Must See TV: Interview with Jim March on 50th Anniversary of the Behavioral Theory of the Firm

Must of us would consider Jim March the godfather of organization theory, or at least I would. His work has been influencing generations of scholars for more than half a century now, and he’s still very much alive and kickin’.

The AoM honors Jim’s work in a symposium next week down in Orlando. For those folks who can’t or won’t go down to Florida, do yourself a favor and take 37 minutes out of your busy schedule and watch this interview with Jim on the 50th anniversary of the behavioral theory of the firm.

Of course, Jim is very casual on most matters, but I’m still glad to hear his blessings that there is still major work to be done in at least three domains of organization theory. That is to say, if you’re working out answers to questions of

• adaptation,
• preferences, or
• rules,

then there is a good chance you’ll have a job tomorrow.

EGOS Standing Working Group “Organization as Communication” approved by EGOS Board

We are very happy to share with you the good news that our proposal of establishing a Standing Working Group on “Organization as Communication” at the European Group of Organizational Studies (EGOS) has been approved recently by the EGOS Board! Many thanks also to those of you who have supported our proposal with your endorsements. The proposal has been prepared and submitted by Francois Cooren (U de Montréal), Tim Kuhn (U of Colorado at Boulder), Dennis Schoeneborn (U of Zurich & Copenhagen Business School), and Consuelo Vasquez (UQAM). The Standing Working Group will feature at minimum four EGOS sub-themes in a row (i.e. in the years 2015-2018) that each will address (in one way or another) the constitutive relation between organization and communication. The Standing Working Group will have its first run at the EGOS 2015 Colloquium in Tallinn (Estonia). We are very much looking forward to your submissions (the CfP will follow in summer 2014, prospectively)!

Paper from EGOS 2012 CCO sub-theme honored with EGOS Best Paper Award

As you may recall, the European Group of Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium 2012 in Helsinki (Finland) featured a CCO-related sub-theme on “Organizations as Phenomena of Language Use: Interconnecting Discourse and Communication“, hosted by Joep Cornelissen (VU Amsterdam), Tim Kuhn (U of Colorado at Boulder), and Dennis Schoeneborn (U of Zurich). Back then, we nominated the paper “Dirty oil, snake oil: Categorical illegitimacy of Alberta´s oil sands” by Lianne Lefsrud (U of Alberta), Heather Graves (U of Alberta), and Nelson Phillips (Imperial College London) for the EGOS Best Paper Award. The paper fruitfully combined institutional theory with an organizatuonal discourse/communication perspective and featured an exciting case study in the context of Canadian oil sands. As we were very glad to learn these days, the EGOS award committee has chosen the paper by Lianne and her colleagues as the best paper of the entire EGOS 2012 Colloquium! The award was handed over at this year’s EGOS Award Ceremony in Montréal (Canada). So all our best congratulations again from our side to Lianne, Heather, and Nelson! And at the 2014 award ceremony in Rotterdam (Netherlands), we of course hope to be able to defend our title with a CCO-based paper (i.e. from this year’s CCO sub-theme)! 🙂

PS: Please also check out Lianne’s TED talk about this research project: