Talking About Organizations Podcast

We conclude our discussion of the War of the Currents using an article from Cole and Chandler on competitive impression management as it applied during the famous War of the Currents between Edison and Westinghouse. The article's aim was to uncover the strategies used between the competitors and build a framework that extended the literature on impression management to better account for situations involving direct competition between two (or more) actors.

We continue or discussion of the War of the Currents using an article from Tushman and Anderson on the impacts of technological breakthroughs and how they increase uncertainty and complexity in organizational environments. through the study of three industries – minicomputer, cement, and airlines. We then contrast their findings to the uniquely circumstances behind the unfolding of the War of the Currents between Edison and Westinghouse.

This is Part 1 of our latest "movie" episode. The film we watched is from 2017 The Current War, directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, and distribution by 101 Studios. It dramatized the so-named War of the Currents that was a real competition between two important industrial figures – Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse – over which type of power would become the dominant standard for distributing electricity across the United States.

Coming soon! We will explore the famous War of the Currents as part of our occasional "movie" episode, this time the 2017 film "The Current War" that dramatized the dispute between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over which form of electrical current -- AC or DC -- would become the de facto standard across the USA and subsequently the world.

In Part 2, we further contrast the relational work perspective of Zelizer and Bandelj with the dominant embeddedness perspective promoted by Granovetter and other early economic sociologists a few decades ago. The embeddedness perspective remains “embedded” in the field despite the relational work perspective providing more robust and interesting scholarly research. Are we seeing the emergence of a new paradigm shift as described in our episode on Thomas Kuhn’s scientific revolutions?

This month we examine three pieces from the relational work perspective in economic sociology, one by Viviana Zelizer and two by her former student Nina Bandelj. The relational work perspective examines how ordinary economic transactions and social relationships work together to establish meaning behind each movement of money. Initially describing decisions in household budgets and other microeconomic moves, this perspective is now finding traction in the study of whole organizations and its programming and budgeting actions.

Coming soon! We will examine a contemporary stream in economic sociology, the relational work perspective, championed by Viviana Zelizer and furthered by some of her students such as Nina Bandelj and others. How does this perspective compare with the more economics-driven models of before, and why is the relational work perspective gaining traction? Tune in and find out.

In Part 2, we bring Max Weber’s speech about Science as a Vocation to the present day and show that many of the same themes and concerns Weber express are still relevant. Modern technologies such as artificial intelligence may have changed academia in compelling ways, but the worthiness of scientific pursuit remains a valid concern.

We return once more to Max Weber and look at one of his most important and noteworthy speeches, “Science as a Vocation.” The speech includes a number of major themes such as what is the worth of science, what are the roles of junior academics as they establish themselves as scientists, and what constitutes proper teaching. Controversial in its day, but required reading for many graduate programs today.

Coming soon! We return once more to Max Weber and look at one of his most important and noteworthy speeches, “Science as a Vocation,” delivered in 1918 at Munich University. This speech may be seen as a text assigned to rising graduate students in many fields, owing to its exhortations to go beyond researching and writing about important knowledge and consider the ethical and moral implications of that research.

This is an expanded version of the supplement from the original Episode 6 on Max Weber's Bureaucracy. This release includes both the original supplement from Dmitrijs along with an extended commentary from Tom to cover contemporary views on bureaucracy since the original episode's January 2016 release.

In this release, we take a retrospective look at Weber's famous work and our original episode. How has our views about bureaucracy changed over the past decade (2016-when the original Weber episode was released) or century (1918-when the speech was delivered).

This is an edited re-release of our Episode 6, Part 2 on Max Weber's bureaucracy, originally from January 2016. Next week, we will provide an additional discussion where we bring Weber's ideas to contemporary times.

We are revisiting an older episode, our Episode 6 on Weber’s bureaucracy. The original episode explored the work objectively, trying to understand how Weber was encouraging the use of rational rules and hierarchical systems to foster greater stability in society rather than efficiency. But it never seemed to happen as bureaucracies became a dominant organizational form. By re-reading Weber through the lens of institutional logics, we hope to better understand why this is the case. This week, we release an edited version of Part 1 of the original episode.

Coming soon! We will re-examine one of our earlier episodes which deserves another look. Weber’s chapter on the meaning of bureaucracy (Episode 6) remains one of the most popular episodes on the program, but given how bureaucracy has become so dimly viewed, we wanted to give it another look with fresh eyes. Is there something we missed as bureaucracies formed?

In Part 2 of our episode on Gieryn’s 1983 article “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from non-Science,” we review the main points in the context of contemporary tensions over society’s growing distrust of scientists and rejection of science. What factors may be contributing to this trend after so many decades where scientists have been considered noble individual or science considered an inherently good thing? What might be necessary to stem or reverse such trends?

We continue our series of discussions on the sociology of science and cover a seminal article that is commonly found as required reading in doctoral programs -- Thomas Gieryn’s 1983 article “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from non-Science” from the American Sociological Review. This commentary draws from three different historical case studies to explore where the boundary is between what is or should be considered science or the autonomy granted to scientists and what is considered other forms of intellectual pursuit. In Part 1, we explore the cases that involve competition between the world of science and those of religion and engineering, of true science vs. pseudo-science, and of scientific openness and collaboration vs. national security and commensurate need for secrecy.

Coming soon! Our next episode features a 1983 article from Thomas Gieryn that discusses how the “boundary work” of scientists and others science contributes to a broader understanding of where science is separated from non-science or pseudo-science and scientists navigate the gap between their individual autonomy and the constraints placed on them by others such as government leaders. Through historical cases, Gieryn explores the contested spaces surrounding science and why the boundary will likely never be clear.

In Part 2 of our episode on Charles Perrow’s book Normal Accidents, we carry the framework forward into the 21st century to consider newer technological systems (especially in information technology) and the Y2K problem that was looming when the updated edition of the book was published in 1999. Is there any hope for mitigating the potential for new forms of high-risk accidents, or are we just stuck with having to deal with the occasional mass disaster?

This month we are discussing Charles Perrow’s book Normal Accidents that addresses the risks associated with complex, tightly coupled high-risk technological systems. Through analyses of numerous accidents and incidents involving nuclear power plants, petrochemical plants, aerospace and maritime systems, and others, Perrow derived a framework that showed how high-risk systems are prone to accidents if they are highly complex and the components are tightly coupled. He also argued that efforts to improve safety such as more meters and indicators can have the opposite effect of complicating the operator’s ability to control a catastrophic situation.