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Decoding Organization doc

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Decoding Organization How was Bletchley Park made as an organization? How was signals intelligence constructed as a field? What was Bletchley Park’s culture and how was its work co-ordinated? Bletchley Park was not just the home of geniuses such as Alan Turing, it was also the workplace of thousands of other people, mostly women, and their organization was a key component in the cracking of Enigma. Challenging many popular perceptions, this book examines the hitherto unexamined complexities of how 10,000 people were brought together in complete secrecy during World War II to work on ciphers. Unlike most organizational studies, this book decodes, rather than encodes, the processes of organization and examines the structures, cultures and the work itself of Bletchley Park using archive and oral history sources. Organization theorists, intelligence historians and general readers alike will find in this book a challenge to their preconceptions of both Bletchley Park and organizational analysis. christopher grey is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the University of Warwick. He was previously Professor of Organizational Theory at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Wolfson College. Professor Grey has published numerous academic articles on the sociology and history of management and organizations, on management education and learning, on critical management studies and on professional services organizations. He is the author of the bestselling student primer A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations (2009, second edition). Decoding Organization Bletchley Park, Codebreaking and Organization Studies christopher grey cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107005457 © Christopher Grey 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Grey, Christopher, 1964– Decoding organization : Bletchley Park, codebreaking and organization studies / Christopher Grey. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-00545-7 (hardback) 1. Great Britain. Government Communications Headquarters – History. 2. World War, 1939–1945 – Cryptography. 3. World War, 1939–1945 – Secret service – Great Britain. 4. World War, 1939–1945 – Electronic intelligence – Great Britain. 5. Intelligence service – Social aspects – Great Britain – History – 20th century. 6. World War, 1939–1945 – England – Bletchley (Buckinghamshire) 7. Bletchley (Buckinghamshire, England) – History – 20th century. 8. Corporate culture – England – Bletchley (Buckinghamshire) – History – 20th century. 9. Organization – Case studies. 10. Corporate culture – Case studies. I. Title. D810.C88G74 2012 940.54 0 8641–dc23 2012000127 ISBN 978-1-107-00545-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Dedicated to my mother, Madeleine Grey The fact is that the process of ‘cryptography’ would perhaps better be described as interpretation. Josh Cooper, Head of Air Section at Bletchley Park, 24 June 1941 Inherent in all good interpretations is the casting of new light on something that earlier has either escaped serious attention or been understood in a conventional and thus partly conservative way. Alvesson and Deetz (2000: 152) Contents Acknowledgements page xi Abbreviations and Acronyms xv Introduction: Organization Studies, History and Bletchley Park 1 Part I Decoding Structures 47 1 The Making of Bletchley Park 51 2 The Making of Signals Intelligence at Bletchley Park 78 Part II Decoding Cultures 107 3 Pillars of Culture at Bletchley Park 113 4 Splinters of Culture at Bletchley Park 145 Part III Decoding Work 173 5 Making Bletchley Park Work 177 6 Understanding Bletchley Park’ s Work 213 Conclusion: Reviving Organization Studies 245 Appendix A. Timeline 1919–2011 273 Appendix B. Table of Interviewees 280 Appendix C. Brief Profiles of Key Figures 283 Appendix D. Organization Charts 1940–46 286 ix Glossary of Terms 289 References 296 Index 313 x contents [...]... intend when speaking of decoding organization, and I contrast it with the ways in which organization is often ‘encoded’, for example when underlying organizational processes are reified into organizational charts, or when the dynamics and complexities of organizational culture are encoded into typologies of homogeneous cultural blocks Thus what I am aiming to do in decoding organization is to make... purposes One is to explicate the decoding organization at Bletchley Park, the place most famous for the breaking of Enigma ciphers in conditions of complete secrecy during the Second World War The other is, in the process, to develop a certain approach to the analysis of organizations; a way of making sense of, or decoding , organization which points to a way of reviving organization studies as currently... which is the organization This apprehension of the organization is by no means confined to commonsense, however Most academic case studies of organizations adopt precisely the same ontology Yet the apparent solidity of ‘the organization is an accomplishment of a process – organizing – which occurs in time and requires a day by day, indeed minute by minute, enactment: the organization of the organization, ... analysis can flesh out one of the most significant insights of recent organization theory This is the recognition that organization is both a noun and a verb (Weick, 1979; Bakken and Hernes, 2006) That is, on the one hand, it is a ‘thing’ – the organization – and on the other hand, it is a process – organization Commonsensically we speak of ‘the organization , imagining it to be in some way a solid, bounded... conducting organization studies It makes sense for me to do this before, later in this chapter, giving an introductory presentation of the organization of BP because, of course, to give any such presentation entails a set of assumptions about, or at least predispositions towards, what organization means and how one might give a ‘presentation’ of organization problems and possibilities in organization. .. interests of better organizational understanding we should urge people to stamp out nouns’ Rather, it is not a matter of organization as noun or verb, entitity or process, being or becoming – it is that organization is always both at the same time Thus my intention is to show (aspects of) organization in both of these senses through a lens of historical distance and via a case study of organization over... of organization studies and therefore did little to restore the status of historical analysis The latter remark is significant because, just as organization studies separated itself from organizational sociology, so too did it move away from industrial sociology, of which labour-process analysis is one outgrowth This had, and continues to have, a tradition of historically grounded analyses of work organizations... understandable to a range of readers and which overcome at least some of the fragmentations within organizational theory, and to do so not via an abstract discussion of that theory but through a situated analysis of a particular organizational setting It is this kind of analysis which I am denoting as a decoding of organization It is important to clarify what I mean by this term It should not be taken to... persuasive, a story of the organization of BP organization studies and history But what kind of story is this? Many of the examples I gave of studies which have the illuminating and persuasive character I am seeking are studies of a particular sort, namely organizational ethnographies (e.g Kunda, 1992; Watson, 1994) in which the researcher lives among, and to an extent as, a member of the organization being... brings some things, like organizational process, into focus whilst necessarily occluding others Returning to the issue of organization as process, I want actually to suggest something rather more than I have done so far Firstly, in the way I have presented it, it might be inferred that I see history as a means of accessing organizational process rather than as studying an organization that existed . Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations (2009, second edition). Decoding Organization Bletchley Park, Codebreaking and Organization Studies christopher. approach to the analysis of organizations; a way of making sense of, or decoding , organization which points to a way of reviving organization studies as

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  • Blank Page

  • Contents

  • Acknowledgements

  • Abbreviations and Acronyms

  • Introduction: Organization Studies, History and Bletchley Park

  • Part I - Decoding Structures

  • 1 - The Making of Bletchley Park

  • 2 - The Making of Signals Intelligence at Bletchley Park

  • Part II - Decoding Cultures

  • 3 - Pillars of Culture at Bletchley Park

  • 4 - Splinters of Culture at Bletchley Park

  • Part III - Decoding Work

  • 5 - Making Bletchley Park Work

  • 6 - Understanding Bletchley Parkâ•Žs Work

  • Conclusion

  • Appendix A. - Timeline 1919â•fi2011

  • Appendix B. - Table of Interviewees

  • Appendix C. - Brief Profiles of Key Figures

  • Appendix D. - Organization Charts 1940â•fi46

  • Glossary of Terms

  • References

  • Index

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