Task Management Study & Rumours Doc

[michelej1]

Book Review, July 15, 2012
http://managementink.wordpress.com/2...roup-dynamics/

Fleetwood Mac: A Study of Group Dynamics
by Cynthia Nalevanko, Editor, Management INK

When Fleetwood Mac recorded Rumours, the band was in turmoil; relationships were breaking apart, and emotions were running high. Yet the album is often considered one of their best. Recognizing the value of music and film for promoting learning, the authors of a Journal of Management Education a study used a documentary about the making of Rumours to create an exercise that teaches key concepts about task groups. Debra R. Comer of Hofstra University and Robert L. Holbrook Jr. of Ohio University published “Getting Behind the Scenes of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours: Using a Documentary on the Making of a Music Album to Learn About Task Groups” in the August 2012 issue of JME. To see the Table of Contents, click here.

The authors wrote:


From the perspective of management educators, the most useful video in this series chronicles the making of Fleetwood Mac’s (1977) Rumours. The story behind the production of this album centers on the effects of the breakups of John and Christine McVie’s marriage and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks’s long-term relationship on their professional collaborations and exemplifies key concepts affecting task groups, including intragroup conflict, group cohesiveness, task and maintenance roles, norms, and group effectiveness…. As Liedtka (2001) advised, video cases work especially well to document interpersonal behavior and offer students “a more realistic kind of messy complexity than traditional [written] cases” (p. 411). Yet creating (taping and editing) one’s own commercial-caliber video may be prohibitively costly in terms of time, labor, and money. Indeed, inasmuch as this professionally produced video focuses on Fleetwood Mac’s group processes and outcomes, it is uncannily suited for the management classroom.

[David]

That Debra R. Comer name rings a bell. Isn't she the author of that would-be academic article that fans found online a decade or so ago?

I think the sociology of management "science" is largely bunk, and this article is probably accurately representative of the intellectual sloppiness. How can anyone extrapolate group-dynamic and conflict concepts from the recording of Rumours without having to rely almost completely on hearsay, bad memories, and secondary and tertiary research?

What documentary (I use that term loosely) did these two pedagogues use? The VH-1 "Behind the Music"? Does the pop-commercial superficiality of "Behind the Music" serve as an acceptable basis for sociological study? No way.

Even the abstract is bunk and filled with faddish jargon and weasel words for concepts that are as shifting, subjective, and vague as a fog bank. "Group cohesiveness," "conflict within groups," "group effectiveness" (what makes a group effective? or what is group effectiveness?), "group roles," etc. etc. How can anyone have any idea A) what this means, and B) how it applies to the recording of Rumours without having seriously examined that entire experience in mind-numbing detail according to the precepts of sociological analysis? I'm sorry, but reading Rolling Stone and watching "Behind the Music" don't cut it, not by a long shot.

The abstract also refers to the group's "complexity" (what does that mean? does it apply only to Fleetwood Mac? does it individuate Fleetwood Mac from other rock bands, or even from groups of people sitting in a circle banging rocks together?), and to the notion that this group created a "high-caliber product." The aesthetic quality of Rumours is not a suitable topic of sociological analysis: it's a judicial call whose only external, verifiable reference is to the problematic notion of public reputation (problematic because millions of people think they like the album and millions more can't stand it, and there's no way to quantify such stuff).

[michelej1]

I was not impressed with Malcolm Gladwell's more professional but, ultimately, equally superficial and insipid use of Fleetwood Mac in his discussion of learning. And the fact that he "studied" the band up to Rumours but not beyond rather detracted from his theories about:

1. Effort v. Talent (actually the deeper question lies in the exploration of group effort v. individual talent);

2. Compensation v. Capitalization strategy (any compensation strategy ended after Rumours);

3. Trial and Error (he actually could have expounded nicely on this theme if he had bothered to incorporate Tusk into his comparisons, not to mention the BTM, Time, line up changes, etc. rather than just looking at the evolving band from 1967-1977)

Michele

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by David

What documentary (I use that term loosely) did these two pedagogues use? The VH-1 "Behind the Music"? Does the pop-commercial superficiality of "Behind the Music" serve as an acceptable basis for sociological study? No way.

Wondering same thing.

[bangdrum]

I would imagine they used the Classic Albums documentary...