105: Manifest & Latent Roles -- Alvin Gouldner (Part 2)

Talking About Organizations Podcast

We conclude our discussion of Alvin Gouldner two-part article, “Cosmopolitans and locals: Toward an analysis of latent social roles.” In the second part of the article, Gouldner presented an initial proposal for a taxonomy of four types of locals and two types of cosmopolitans as a way kickstart the broader research agenda. However, this groundbreaking study had some significant limitations, most notably that the separation between manifest and latent roles was problematic. After addressing the contemporary implications of this article, we cover some of the different directions followed by recent scholars to bring more clarity to the latent role construct.