B. Gibbons
March, 2015
This is my second fellowship at CASBS, and I am realizing that this one is even more formative than the first. But some (great) things haven’t changed.
First, the gift of time remains precious and the gift of uninterrupted time even more so. Obligations chop academic life into little pieces; being free to think for a year is restorative and emboldening.
Second, having that year in a community of similar others is even better. The surroundings really matter. Being on leave in one’s own department is not remotely the same, and neither is being on leave in another active department. Away from the hubbub of department life, here you are constantly reminded to breathe, reflect, and aim high.
Third, having that community year here is best of all. Resources abound: one’s fellow Fellows, the Stanford community, and even the “ghosts” (i.e., the legacy of and inspiration from those who have come before).
I felt all these things when I was first here, 20 years ago, but less so for each of them. I was recently tenured, so I didn’t quite realize how fragmented academic life could become. And I had yet to be on leave in another active department, so that comparison didn’t loom as large.
But the biggest difference is in the third point. As a budding organizational economist, I learned a great deal 20 years ago from certain sociologists, political scientists, and social psychologists; in fact, my students will attest that I quote several of them to this day. But if I was a sponge then, soaking up whatever came my way, I am laser-focused now—opinionated about what organizational economics needs from other disciplines to move forward and obstinate about beginning to acquire those things while here.
There are three ways that I get this help from fellow Fellows: sometimes I am taught (about the Fellow’s own work or field); sometimes I am guided (to work the Fellow knows less well); and sometimes I am inspired (e.g., by a whacky interpretation utterly unintended by the source discipline). This year, even with that laser focus on what I think organizational economics needs, Fellows have helped me greatly in anthropology, communications, linguistics, political science, social psychology, and sociology. Much the same is true for the Stanford community (and I hope a little organizational economics is flowing into CASBS and Stanford in return).
Finally, but in some ways most importantly, there are the ghosts. Two of the world's greatest organizations scholars—Robert Merton and Herbert Simon—were members of the small committee that founded CASBS. I see the tile commemorating Merton’s decades of contributions to CASBS every day on my way to lunch.
It may be no surprise that the early classes continued this theme, with Kenneth Arrow, Peter Blau, Ronald Coase, Michel Crozier, Alvin Gouldner, George Homans, Daniel Katz, Harold Kelley, James March, Jacob Marschak, Roy Radner, William Riker, Philip Selznick, John Thibaut, and Harrison White being Fellows in the first eight years. Happily, great organizational scholars have been at CASBS every decade since.
But there is also something new afoot, reflecting the widespread sense that there is no shortage of organizations that need help—from firms, plants, and work groups, to hospitals, schools, and government agencies, to communities, networks, and more. Baldly stated, CASBS may be combining theory and practice!
Even the physical layout of CASBS is inspiring productive conversations almost daily: drawing a line from the Clinical Excellence Research Center (studying improvements in health-care delivery, and recently moved into the Maybeck Building) to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (whose headquarters arose a decade ago just past the CASBS parking lot) goes right through Merton's tile. Might this be the time and the place to convene leading-edge conversations about how academics and practitioners can help improve the organizations all around us?