The Making of Organizational Researchers. Commentary on Daniel Beunza’s <em>Taking the Floor</em>

Katherine K. Chen

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/14740

Authors

Katherine K. Chen The City College of New York and Graduate Center, CUNY https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1826-5501

Katherine K. Chen is a Professor of Sociology at The City College of New York (CCNY) and Graduate Center, CUNY. As an organizational ethnographer who studies how prefigurative and voluntary organizations create communities, her publications include the award-winning Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization Behind the Burning Man Event (University of Chicago Press, 2009). She has also published research on how intermediary organizations help consumers enter health insurance and other complex markets. Besides chairing her department, she co-organizes the network "A Communitarian Ideals and Civic Society" at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/14740

Keywords:

Leadership, Organizational Culture, Inclusion, Organizational Research, Abductive Analysis

Abstract

This commentary examines the development of research findings in Daniel Beunza’s Taking the Floor, an ethnography of a Wall Street investment bank. Themes explored include: How can organizational researchers learn about group dynamics and culture? How can leaders facilitate return to in-person work and face-to-face contact: what’s lost, what’s gained? How should organizations approach exclusion vs. inclusion?

References

Beunza, D. (2019). Taking the Floor: Models, Morals, and Management in a Wall Street Trading Room. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691185996

Chen, K.K. (2009). Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization Behind the Burning Man Event. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226102399.001.0001

Chen, K.K. (2017). Capturing Organizations as Actors. In C. Jerolmack & S. Khan (Eds.) Approaches to Ethnography: Analysis and Representation in Participant Observation (pp. 31–59). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chen, K.K. (2020). Extended Q&A with Daniel Beunza About “Taking the Floor: Models, Morals, and Management in a Wall St. Trading Room.” orgtheory.net, 22 April. https://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2020/04/22/extended-q-a-with-daniel-beunza-about-taking-the-floor-models-morals-and-management-in-a-wall-st-trading-room/

Chen, K.K. (2022). Learning How to be a Scyborg: How Prefigurative Organisations can Promote Capacity to Decolonialise Organisations. Voluntary Sector Review, 13(1), 117–133. https://doi.org/10.1332/204080521X16346541850357

Hackman, J.R. (1991). Groups That Work (and Those That Don’t). Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.

MacKenzie, D. (2022). Baboon Sociology? Commentary on Daniel Beunza’s “Taking the Floor.” Sociologica, 16(1), 71–74. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/14724

Tavory, I., & Timmermans, S. (2014). Abductive Analysis: Theorizing Qualitative Research. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

The Making of Organizational Researchers. Commentary on Daniel Beunza’s Taking the Floor

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