2026 ASA OOW SECTION AWARDS

On August 18, 2026 By Michelle T. LeeIn Awards, Chicago 2025Leave a comment

Congratulations to the 2026 award recipients for their achievements!

David Su won the James Thompson Graduate Paper Award for his paper “Gaming the Algorithm: Algorithmic Literacy, Tactical Innovation, and Collective Resistance in China’s Platform Economy.”

Dr. Benjamin Shestakofsky won the 2026 Max Weber Book Award for his book, Behind the Start-Up: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (University of California Press, 2024).

Christopher I. Rider (not pictured), James B. Wade (center), Anand Swaminathan (right), and Andreas Schwab (left) won the W. Richard Scott Article Award for their paper, “Racial Disparity in Leadership: Evidence of Valuative Bias in the Promotions of National Football League Coaches,” published in American Journal of Sociology.

Dr. Phyllis Moen received the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Distinguished Career Award for 2026.

Call for ASA OOW Section Award Nominations!

On October 21, 2025October 21, 2025 By Neha JangetiIn Awards, Conferences, New York 2026Leave a comment

Organizations, Occupations, and Work

James D. Thompson Graduate Student Paper Award
The James D. Thompson Graduate Student Paper Award is given for an outstanding graduate student paper in the area of organizations, occupations, and work, written or published within the last three years (2023, 2024, 2025). Publication date is based on print publication for traditional journals (i.e., not online-first date) and release date for online-only journals. Paper co-authored with faculty members are not eligible for this award. Self-nominations are welcome. All nominations must come from members in good standing of the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section. However, nominated candidates need not be members of the Section or the ASA in order to be eligible for the award.

To nominate a paper, please submit the following materials via email to all members of the committee: (1) a PDF of the paper, (2) a brief letter highlighting the paper’s contributions to scholarship on organizations, occupations, and work, and (3) contact information for the nominee. Use “Thompson Paper Award Nomination 2026” as the subject line of your email. To receive full consideration, nominations must be submitted by February 15, 2026 to:

Aliya Hamid Rao (Committee Chair)
London School of Economics
a.h.rao@lse.ac.uk

Committee members:
Julia Dessauer, Indiana University
Nino Bariolo, University of Toronto

W. Richard Scott Article Award
The W. Richard Scott Article Award is granted for an outstanding article in the area of organizations, occupations, and work published within the last three years (2023, 2024, 2025). Publication date is based on print publication for traditional journals (i.e., not online-first date) and release date for online-only journals. Self-nominations are welcome. All nominations must come from members in good standing of the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section. However, nominated candidates need not be members of the Section or the ASA in order to be eligible for the award.

To nominate an article, please submit the following materials via email to all members of the committee: (1) a PDF of the article, (2) a brief letter (PDF or MSWord) highlighting the article’s contributions to scholarship on organizations, occupations, and (3) contact information for the nominee. Use “Scott Article Award Nomination 2026” as the subject line of your email. To receive full consideration, nominations must be submitted by February 15, 2026 to:

Youngjoo Cha (Committee Chair)
Indiana University
cha5@iu.edu

Committee members:
Leroy Gonsalves, Boston University
Angelina Grigoryeva, University of Toronto
Jennifer Merluzzi, George Washington University

Max Weber Book Award
The Max Weber Book Award is granted for an outstanding book in the area of organizations, occupations, and work published within the last three years (2024, 2025, 2026). Self-nominations are welcome. All nominations must come from members in good standing of the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section. However, nominated candidates need not be members of the Section or the ASA in order to be eligible for the award.

To nominate a book, please submit via email a brief nomination letter highlighting the book’s contributions to scholarship on organizations, occupations, and work and including contact information for the nominee. Use “Weber Book Award Nomination 2026” as the subject line of your email. In addition, send a hard or digital copy of the book to each committee member at the mailing addresses or the email addresses provided below. Books should be received by the submission deadline. To receive full consideration, nominations must be submitted by February 15, 2026 to:

Laura Doering (Committee Chair)
University of Toronto
laura.doering@utoronto.ca
Mailing address:
University of Toronto
105 Saint George St
Toronto, ON M5S 3E6, Canada

Malissa Alinor, UNC Chapel Hill
malinor@unc.edu
Mailing address:
UNC Chapel Hill
Abernethy Hall
131 S. Columbia St.
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Xi Wang, Northwestern University
XiWang2026@u.northwestern.edu
Mailing address:
6000 N Sheridan Rd #509
Chicago, IL 60660

Kim de Laat, University of Waterloo
kim.delaat@uwaterloo.ca
Mailing address:
125 St. Patrick Street
Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business
University of Waterloo
Stratford, ON
N5A 0C1
Canada

Heba Alex, University of Chicago
halex@uchicago.edu
Mailing Address:
University of Chicago
Department of Sociology
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Tiantian Yang, University of Pennsylvania
yangtt@wharton.upenn.edu
Mailing address:
University of Pennsylvania
Office 2025 SH-DH
3620 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Rosabeth Moss Kanter Distinguished Career Award
The Rosabeth Moss Kanter Distinguished Career Award recognizes and celebrates a career of outstanding contributions to the area of organizations, occupations, and work. Nominations are judged on the depth and breadth of impact through scholarship, teaching and/or service over an extended time and across multiple projects, initiatives, and roles. All nominations must come from members in good standing of the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section. However, nominated candidates need not be members of the Section or the ASA in order to be eligible for the award.

The section retains and considers nominations for the Kanter Award over a 3-year cycle. Thus, this year’s committee will consider nominations submitted in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Nominations submitted in 2026 but not selected will remain in the pool for the 2027 and 2028 award years.

To submit a nomination, send the following materials to the selection committee: (1) a letter of nomination, which outlines the candidate’s contributions to the field, (2) a copy of the nominee’s most recent curriculum vitae, and (3) contact information for the nominee (including email address). Nomination materials may also include supporting letters and up to 10 of the nominee’s publications in electronic form. All nomination materials should be in PDF or word format and submitted as email attachments (a single email if possible). Use “Kanter Career Award Nomination 2026” as the subject line of your email. To receive full consideration, nominations must be submitted by February 15, 2026 to:

Eunmi Mun (Committee Chair)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
eunmimun@illinois.edu

Committee members:
Callen Anthony, New York University
Caroline Hanley, College of William & Mary
Malte Reichelt, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität

2025 ASA OOW SECTION AWARDS

On August 21, 2025 By Neha JangetiIn Awards, Chicago 2025Leave a comment

Congratulations to the 2025 award recipients for their achievements!

Dr. Heather A. Haveman (middle) received the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Distinguished Career Award for 2025

Dr. Katherine Sobering won the 2025 Max Weber Book Award for her book The People’s Hotel: Working for Justice in Argentina (Duke University Press, 2022).

Anna Fox (left) won the James Thompson Graduate Paper Award for her paper “Covalent Logics: Policing, Family Values, and the Reproduction of Inequality.”

Dr. Katherine Weisshaar (left), Dr. Koji Chavez (in the middle), and Dr. Tania Hutt (not in the picture) won the W. Richard Scott Article Award for their paper “Hiring Discrimination Under Pressures to Diversify: Gender, Race, and Diversity Commodification across Job Transitions in Software Engineering,” published in American Sociological Review.

2023 OOW Award Winners!

On October 6, 2023 By Julia DessauerIn AwardsLeave a comment

Here are photos of our 2023 award winners at the Section business meeting in Philadelphia (taken by Past Chair Tim Bartley). Congratulations to all!

Erin Cech presents the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Distinguished Career Award to Don Tomaskovic-Devey.

Laura Lopez-Sanders presents the James Thompson Graduate Student Paper Award to co-winner Eldad Levy Guerrero for his paper, “Looking Right and Looking Busy: Producing Vigilance in Private Security.”

Laura Lopez-Sanders presents the James Thompson Graduate Student Paper Award to co-winner Wendy Li for her paper, “Regulatory Capture’s Third Face of Power” (forthcoming in Socio-Economic Review).

Adilia James presents the W. Richard Scott Article Award to Jayanti Owens for her article, “Double Jeopardy: Teacher Biases, Racialized Organizations, and the Production of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in School Discipline,” published in American Sociological Review.

Amy Binder presents the Max Weber Book Award to Josh Seim for his book, Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering, published by University of California Press.

ASA Annual Meeting Travel Fund Awards

On April 15, 2023 By Julia DessauerIn Announcements, Awards, ConferencesLeave a comment

The American Sociological Association offers an Annual Meeting Travel Fund and the Student Forum Travel Award to help offset some of the costs associated with attending the Annual Meeting for those who would otherwise find it difficult to attend. The deadline to submit applications for both is April 24.

Application links:

Student Forum Travel Awards

Annual Meeting Travel Fund

Announcement: Diane Vaughan’s “Dead Reckoning: Air Traffic Control, System Effects, and Risk” (Chicago, 2021) has been selected for the 2023 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Gardner-Lasser Aeronautics and Astronautics History Literature Award.

On November 10, 2022 By Dilan ErenIn Announcements, Awards, PublicationsLeave a comment

Dead Reckoning is an historical ethnography covering the life course of the air traffic control system from system emergence through 2017. Based on archival research and field work in four air traffic control facilities, the book focuses on how historical conditions, social actors, and events in the system’s institutional environment – political, economic, technological, cultural – impact the air traffic organization, changing it, and how in turn those changes affect not only the social, technological, and material arrangements of the workplace, but also controllers’ interpretive work, cultural understandings, and work practices. Far from a top-down model, controllers – the workers at the bottom of the hierarchy – respond to these events, making repairs that supply organizational resilience. Building on work on institutional logics, boundaries and boundary work, culture and cognition, and expertise, the case demonstrates the connection between institutional change, agency, and persistence over the life course.

OOW Section Call for Awards: W. Richard Scott Article Award

On October 26, 2022 By Dilan ErenIn AwardsLeave a comment

The W. Richard Scott Award for Distinguished Scholarship is granted for an outstanding contribution to scholarship on organizations, occupations, and/or work in an article published within the last three years (2020, 2021, 2022). An article may be nominated by its author(s) or by any ASA member.

To nominate an article, send (1) a PDF file of the article or a functioning URL where it can be accessed, (2) a letter (PDF or MSWord) of no more than one page justifying the nomination, and (3) contact information for the nominee (including email), to the selection committee. Publication date is based on print publication for traditional journals (i.e., not online-first date), and release date for online-only journals. To receive full consideration, nominations must be submitted by March 31, 2023.

Please submit your nomination to the members of the Thompson Award Committee:

Jiwook Jung (chair)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

jwjung@illinois.edu

Adilia James

Endicott College

adilia.james@gmail.com

Barbara Kiviat

Stanford University

bkiviat@stanford.edu

OOW Section Call for Awards: Max Weber Book Award

On October 26, 2022 By Dilan ErenIn AwardsLeave a comment

The Max Weber Award for Distinguished Scholarship is granted for an outstanding contribution to scholarship on organizations, occupations, and work in a book published within the last three years (2020, 2021, 2022). Self-nominations are permitted; however, all nominations must come from members in good standing of the OOW Section. Nominated candidates need not be members of the OOW Section or the ASA in order to be eligible for the award.

To nominate a book, mail each member of the selection committee at the addresses below: (1) a hard copy of the book; and (2) a nomination letter that states how the book contributes to scholarship on organizations, occupations, and work and provides the nominee’s email address and other contact information. To receive full consideration, nominations must be received by March 31, 2023.

Please submit your nomination to each of the members of the 2023 Weber Book Award Committee:

Amy Binder (Chair)

840 24^th Street

San Diego, CA 92102

abinder@ucsd.edu

Melissa Abad

585 W Hacienda Ave, Apt 109

Campbell, CA 95008

mabad2@stanford.edu

Eric Dahlin

2927 Rensselaer Ct

Vienna, VA 22181

eric.dahlin@byu.edu

Minjae Kim

McNair Hall #238

Rice University

6100 Main Street

Houston, Texas, 77005-1892

minjaekim@rice.edu

OOW Section Call for Awards: James D. Thompson Student Paper Award

On October 26, 2022 By Dilan ErenIn AwardsLeave a comment

The James D. Thompson Award is given for an outstanding graduate student paper in the area of organizations, occupations, and work (OOW) written or published within the last three years (2020, 2021, 2022). Authors may nominate themselves, or section members may do so. However, all submitted nominations must come from members in good standing with the OOW Section or the ASA in order to be eligible for the award. In addition, the award recipient serves for one year on the section Council and receives $500 for travel to a professional meeting.

To nominate a paper, please submit the following materials via e-mail:

PDF file of the paper,
Nomination letter (PDF format) indicating how the paper contributes to scholarship on organizations, occupations, and work, and
Contact information for the nominee (including email).

To receive full consideration, the committee Chair should receive the nomination materials by March 31, 2023 – Please use Thompson Paper Award Nomination as the subject for the email. The full committee includes:

Laura López-Sanders (Chair)

Brown University

laura_lopez-sanders@brown.edu

prabhdeep singh kehal

University of Wisconsin, Madison

kehal@wisc.edu

Laura Garbes

University of Minnesota- Twin Cities

garbes@umn.edu

Daniel Auguste

MIT Sloan School of Management

augustep@mit.edu

OOW Section Call for Awards: Rosabeth Moss Kanter Distinguished Career Award

On October 26, 2022 By Dilan ErenIn AwardsLeave a comment

The Distinguished Career Award recognizes and celebrates a career of outstanding contributions to the area(s) of organizations, occupations, and/or work. Nominations are judged on the depth and breadth of scholarly impact over an extended time and across multiple projects.

Section members may nominate a distinguished scholar by sending the following information to the selection committee: (1) a letter of nomination, which outlines the candidate’s scholarly contributions to the field, (2) a copy of the candidate’s most recent curriculum vitae, and (3) contact information for the nominee (including email address). Nominators also have the option of sending a portfolio of up to 10 of the nominee’s electronic publications. All nomination materials should be in pdf or word format and submitted as attachments to a single email.

To receive full consideration, nominations must be submitted by March 31, 2023.

Please submit your nomination via email to each of the members of the 2023 Distinguished Career Award Committee:

Erin Cech (chair)

University of Michigan

ecech@umich.edu

Oneya Okuwobi

University of Cincinnati

okuwobof@ucmail.uc.edu

Eunmi Mun

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

eunmimun@illinois.edu

David Embrick