Category: Publications

New Publication: “Workplace Productivity: Gender, Parenthood, and Career Consequences in the United States”

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Yavorsky, Jill, Yue Qian, and Rebecca Glauber. 2025. “Workplace Productivity: Gender, Parenthood, and Career Consequences in the United States.” Gender, Work & Organization 1–21. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.70027

Main Findings: Using a novel survey experiment fielded among 975 US managers, we find that managers more severely penalize mothers, compared to fathers, when their job productivity decreases due to childcare issues outside their control. This result was primarily driven by men managers who gave fathers a greater benefit of the doubt when it came to their decreased productivity. 

Abstract: Many dual-earner parents face ongoing challenges to securing reliable and accessible childcare, which potentially affect their productivity at work and consequential career rewards. Although productivity can ebb and flow, limited research has examined how productivity changes influence parents’ access to organizational rewards, especially when productivity changes result from childcare issues outside their control. The answer to this question is crucial for understanding gender inequality given that childcare issues are more likely to affect mothers’ productivity and employers could enact gender biases toward mothers (or fathers) when their productivity changes. Using a novel survey experiment fielded among 975 US managers, we assessed how a parent’s productivity changes (because of childcare issues outside their control) influenced managers’ recommendations of future organizational rewards (pay, promotions, etc.) to the parent. First, we find that managers assigned lower career rewards to workers whose productivity decreased, relative to workers whose productivity increased or stayed constant. Second, managers more severely penalized mothers, compared to fathers, when their productivity decreased. Third, exploratory analyses suggested that the widened gender gap in career rewards among parents whose productivity decreased was driven by men managers who penalized fathers less than women managers, primarily because men managers did not view fathers’ decreased productivity as evidence of reduced competence, professional commitment, or interest in advancement. By revealing pro-male biases that help explain the greater penalties faced by mothers relative to fathers when their productivity declined, our findings expose potential long-lasting impacts of parents experiencing disruptions to childcare on gender inequality in the workplace.

Authors:

Jill Yavorsky is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizational Science at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

Yue Qian is a Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Rebecca Glauber is a Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire.


Recent Publications from OOW Scholars

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Birced, Elif. 2025. “Empowered by Consumers: How Content Creators Use Relational Labor to Resist Labor Control.” Socio-Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaf064

Abstract: Researchers often discuss consumers as a means of labor control. In contrast, I ask how workers leverage consumers to resist control over their labor process. Focusing on sponsored content creation as a case, I explain how creators prioritize audience interests to resist sponsors’ control over their creative decisions. Using semi-structured interviews with 39 content creators and observations of a conference session, I show that the managerial practices of sponsoring brands contradict audience expectations due to the relational labor that creators perform to build a sense of community, authenticity, and trustworthiness in the eyes of audiences. Second, I document the role of part-time content creation and YouTube’s paid channel memberships in enhancing creators’ capacity to be selective with sponsorship requests and resist brand interventions that may ultimately lead to a decline in audience engagement. I extend the literature by theorizing when consumers enable workers to resist labor control.

Elif Birced earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston University in 2025 and is a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Schwarzman College of Computing during the 2025-26 academic year. 

Carter, Carrie. 2025. “Fight Like a Girl: Fitness Testing as Gendered Organizational Logic in the U.S. Army.” Gender, Work & Organization. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.70048

Abstract: Organizational logics related to excellence and equity are changing rapidly in contemporary workplaces, yet limited research examines the impacts of specific policy initiatives, including why some fail—or even backfire. This study examines one such recent policy case: a temporary period of gender-neutral fitness testing in the United States Army. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with U.S. soldiers who served during this failed policy change, I examine how the historic and seemingly gender egalitarian practice of sex-normed fitness testing may reinforce inequality in this highly male-dominated organizational context. By comparing soldiers’ narratives about what it takes to be fit for service with the new organizational logics about combat readiness, I highlight how a masculine-typed “ideal soldier” is (a) embedded in the structure of sex-normed fitness standards, (b) reproduced in interactions among soldiers in the process of “doing gender,” and (c) ultimately internalized in soldiers’ evaluations of their own and others’ fitness for service. Findings expand our understanding of how interacting gendering processes may influence workers’ perceptions of organizational change, potentially producing paradoxical outcomes.

Carrie Carter is a sociology Ph.D. candidate at North Carolina State University specializing in gender, work and organizations. Her research explores how organizational policies, practices and culture impact equity and effectiveness, with a particular focus on the U.S. military.

Prechel, Harland, Amber Blazek, and Ernesto F. L. Amaral. 2025. “Toward Theory Consolidation: Stratification, Organizational, and Political-Legal Effects on Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Energy Research & Social Science 128:104330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104330

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to understand the relationship between dimensions of the social structure and greenhouse gas emissions in U.S. fossil fueled electrical power plants. While environmental scholars have made important contributions to understanding society-environmental relations, theoretical growth and therefore the capacity to affect environmental policy is hampered by the lack of integration among different middle range perspectives. To address this issue, we adopt Robert Merton’s observation that theoretical advances require the ‘consolidation of groups of special [middle range] theories.’ We develop a conceptual framework and conduct an empirical analysis that includes core dimensions of the component parts of the social structure. Our geographic information systems analysis shows that electrical energy producing plants are disproportionately located near poor and minority communities. While controlling for physical characteristics of plants, our regression analysis shows that poor communities, region of the U.S. where the plant is located, subnational state environmental policies, ownership of the plant by another corporation, plant size, and the interaction between plant size and subnational state environmental policies all affect greenhouse gas emissions. We present graphs with predicted values from our regression model to illustrate the expected gas emissions, based on values of key independent variables, making complex statistical results more interpretable and meaningful.

Harland Prechel is Professor of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts Cornerstone Fellow, and Energy Institute Fellow at Texas A&M University. His primary areas of research are the corporation, economic sociology, political sociology, and environmental sociology. 

Ernesto F. L. Amaral is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. His research is related to social demography, migration, and public policy analysis. 

New Publication: “Fuzzy Boundaries: A Mechanism for Group Accumulation of Advantage” by Dr. Heba Alex

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Alex, Heba. 2025. “Fuzzy Boundaries: A Mechanism for Group Accumulation of Advantage.” Sociological Theory. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751251378516

Abstract:
This article describes a strategic mechanism, fuzzy boundaries, that groups use to accumulate advantage. In contrast to the dominant view that rigid, well-defined boundaries maximize group rewards, I argue that ambiguity in membership criteria can, under certain conditions, more effectively secure and promote group benefits. Fuzzy boundaries are defined by two features: an intentionally ambiguous criterion for inclusion and the selective, inconsistent application of that criterion to adjust the insider-outsider line as needed. I illustrate the operation of fuzzy boundaries through a historical analysis of occupational boundary drawing in the nineteenth-century United States. Ultimately, the study offers a generalizable framework for understanding how strategic ambiguity in group boundaries can serve actors seeking to preserve privilege across domains, such as education, hiring, and professional accreditation. Unlike well-defined qualifications, the malleability of fuzzy boundaries often insulates them from legal challenge, making them an effective mechanism for maintaining social and institutional advantage.

Dr. Alex is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and studies topics related to evaluation, differentiation, and morality in diverse institutional contexts such as lower courts, rights, and occupational organizations.

At present, Dr. Alex is developing a book about the moral character clause (being of good moral character) in licensing laws in nineteenth-century America.  You can read an article that emerged from one aspect of this project here. Dr. Alex is also in the early stages of a comparative study examining how the moral clause relates to voting and jury rights during the same period.

Dr. Alex received their Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2025. Before that, Dr. Alex obtained a B.A. in History from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies from UW–Madison. Dr. Alex’s professional journey includes a year at the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York and a Doctoral Fellowship at the American Bar Foundation.

New Piece: “Civil servant exodus” by Jamie Kucinskas and Yvonne Zylan

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Kucinskas, Jamie and Yvonne Zylan. 2025. “Civil servant exodus: How employees wrestle with whether to stay, speak up or go.” The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/civil-servant-exodus-how-employees-wrestle-with-whether-to-stay-speak-up-or-go-261985

Based on The Loyalty Trap (Columbia University Press).

Authors:

Jamie L. Kucinskas is Associate Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College. An award-winning teacher and researcher, she studies how people strive to be moral citizens in a world dominated by organizational power and influence. Her most recent book, The Loyalty Trap (Columbia University Press), examines how federal civil servants responded to the Trump administration amid a leadership turn toward autocracy. Her first paper from this research, coauthored with Yvonne Zylan, appeared in American Journal of Sociology.

Yvonne Zylan is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary and an attorney. She is the author of States of Passion: Law, Identity, and the Social Construction of Desire (Oxford University Press, 2011). Her research spans law and society, sexuality, social theory, political institutions, and social policy, with a focus on how law constitutes and is constituted by social life. She also examines resistance within state institutions and the dynamics of political institutions and social movements.

New Publication: “Working-Class Structural Power, Associational Power, and Income Inequality” by Dr. Masoud Movahed

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Movahed, Masoud. 2025. “Working-Class Structural Power, Associational Power, and Income Inequality.” Journal of Industrial Relations. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221856251326670

Abstract:
Under capitalism, workers have two sources of power: associational and structural. A vast body of social science research shows that workers’ power—often measured by union density—is associated with lower levels of income inequality. Drawing on a country-level, panel dataset for much of the post-World War II era (1960–2013), the author introduces a model of distributive outcomes that centers on the dual sources of workers’ associational and structural power. By differentiating the sources of workers’ power, the author examines the extent to which they bear on distributive outcomes across countries in the Global North. Using two-way fixed effects regression models, the author presents strong evidence that while workers’ associational and structural power are both statistically associated with lower levels of income inequality, it is workers’ structural—and not associational—power that drives egalitarian outcomes. Notably, counterfactual simulations demonstrate that, on average, structural power of the working class explains a gap up to approximately 4% in levels of income inequality over the past five decades across postindustrial countries.

Dr. Masoud Movahed’s research lies at the nexus of social stratification, economic, and political sociology. It integrates computational and quantitative methods with those of comparative historical methods in order to investigate the social-structural and institutional determinants of income and wealth inequality, both cross-nationally and within the U.S. context. More specifically, his research draws on panel data analysis, spatial econometrics, and machine learning tools, including both unsupervised clustering techniques and supervised learning algorithms. While Dr. Movahed employs computational methods, he retains a keen interest in comparative-historical methods, particularly event structure analysis (ESA), sequence analysis, and process tracing. More recently, Dr. Movahed has been part of collaborative projects that use survey experiments in U.S. contexts, alongside work in computational text analysis focusing on topic modeling and sentiment analysis.

Dr. Movahed’s papers have been published in Social Science Research, Journal of Industrial Relations, Spatial Demography, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Journal of International Development, The Sociological Quarterly, and Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements. Beyond academic research, Dr. Movahed also contributes essays and commentary to public-facing outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Boston Review, World Economic Forum, Harvard International Review, Yale Journal of International Affairs, and Al Jazeera.

Dr. Movahed has won awards from various sections of the American Sociological Association, including the Mathematical Sociology, Political Economy of the World-System Section, and Sociology of Development. He also received the Sabina Avdagic Early Career Scholar Prize from the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).  He holds an M.A. from New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

New Publication: “Competence over Partisanship” by Greer Mello

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Greer Mellon (2025). “Competence over Partisanship: Party Affiliation Does Not Affect the Selection of School District Superintendents.” American Sociological Review 90 (4): 561–593. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224251346993

Abstract: 

In recent decades, affective polarization and partisan animosity have risen sharply in the United States. To what extent have these trends affected hiring decisions? I examine partisan biases in hiring by considering the case of school district superintendent appointments: chief executives of local U.S. elementary/secondary education systems. I analyze mixed-methods data on a decade of hiring outcomes in Florida and California from 2009 to 2019. Despite rising polarization, the data consistently show that partisan affiliation is not a primary factor in these hiring decisions. Quantitative analyses reveal no significant relationship between changes in board partisan composition and superintendent hiring outcomes within school districts. I find no relationship between board-level partisan composition and superintendent exits. Qualitative findings show hiring decisions are primarily shaped by evaluations of candidates’ interpersonal skills and competence, even among board members with strong partisan views on other policy issues. Board members discuss a strong commitment to building consensus in their selections. While I cannot rule out very small effects, these results show that school boards do not routinely prioritize applicants from their own political party. This study advances research on affective polarization and social closure by demonstrating the contingent nature of partisan affiliation on decision-making and by providing evidence of a strong respect for professionalism in a critical U.S. public sector setting.

Author:

Greer Mellon, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Brown University

PSTC &  Annenberg Institute for School Reform 

greermellon.com 

New Publication: “Home but Not Free: Rule‐breaking, Withdrawal, and Dignity in Reentry” by Gillian Slee

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Slee, Gillian. 2025. “Home but Not Free: Rule-Breaking, Withdrawal, and Dignity in Reentry.” Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12408

Abstract: Research on reentry has documented how material hardship, network dynamics, and carceral governance impede reintegration after prison, but existing scholarship has left underdeveloped other instances in which adverse outcomes stem from the institution’s socioemotional dynamics and people’s practical and emotional responses to bureaucratic indignities. Drawing on more than 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork with people on parole in Philadelphia, this study analyzes three sources of adversity that occur because reentry institutions’ or actors’ practices are incompatible with the behaviors and needs of system-involved people. I demonstrate how unrecognized vulnerability, discretion’s benefits and drawbacks, and risk-escalating rules contribute to adverse outcomes—withdrawal and rule-breaking—that sometimes lead to reincarceration. In failing to account for aspects of human agency and dignity, such as the ability to provide for oneself and to advance personal and familial well-being, parole guidelines often prompted withdrawal and subversion.

Gillian Slee is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia. Her work focuses on understanding and ameliorating inequality in American state processes. To this end, she has studied issues and institutions with far-reaching consequences: public defense, eviction, child protective services, and parole.

Her projects ask questions such as: How do interactions and relationships shape outcomes for people involved in large government systems? What (or who) drives bureaucrats’ discretion? How does material hardship influence the exercise of rights and citizenship?

With each of her projects, Slee aims to humanize key state processes and demonstrate how institutions’ relational dynamics shape inequality. She uses a range of methods—ethnography, in-depth interviews, and statistics—and has published her work in Criminology, Theory and Society, Social Service Review, Politics & Society, and Journal of Marriage and Family.

Slee completed her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton University in 2024. She earned her M.Phil. in Criminology at the University of Cambridge, where she was a Herchel Smith Harvard Scholar. Slee graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Social Studies and a minor in Psychology. She completed her postdoc at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), where Slee was the Gerhard Casper Fellow in Rule of Law. Her research has been recognized with Centennial, Charlotte Elizabeth Procter, Marion J. Levy, Jr., and P.E.O. Scholar fellowships.

New Publication: “The Internal Effects of Corporate ‘Tech Ethics’: How Technology Professionals Evaluate Their Employers’ Crises of Moral Legitimacy” by Rachel Y. Kim

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Kim, Rachel Y. 2025. “The Internal Effects of Corporate ‘Tech Ethics’: How Technology Professionals Evaluate Their Employers’ Crises of Moral Legitimacy.” Socio-Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaf043

Abstract: Big Tech firms use “tech ethics” to regain public trust and influence employees’ moral evaluations of their firms and their work. Unlike traditional professions, technology professionals lack institutionalized professional ethics. Consequently, corporate “tech ethics” serve as a primary source of formal ethical guidance. Analyzing thirty-two interviews with technology professionals employed at US-based Big Tech firms, this study demonstrates that respondents’ perceptions of the effectiveness of corporate “tech ethics” closely align with how they evaluate their firms’ crises and the ethicality of their own work. Those who trusted “tech ethics” tended to believe that their companies had adequately addressed their crises and defended their work as following rigorous ethical standards, while those who were doubtful or distrusting reported greater moral unease and professional disillusionment. By highlighting the effects of organizational legitimization strategies, this study contributes to research on the role of moral perceptions in professional employees’ work experiences and career trajectories.

Rachel Y. Kim is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at Harvard University. Her research interests include economic sociology, cultural sociology, the sociology of work and professions, science and technology studies, and qualitative methods. She is particularly interested in how professionals in the tech industry, especially in Silicon Valley, navigate issues of expertise, innovation, and moral legitimacy in the context of corporate ethics.

Rachel holds a B.A. in Sociology with Honors from the University of Chicago (2019). Before graduate school, she worked as a project coordinator at Loevy & Loevy, a civil rights law firm in Chicago.

New Publication: “Reclaiming the Class Struggle in Africa Today: Four Propositions on the Revolutionary Potential of the Urban Working Class in Africa and a Marxist Critique of Factory-Workerism” by Joshua Lew McDermott

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McDermott, Joshua Lew. 2025. “Reclaiming the Class Struggle in Africa Today: Four Propositions on the Revolutionary Potential of the Urban Working Class in Africa and a Marxist Critique of Factory-Workerism.” International Critical Thought 15(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2025.2514615

Abstract: In Africa, the working class is defined less by industrial employment, stable jobs, and trade-unionism than by informal, flexible, casual, and precarious employment, by non-wage and own-account work. This is not an anomaly nor a passing phenomenon, but rather indicative of the inherent nature of capitalism. These realities do not, however, signal the end of socialist struggle nor the irrelevance of Marxism in Africa. This article challenges the trend of decentering class and capitalism in understanding so-called subaltern populations in urban Africa, while also identifying and tracing the history of, and countering what this article refers to as “factory-workerist” notions of socialism and class struggle that are dismissive of non-industrial urban workers and, by extension, the possibility of revolutionary socialism taking shape in Africa. In contrast, this work draws upon classical Marxism, especially Marx’s thoughts on the Silesian Weaver Uprising, to offer four propositions on the potential for successful socialist struggle comprised of irregular workers today, while also highlighting several cases of revolutions and social upheavals led by irregular workers in the 21st century across Africa and the world that illustrate the potential of socialist movements led by a predominately irregular working class. 

Joshua McDermott is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Southeastern Louisiana University. He was recently awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowship to conduct research and teach at Njala University in Bo, Sierra Leone. His research centers on irregular and informal labor in Africa, particularly how college-educated youth navigate informal economies amid structural unemployment.

While in Sierra Leone, Dr. McDermott will continue fieldwork for his first book, focusing on the political behavior and lived experiences of educated but economically marginalized individuals. His work addresses a globally relevant issue: the widespread nature of informality, which affects the livelihoods of a majority of the world’s workforce. Dr. McDermott aims to understand how informal labor impacts economic development, political stability, and community resilience.