Editor’s Note: Originally posted to the OOW Listerseve. If you can think of an idea, let Tania know via email or post in the comments section.

I am a PhD student at Brown University and a member of the OOW section of ASA. I was wondering if it might be possible to issue a query to the OOW listserv regarding something that has come up in my dissertation work. I study internal medicine residents and have found there to be significant preference (and some might say bias) towards graduates from US allopathic medical schools, even though fewer than 50% of residents in internal medicine graduated from such schools (the rest are foreigners who trained at  foreign medical schools, Americans who studied at Caribbean medical schools or Americans who studied at osteopathic institutions). So I wanted to query to listserv to see if anyone knows of another American profession where such a premium is placed on having trained in the US. In some professions (such as computer science), I’m inclined to think that this same preference is not as strong. In other professions (such as law), it is very difficult for individuals trained outside the US to penetrate the profession. The medical profession, however, relies on foreign and osteopathic trained professionals to fill a critical gap in the training workforce, all the while privileging US medical grads over all others. Can anyone think of a parallel in any other profession?

Tania M. Jenkins, M.A.
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Sociology, Box 1916
Brown University
tania_jenkins@brown.edu

 

John Grady <jgrady@wheatonma.edu> writes:

Wheaton College is developing a new major in business. It includes as a requirement a course to be taught in organizational behavior in the psychology department. We will be offering a course on How Organizations Work, and have requested that it be considered as an alternative to the Organizational Behavior course. The administration feels that the psychology course is a standard offering in business majors, but that organizational sociology is not. Can a case be made — with examples to boot — of the equivalence of the sociological studies of organizations in such offerings?

Beth Mertz (bmertz@thecenter.ucsf.edu) writes:

Do any of you do research on, or know of research on, the reorganization of work spaces through open floor plans (i.e., such as has been done in technology sector such as the HP open floor plan, no offices, or offices without doors, etc) in the University context? Specifically, has anyone experienced, studied, or know of a university that has shifted a social sciences department/research group, including faculty, post docs or RAs and admin staff, from traditional office/cube type set up to one of these open floor plan – no offices, everyone gets an ‘equal’ space (regardless of your rank, title, etc) with ‘huddle rooms’ for group meetings or private phone calls. We are seeking evidence (anecdotal or published) that looks at the issues such a transition might raise, or outcomes of such an experiment. Alternatively, do any of you within a social sciences research group have experience with departments  moving to new or remodeled space that worked very well? What was the redesigned space like?

Thank you for any feedback or leads to data/experiments of this type that you can provide.