Talking About Organizations Podcast

The slightly belated, yet highly anticipated discussion from after the Connections in Action event is here! Join Pedro, Katharina and Brian as they reflect on what they have learned during their time at the workshop/conference. A really fascinating discussion about methodology, fundamental issues to do with actions and practices, and a bit of philosophy!

What a treat! Joining us for this Special Episode from the fascinating 'Connections in Action' workshop at the University of Warwick are Katharina Dittrich and Brian Pentland (aka Doctor Decade)! To our great delight, Doctor Decade provided the live intro music for this episode and even performed one of his songs (Ruts in the Road)!

This is a summary of Episode 20, where we held two discussions broadly grouped under the umbrella title of High Reliability in practice. Broadly focused on the 1993 classic research by Karl Weick and Karlene Roberts which asked how do complex, high risk organizations manage to work safely and reliably, our discussion in Episode 20 featured an appearance by a very special guest! Basically, Weick and Roberts went aboard a US Navy Nimitz class aircraft carrier to collect data and observe how the flight deck crew launches and recovers aircraft. When they came aboard the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, guess who was there to welcome them? Commanding officer Rear Admiral Tom Mercer! Thanks to Ralph we managed to get in touch with Tom and he joined us for part one of the discussion, so definitely listen to that if you haven’t yet.

In Part 2 we delve deeper into the article itself (Weick and Roberts, 1993) in order to understand how a high reliability way of organizing can be implemented, what are the steps, and how rigid the rules and procedures have to be. Join us for a detailed and rich in examples discussion of these very key, yet academically under-explored aspects of organization studies.

Based around a classic work by Weick and Roberts (1993) on Collective mind in organizations - where the authors observed and analyzed the way people on the deck of an aircraft carrier function in a collective manner - this episode brings you a discussion of how concepts of High Reliability (see also Episode 11) flesh out in real life!

Joining us for this episode is a very special guest - Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier on which Weick and Roberts performed their study, Read Admiral (retired) Tom Mercer! Tom is an extraordinary individual and a highly experienced leader, bearing responsibility for a multidisciplinary organization of 6000 people working everything from munitions and aircraft to baking bread and producing television. This is a must listen for a grounded, empirically saturated representation of the theoretical concepts of High Reliability Organization, and general management as such, that we cover on this podcast!

Join Miranda and Ralph as they summarise our discussion of Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning by James March. This is an excellent little segment to introduce new people to the ideas developed in this classic text, as well as to help add structure to our discussion in the main episode. As a bonus, you will also get a special emphasis from Miranda on socialisation, and some useful tips from Ralph on employee learning!

In the second half of our discussion we carry on with the examination of March's model of knowledge exploration and exploitation. Expect more up-close analysis as well as some implications of this way of looking at organizational learning.

For this episode, we read the widely cited article, “Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning,” published in 1991 in the journal Organization Science. In the paper, James March considered the relationships between exploration of new ways of doing things and the exploitation of accepted, standard practices for organizational learning. He did so in order to show that learning in organizations is still possible even in the presence of causal ambiguity. While the paper has been criticized for its very simplistic model of organizational learning and lack of empirical data, a strong point of the paper may be the general insight in provides about collective learning under ambiguous conditions.

What are the trade-offs and challenges associated with balancing exploitation and exploration? What does it mean for organizational learning? Read the paper and listen to your intrepid podcasters, as we grapple with March’s ideas in Episode 19.

Once again joined by the lovely Arianna, we summarize Episode 18 on Gig Economy and Algorithmic Management.

Once again joined by the lovely Arianna, we summarize Episode 18 on Gig Economy and Algorithmic Management.