Seminar with Vaughn Tan

Vaughn Tan is PhD candidate in organizational behavior and sociology at Harvard Business School. He is visiting the Department of Organization in conjunction with collection of ethnographic data at the Danish restaurant Noma.

He will present a paper that draws on interview and observational data from task-oriented groups working in the rapidly changing world of high-end cuisine.

His analytical focus is bidirectional, negotiated joining processes, a conceptual alternative to selection-oriented hiring processes by which new group members are chosen from a pool of candidates. This type of joining process, highly adapted to rapidly changing environments, operates where group structure is amorphous in the sense that member roles and group objectives are left persistently and intentionally undefined.  

He shows that while negotiated joining processes are costly in time and effort, respondents believe that their high cost is more than justified by improved group efficacy, better work relations between members, and increased adaptivity to environmental change. These findings may generalise to the study and management of task-oriented groups with a mandate for innovation (such as R&D teams) or which work in rapidly changing environments.

Please register for the seminar no later than the 13 of June to Ane Lindgren Hassing alh.ioa@cbs.dk

The seminar is free of charge and for everyone who might be interested - academics or practitioners alike.

The paper is available upon request. Please contact Ane Lindgren Hassing at alh.ioa@cbs.dk

ABC and Imagine.. are co-hosting the seminar. ABC is an FSE-funded research network of institutionalist researchers at Copenhagen Business School, Harvard University and University of Alberta. www.cbs.dk/ABC.

Imagine.. is a research centre at Copenhagen Business School. Imagine.. conducts research on the experience economy and organization of creativity in firms, projects and networks. www.cbs.dk/imagine