How corporations reshape democracy

Details of this year's Joan Woodward lecture on the influence of companies on their environment.

Professor Stephen Barley from Stanford University will be speaking at Tanaka Business School on 13 November as this year’s Joan Woodward guest speaker.
Professor Barley's talk, "How Corporates Reshape Democracy" develops the debate begun by Professor Woodward.  She is credited as a leading organisational theorist who studied how organisations are shaped by their environments.  

“I’m going to turn this assumption on its head,” explained Professor Barley. Adding:

“In the talk I will explore why it’s time for organisation studies to reverse this perspective.  Today we must turn our attention to how organisations shape and even create the environments in which they operate.”

Professor Barley will address the ways in which corporations have reshaped the nature of representative democracy at the expense of the public good.

Professor Barley has recently published a book on contingent work among engineers and software developers, entitled Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in the Knowledge Economy.   He teaches courses on the management of R&D, the organisational implications of technological change, organisational behaviour, social network analysis and ethnographic field methods. He has also worked as a consultant to organisations in a variety of industries including publishing, banking, IT, electronics and aerospace. 

Nelson Phillips: “As is befitting the centenary lectures, Professor Barley has chosen a topic that is relevant and very timely. I hope many of our students and faculty will be able to join us.”
The Joan Woodward Memorial Lecture Series is an annual event held at the Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London. Each year one distinguished speaker is asked to talk on a topic related to the main themes in Professor Woodward's work. The intention is to advance current thinking on the topic of technology and organisation. The notes for each lecture will be made available online.
The Lecture Series is funded by an endowment established by her friends, colleagues and corporate partners on Joan's death. The endowment funds the Lecture Series as well as an undergraduate and post-graduate prize in her name.
The event will take place on Tuesday 13 November from 18.00 until 19.30.  Please email tbscentenary@imperial.ac.uk to hold a place in the lecture.  The venue is the Lower Ground Square Lecture Theatre.
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About Professor Woodward
Professor Woodward died in 1971 at the age of 54. She was only the second woman professor at Imperial College London where she was appointed Professor of Industrial Sociology in 1970. She had joined the Production Engineering and Management Section of Imperial College London in 1958 and much of her most important work was published during this period. Prior to that she had spent a number of years at the South East Essex College of Technology where much of the empirical work that underlies her theoretical advancements was conducted.