Talking About Organizations Podcast

Don't miss this conversation that Dmitrijs and Ella had with Professors Hari Tsoukas and Ann Langley at the wonderful PROS 2017 Conference! In the second special from this symposium, we talk about process view in general and PROS, as an academic congregation, in particular. At the end of the episode, Hari and Ann say a few words about the next conference, its theme and the motivation behind it.

Please join us for the first of two fascinating special episodes recorded from the International Process Symposium 2017. In the first instalment, Dmitrijs and Ella sit down to talk to Professors Trish Reay (University of Alberta) and Tammar Zilber (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) about institutional theory.

Please join us for the final instalment of Episode 30 and Season 3 where we discuss the relationship between George Orwell's classic 1984 and Corporate Culturalism as discussed by Hugh Willmott and Peter Fleming in their JMS Classics. Specifically, we talk about such things as newspeak and technology, as well as the inherent paradox of independence/autonomy critiqued in the articles!

Please join us for this (much delayed) conversation about Hugh Willmott's extraordinarily interesting critique of corporate culturalism - a movement within management thought that sees organizational culture and normative control as the primary means of organizing a workforce! In the first part of the episode we work on developing a common footing and a deeper understanding of what corporate culturalism is, as well as provide some examples (like Uber) and offer reflections on how this concept plays out in 'real life'.

oin Tom for a summary of our conversation with the wonderful Denise Rousseau about Herbert Simon's JMS Classic on Business Schools! Make sure to listen to this one if you don't have the time to get through the main episode just yet as the discussion about management education and the many underlying factors that we have had with Denise is really key!

In this part of the conversation with the wonderful Denise Rousseau we plunge into the deep end of what business schools are for, what are the moral foundations for management education, the role and value of authority, and the dichotomy between individual vs environmental interpretation of a person. We also discuss the relationship of business schools with actual businesses and talk about coaching and development. All in all, a fascinating episode full of reflections about management as a profession!

Please join us for this very interesting conversation with the fascinating Denise Rousseau about Herbert Simon's JMS Classic - The Business School: A Problem in Organizational Design (1967). In this episode we touch upon the now pervasive issues of managerial education, the value of teaching administration, as well as the origins of how management became an institutionalized profession.Also, get to know Herbert Simon from anecdotes recounted by Denise, and hear what she has to say on these, and many other topics!

Join us for a brief summary of Episode 28, where we were joined by Mats Alvesson to discuss his JMS Classic "Organizations as Rhetoric". This is a synopsis of the conversation, covering a number of aspects related to epistemology, types and purpose of rhetoric, and adjacent concepts such as organizational memory and functional (as well as generic) stupidity.

In this concluding part of Episode 28 we further delve into the relationship between rhetoric and knowledge, touching upon such aspects of it as collective memory, the roles people play, fads and fashions, as well as functional stupidity.

For our sixth Journal of Management Studies Classic episode we discussed a set of articles by Professor Mats Alvesson on Organizations as Rhetoric. Focusing on the original work published in 1993, we were very pleased to welcome Mats himself as a guest on this episode!In this paper, Mats made a series of critical claims to highlight ‘the politics and rhetoric of professions’, as opposed to an ‘essentialist’ view of organizations (Alvesson, 1993: 999). Central to his observations is a notion that although organizational knowledge is seen as key to to organizational performance, there is little grounding or relationship to external reality of such knowledge. So, if you're interested in critical management, epistemology or anything to do with identity construction, we highly recommend that you listen to what Mats has to say on these topics!