The Conversational Firm: Rethinking Bureaucracy in the Age of Social Media

The Middle Range Series

by Catherine J. Turco

A fast-growing social media marketing company, TechCo encourages all of its employees to speak up. By promoting open dialogue across the corporate hierarchy, the firm has fostered a uniquely engaged workforce and an enviable capacity for change. Yet the path hasn't always been easy. TechCo has confronted a number of challenges, and its experience reveals the essential elements of bureaucracy that remain even when a firm sets out to discard them. Through it all, TechCo serves as a powerful new model for how firms can navigate today's rapidly changing technological and cultural climate.

Catherine J. Turco was embedded within TechCo for ten months. The Conversational Firm is her ethnographic analysis of what worked at the company and what didn't. She offers multiple lessons for anyone curious about the effect of social media on the corporate environment and adds depth to debates over the new generation of employees reared on social Millennials who carry their technological habits and expectations into the workplace.

Marshaling insights from cultural and economic sociology, organizational theory, economics, technology studies, and anthropology, The Conversational Firm offers a nuanced analysis of corporate communication, control, and culture in the social media age.

Genres: Sociology, Business, Ethnography, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

Published September 6, 2016

About the author

Catherine J. Turco is currently working as the Theodore T. Miller Career Development Professor and Associate Professor of Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Reviews

[Tressie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine book. Turco addresses an emerging interest in organizational theory literature: what is the bureaucratic firm in the age of social media? Turco was embedded in a social media company in silicon valley. It's fairly easy to figure out which one. She observes how "openness" is transforming some, but not all, hierarchical rules of the industrial era firm. It's an easy read. Some of the conclusions are overstated given the evidence. But, as any good such academic book should do, it leaves more questions for further research (assuming you know someone who can get you unprecedented access to a SV firm to do research).

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having lived through Web 1.0 and 2.0 at various start-ups and “growth phases”, I found this to be a great read and snapshot of a moment in time…Would love for Turco to go back and revisit TechCo to see what and how things have evolved. The most interesting part to me was the conflation of voice rights with decision rights (and how common it is to have leadership avoid making decisions.) Also the sheer amount of noise generated by the loudest voices (or most prolific wiki-commenters.) Turco calls out all sorts of interesting dynamics at play in a so-called “open” or minimum viable bureaucratic culture.

[ina · Rating 3 out of 5]

never talk to me about bureaucracy again

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is an amazing ethnography of a technology firm that focuses on marketing . . . whose leadership chose not to define rules but to inculcate a culture based on conversation. I'm going to have to expand this review, but for now I'll just say . . . if you work in 2017, this is a must read: It provides many qualitative insights but the groundwork is empirical.

Review here: http://7fff.com/2017/07/turco-the-con...

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ethnographer embeds herself within a social media marketing company where the median employee age is seemingly under 30. She documents both online and IRL communication, management (and lack of management), and the use of physical space. A academic-leaning complement to Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley memoir, which documents an employee’s perspective in these idiosyncratic organizations.

PS - Turco’s methodological appendix is excellent and shouldn’t be skipped.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clearly written, careful, thoughtful, and useful ethnography of a modern day social media marketing firm. A must read for anyone embarking on institutional ethnography.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confronts what adopting ‘openness’ means in practice. Not doing away with bureaucracy completely, but giving voice rights to all employees.

[Jlnelso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful written; makes me excited to be a student of organizations and write my own research.

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far too many companies do not communicate efficiently or effectively internally. Often the communications chain, should it exist, is just one-way, going down the hierarchy rather than also up and across it. Some companies, however, have understood the need of having a genuine open dialogue within. This yields benefits and even can extend to their external operations.

So this book takes a look at the power and benefit of communications. It is built around what happened at a certain company, offering a warts and all look at some of things that worked and perhaps more importantly what didn’t work and why it failed. In many ways not communicating will not be an option going forward; the younger generations are increasingly used to sharing and having access to information in the format they want when they want it. The author mixes, interprets and evaluates this through a host of different lenses including economics, anthropology, organizational theory and sociology. It all contributed to an interesting and engaging read, something that was a lot better than one had expected.

Rejecting a communications-restricted, hierarchal approach and opting to get chatty is not an overnight process. Neither is it something that can be determined by decree or lip service. The change needs to be authentic, enthusiastically applied and made a credible part of the company’s operations. The rewards may take a time to come through and not everything can be enumerated, yet in the long-haul it will beneficial. You can view it another way too: it won’t hurt by doing it!

The book demands a certain disciplined reading mind to get the most out of it; yet this is no specific criticism. For many it won’t be a light read, yet it contains a powerful mass of information that is deserving of the reader’s undivided attention. Focus on the book, think about your company and then be prepared to get communicating.

Autamme.com

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having great conversation and transparency in your workplace may seem unusual for many people. For one, there is a danger that being so transparent may run the risk of damaging a company one way or another.

This book tells the story of a real organization whose identity is hidden (so much for being transparent) on how they espoused the value of open communication in the workplace. The author vividly shows the pros and cons of the set up and how people in such organization deal with this unusual organizational model.

This was a nice read in getting another perspective on corporate communication.

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's what happens when you restructure a company--opening up communication rights, while maintaining decision rights

[Mills College Library]

302.35 T933 2016