Podcasts About Organizations

A brief introduction to Xenophon's Oeconomicus - quite possibly the first text on management and administrative theory out there! Join Maik Arnold as he talks about this text, about how it brings together household management, economy, agriculture, religion, politics, and education, and about why he considers it to be a masterpiece.

Original post available here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/12512458/episode-10

Competitive advantage is one of those terms that I have puzzled over. It is used so often that I know people believe it means something, but it is rarely defined in practice. Scholars have attempted to derive formulas for it, but do those formulas mean anything or do they just tell us in scientific language what we already knew? In other words, is it just a MacGuffin–a prize or goal that drives a narrative forward but isn’t actually anything at all?

On the other hand, if the term is meaningful, then how can one use ‘competitive advantage’ as a construct to make convincing arguments about the need for change? Several have tried, but those efforts have not always borne fruit.

Original release can be found here: https://reflections.talkingaboutorganizations.com/s01-e03/

The number of business start-ups in Germany – measured in terms of business registrations, and thus also the number of entrepreneurs – has fallen steadily in absolute terms over the last decade. But the picture is completely different in the social and health care sector, where social enterprise start-ups are booming. In this episode, I will dig a little bit into this, especially into the question of how important entrepreneurial skill are for social work and health care sector. First, we will look at statistics and the development of business start-ups in Germany in general. After I am going to describe the situation for social enterprises. Last, but not least, I will dwell on the question of what can be done with this knowledge?

Original release can be found here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/12512458/maikarnold-episode-7

Learn about the challenges of studying work ethnographically with Gretta Corporaal (University of Oxford). Gretta has researched cross-boundary collaboration and, more recently, how some of the world’s largest corporations adopt online platforms to hire and manage specialists and the work involved in designing these platforms.

During the conversation with Ruthanne and Pedro, Gretta reflected on some tactics to study work which today is increasingly happening online and geographically distributed, and the importance of in-depth qualitative research on digital technologies and AI in and around organizations to offer more nuanced views on the changing nature of work in the digital gig economy.

Original release can be found here: https://www.ethnographyatelier.org/gretta-corporaal-podcast

Many of us have worked around (occasionally for) leaders who fall from grace, either due to personal misconduct, embarrassing the organization, or something else above and beyond mere poor performance. The leader becomes a pariah. Sometimes that fallen leader did things that made a lasting positive difference in the organization, and the accomplishments may be worth retaining and retelling. Unfortunately, because of the leader’s sullied reputation, the accomplishments may be discounted or ignored. It is as though nothing the leader did is valued, despite the possibility that the leader’s errors were unrelated to the accomplishment. And thus, by ignoring the positive story, no one benefits.

Have you experienced this? I have, more than once. And in some cases I had to wait several years until memories of the leader sufficient faded away, before I could tell the good news stories and use them to others’ benefits. Frustrating? Yes. Unfortunate or unnecessary? You be the judge after listening to this episode.

Original release can be found here: https://reflections.talkingaboutorganizations.com/4-3-when-a-leader-falls-from-grace-should-that-negate-their-positive-contributions/

To continue with the theme of ethnography, we turn back to Episode 13 of the Talking About Organizations Podcast on Donald Roy's 1959 work entitled 'Banana Time: Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction'.

This article describes Roy’s experience of working as a drill press operator for two months. Set against the backdrop of Taylor-inspired Scientific Management, the paper provides a thick description of the setting, the tools of work and, most importantly, behaviour and dynamics of the group of workers whom Roy was assigned to work with. The thick descriptions of work and social interactions touch upon a great number of themes and foundational concepts in management, psychology and sociology. For instance, Roy alludes to, directly or indirectly (usually the latter), Scientific Management, esprit de corps, Hawthorne Studies, motivation and self-actualization, time and motion studies, humour, play, and lived experience of time.

Original release can be found here: https://www.talkingaboutorganizations.com/e13/

In this episode, Professor Susan Silbey from M.I.T talks about a team approach to ethnography. Ethnography is a qualitative approach originated in anthropology that is widely used today in many academic areas and also applied research. It is heavily grounded in the study of naturally occurring phenomena, usually via observation. The goal is to understand and describe social processes from the perspective of the people studied by being immersed in their reality. While traditionally associated with a single researcher, many benefits may come from a team approach.

In conversation with Ruthanne and Pedro, Susan elaborates on the benefits of a team approach to ethnography, the reasons which lead her to adopt it in a multi-year study of the implementation of safety regulations in scientific labs, and the lessons she learned from this experience.

Original release can be found here: https://www.ethnographyatelier.org/susan-silbey-podcast

Learn about the life and scholarship of Prof. Marc-David Seidel (The University of British Columbia), including his interest in stand-up comedy, how his start-up may have been a unicorn, and questions about technology that he is researching and thinking about.

Original release can be found here: http://omtweb.org/omtpodcast

Episode 16 of the Talking About Organizations Podcast about the classic article “Differentiation and Integration in Complex Organizations”, published by Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1967. In this classic work, Lawrence and Lorsch investigate the relation between organizational characteristics and their environment, and stipulate that an organization’s economic performance is determined by its ability to meet integration and differentiation requirements according to their environment.

Original release can be found here: https://www.talkingaboutorganizations.com/e16/

An introductory note about what this podcast is and what to expect and not expect from it.