Source on Privatization of Intelligence

Heard interview with TIM SHORROCK, an author who investigates privatization of intelligence operations by US.


Democracy now interview.

This is a possible future research thread for me. Critics will say privatization doesn't work by its own metrics of effectiveness and cost efficiency. Why does it persist then? How is it institutionally perpetuated? A network image springs to mind- there is a thick and lumpy skin of overlaping contractors around the core funding source of US intelligence. There are network questions. There is the revolving door phenomenon. There are also 1,000s of top secret classification analysts who leave government and then install with private contractors at big premiums.

Note to self: x-post with MGMT339 blpog.

Cute picture of Thea

A ridiculously cute picture of my daughter, Dorothea "Thea."

Tip to her maternal grandfather.

Two paragraphs I like from my draft teaching statement.

I don't know if they will make the final cut. I don't know if the amalgam of moments will work, but since writing about teaching usually sounds like airy cool-whip generalities (all the same and all bland), I hope this is acceptable risk.

“Line up in a circle!” The first year students in my foundation seminar (or the seniors in an Organization Change class) pause, look puzzled, and then shuffle with the studied aloofness of adolesence that they have not quite yet shed into something a misshapen ellipse. A simple game follows. I ask students to describe what they have been doing in one word. “Weird. Fun. Chaotic. Unexpected.” These are typical responses. “How is your learning Weird? Unexpected?” They loosen up. They share a story of how they discovered an unspoken norm in the last place they worked. We shift back to our seats. I praise the day’s discussion leader for her astute questions. I ask them: “You are a new manager at an advertising firm. Is it better to have four links to four clusters of four people, or sixteen to links to everyone?” They discuss both in terms of ideas of centrality, effectiveness, and information redundancy using the day’s readings. I continue: “How could we discover which is better? What kinds of questions would you ask?” We record their responses on the board and post them later on a class forum so that they can use these ideas as they pursue their final research or service-learning projects.



In this amalgam of moments from my classes, I am illustrating the three guiding principles of my teaching. These are: the wisdom of social science, experiential cycles, and building a community of learners. To “line up in a circle,” throws my students off-guard. They pause on the way to complying. In a minute way, the pause throws into relief the ability to take the flow of experience, language, and influence that permeates our normal existence and to hold those moments, large and small, at arm’s length. To be in and out of the moment simultaneously is, for me, one of the delights of knowing the wisdom of the social sciences. I point my students towards the unexpected and with readings, movies, activities, humor, or provocative questions.

Teaching SNA resorsz

David Lazer at the Kennedy Center for Networked Governance has a nice collection of syllabi and course links.

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/netgov/html/sna_courses_events.htm

I'll need to check out what other people are up to.

Networks and Movements

This looks interesting. And it is the kind of work I think I should be doing. I don't know the (vast?) social movement literature real well, but what a chance to explore it. The obstacle I wonder about is how to get data in such a compressed time frame.

Are these topical special issues more for people already for people well-entrenched in their sub-sub area, as opposed to being incentives for hungry young scholars like me to branch out? Or maybe incentives for wiley old scholars (not me) to reinvent themselves?

And to collaborate with someone presupposes I am appealing to collaborate with. How do you become very appealing? Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem.

Cluck, cluck...

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue on Social Movements in Organizations and Markets

The Administrative Science Quarterly is seeking papers for a special issue on Social Movements in Organizations and Markets, guest edited by Gerald Davis, Calvin Morrill, Hayagreeva Rao, and Sarah Soule. Social movements are motors of cultural, technological, and institutional innovation in organizations and markets and have increasingly attracted the attention of organizational researchers. Organizations are both actors in, and sites of, social movement activities; moreover, movements and organizations share common mechanisms of organized action. A special issue provides an opportunity for ASQ to develop better theory about organizations and organizing in the light of contestation and collective action.

The guest editors encourage submissions of theoretical and empirical work on social movements in organizations and markets. We invite contributions that span the interorganizational, organizational, and the person level. The call for papers, and some prospective topics, can be viewed at:
http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/

The last date for submissions is May 1, 2007. Manuscripts in ASQ format can be submitted to Asq-submit@johnson.cornell.edu, with the subject-line heading "Social Movements Special Issue." See the Notice to Contributors on the ASQ Web page (http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/) for information on preparing manuscripts.

The last date for submissions is May 1, 2007. Manuscripts in ASQ format can be submitted to Asq-submit@johnson.cornell.edu, with the subject-line heading "Social Movements Special Issue." See the Notice to Contributors on the ASQ Web page (http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/) for information on preparing manuscripts.

Variety of opinions on letters

I am applying for a tenure track job at Bucknell. I need three letters fo reference. I have been canvassing folks to find out if my third pletter is better to be from someone who is topically simialr (organizations) but in a different field (Socioloy) and who can say more about me than a necessarily more shallow letter from someone at another univeristy who is more clearly a network/management scholar.

So far, the opinions range widely from the first option is good tpop the first option is a mistake.

Anyone want to weigh in?

Teaching OT… impossible?

So a colleague tells me that no one knows how to teach Organization Theory [OT]. He tells me about seeing a presentation by an author of an OT textbook in which the author claims that she/he won’t teach OT anymore.

GRRRRRRREEEEEEEATTTT….

This is one of the classes I am teaching next semester.

Before I read his message, I had just spent two hours in vain trying to find reviews of Mary Jo Hatch’s Organization Theory; Modern, Symbolic, and Post-Modern Perspectives and Gareth Jones’ Organization Theory, Design ,and Change. No luck.

Three ideas I am kicking around now include
1) Groups of students will select a rich, ethnographic or narrative book-length account of a particular organization. I looked for works with lots of detail and engaging stories and little analysis. This way they can deeply engage with this story, almost treat it as a source of qualitative data, and test drive some OT perspectives.
2) Use cases and case preparation to foster in-class discussion.
3) Maintain a “scrapbook” of organizational theory ideas and links based on news and current events. I was initially imagining an actual scrapbook, but am toying with the idea of a blog. Students could be required to post regularly and comment on each other’s.

More later…