its use in organizational analysis. By examining the origins and spread of Western thought through the colonial period, he explains how much of the Western philosophies and epistemologies remain dominant and the cross-cultural challenges that this presents.

This is Part 2 on our discussion of Fligstein’s 1996 article, “Markets as politics: A political-cultural approach to market institutions." Here we work our way through the 16 propositions” (or provocations as we would refer to them)and test them out from a contemporary view. Do they make sense in retrospect? Do they continue to lend themselves toward a useful research agenda? What alternative or additional propositions might we come up with?

Fligstein’s 1996 article, “Markets as politics: A political-cultural approach to market institutions,” was an important contribution to the field of economic sociology, countering the dominant neoclassical view of economics that failed to explain market behaviors in practice. He argued for an alternative paradigm – a “political-cultural” model that suggested that the formation of markets was part of “state building” and subjected to various social institutions that belonged to the state such as property rights and rules of exchange. A very provocative piece that bridges institution theory with theories of social action.

We will cover the economic sociology of Neil Fligstein, who countered the dominant 1990s-era neoclassical view of economics that failed to explain well various market behaviors being observed at the time. He argued for an alternative paradigm – a “political-cultural” model that suggested that the formation of markets was part of “state building” and subjected to various social institutions that belonged to the state.

We are launching the TAOP Resource Center! The Resource Center is a repository for entry-level scholars to learn more about “what’s out there.” What are the major fields of scholarship, tools of the trade, and phenomena of interest to researchers and practitioners alike. This release is an introduction to the structure of the Center and how to navigate it. We also invite contributions!

The Talking About Organizations Podcast website is more than just a host for great conversations. It is also a resource for rising scholars of organization theory and management science. And so, to launch our 10th year of podcasting and with 120+ episodes covering so many great classics of organization studies, we decided the website and the program needed a boost. Part 1 is a conversation about professional knowledge in which we explain some of the challenges that organizations face in maintain their corporate base of knowledge and expertise

In Part 2 on Zbaracki’s “The rhetoric and reality of Total Quality Management,” we look at contemporary examples of rhetoric-reality gaps. Not being confined to “business fads,” there are many other cases where threatened legitimacy of an organization can lead it to acting defensively and avoid public acknowledgement of significant problems. What can or should managers do to avoid getting caught in a “lie” (or a really robust “fish story”)?

This month we explore a renowned multiple-case study commonly assigned as foundational readings in organization studies programs. Mark Zbaracki’s “The rhetoric and reality of Total Quality Management” chronicled the development and introduction of Total Quality Management (TQM) into the corporate environment, only to find that in many cases its implementation did not align with the promises made by leaders about process improvements nor did firms fully exercise all the practices and activities that TQM required. The question that Zbaracki posed was more than to what extent did this rhetoric-reality unfold, but why?

Coming soon! You might not have heard of Total Quality Management (TQM) but you no doubt have encountered pre-packaged performance improvement programs like it. What happens when the promises and rhetoric surrounding such a program exceed the realities of its implementation? Such is the subject of Mark Zbaracki’s “The rhetoric and reality of Total Quality Management” that explored its implementation in several different sites, finding that oftentimes the pressures to maintain organizational legitimacy overtake all other considerations.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.