Category: Uncategorized

Job Posting: Senior-Level Faculty Position at Brown University

On By Sarah MosseriIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The Brown University Department of Sociology seeks applications for an appointment at the rank of Associate or Full Professor of Sociology, to begin July 1, 2017, for a scholar with a specialization in the area of organizational studies and entrepreneurship. Within this focus, we particularly seek candidates who conceive their work broadly, and whose work contributes to the larger discipline of sociology. The new faculty member will join a growing community of scholars associated with Brown’s newly created Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship and will participate actively in teaching undergraduates interested in organizational studies and entrepreneurship. A successful candidate must have an outstanding record of scholarly achievement, a proven record of research funding, and demonstrated excellence in undergraduate and graduate teaching and advising.

Candidates should submit: (1) a cover letter describing research completed and planned, (2) a curriculum vitae, and (3) the names of five references who would be contacted at the appropriate time by the search committee. To receive full consideration applications must be received by October 15, 2016. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled or the search is closed. Brown is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, and women and minorities are enthusiastically encouraged to apply. Send materials to: apply.interfolio.com/37132

Job Posting: Professor of the Practice Position at Duke University

On By Sarah MosseriIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The Markets and Management Studies Program (MMS) at Duke University seeks applicants for an open rank Professor of the Practice position, a non-tenure track but regular rank faculty position.

The Professor of the Practice track at Duke is parallel to the tenure track, and affords possibility for reappointment and promotion.  The position will come with an initial four-year contract that is renewable, subject to review, beginning with a start date in July or August 2017.  The position will be located administratively in the Department of Sociology with teaching responsibilities in Duke’s MMS Program.  A Ph.D. in Sociology or an allied social science field (Psychology, Economics, Management, Marketing, Organizational Behavior and so on) is required, along with two years of teaching experience.  The position will have a 3-3 teaching load, which is adjustable downward for possible administrative duties in MMS.

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ILR Review: CALL FOR PAPERS

On By Richard BentonIn Calls for Papers, Conferences, UncategorizedLeave a comment

ILR Review: CALL FOR PAPERS

A Conference and Special Issue Honoring David B. Lipsky

Conflict and Its Resolution in the Changing World of Work

The ILR Review (http://ilr.sagepub.com) invites submissions for a conference and subsequent special issue devoted to the role that conflict and conflict resolution play in the changing world of work. Ariel Avgar (University of Illinois; avgar@illinois.edu), Alexander Colvin (Cornell University; ajc22@cornell.edu), and Harry Katz (Cornell University; hck2@cornell.edu) will serve as coordinators of this special issue. Scholars interested in participating should submit a complete draft of their paper by April 15, 2017. Authors will be notified by July 1, 2017, if their paper has been accepted for presentation at the conference. Prospective contributors are urged to consult any of the coordinators regarding preliminary proposals or ideas for papers.

Authors whose papers are accepted will be invited to a conference sponsored by the ILR School at Cornell University honoring David B. Lipsky and recognizing his many contributions to the field of conflict resolution. The conference will be held in Ithaca, New York, in November 2017. Conference expenses will be subsidized by Cornell University. Papers presented at the conference should be suitable for immediate submission to external reviewers. A subset of authors will be asked to submit their papers to the ILR Review with the expectation that their papers will be published in a special issue if they pass the external review process. Papers that are deemed of good quality but not selected for the special issue may be considered for publication in a regular issue of the journal.

Conflict and its resolution play a pivotal role in the workplace and organizations and help to explain a range of important outcomes at different levels of analysis. While conflict is an inherent part of the workplace and organizational life, the past 40 years have seen a dramatic and consequential transformation in the way it is resolved and managed. In the workplace arena, individual employment rights disputes have supplanted collective bargaining as the most widespread mode of conflict resolution, with declining unionization and strike rates and rising litigation numbers. At the same time, a growing proportion of organizations have turned to alternative methods for dealing with conflict, such as mediation and arbitration that, among other things, are designed to bypass approaches that rely primarily on traditional litigation or managerial authority. New organizational structures and work practices have changed the very nature of conflict and require new and innovative conflict management approaches.

This changing landscape has given rise to important questions about the antecedents and consequences associated with new forms of conflict and the wide array of methods used to manage and resolve it. While scholars in a variety of disciplines have begun to address these questions, there is much more we need to know. Research on alternative conflict resolution methods, for example, has focused more on explaining how and why such methods have emerged and much less on how they affect employees, organizations, and society more generally. In addition, existing studies have primarily focused on conflict resolution in the context of traditional employment arrangements, with far less attention paid to new forms of work and employment models. Existing research has also focused heavily on conflict resolution in the United States, with less attention given to international and comparative perspectives.

The study of conflict and its resolution has been fragmented, with little integration of theoretical and empirical insights across disciplines. Research examining conflict and its resolution at the individual or group levels, for example, does not incorporate relevant findings from organizational and societal level studies, and vice versa. Our theories need to integrate an understanding of how factors at multiple levels of analysis affect conflict, alternative approaches to conflict resolution, and related outcomes.

For this conference and special issue, we are particularly interested in papers that address underexplored areas of research and that incorporate diverse disciplinary perspectives. We welcome papers that are empirical or conceptual; that include international perspectives; and that make use of a range of methodologies, including surveys, experiments, case studies, archival studies, or legal research.

Potential topic areas include, but are not limited to:

  • New and emerging conflict resolution techniques in union and nonunion settings
  • Conflict and conflict resolution practices in different national settings and their implications for theory in this area
  • The relationship between alternative work arrangements and workplace conflict and conflict management
  • The influence of new employment models on conflict and conflict resolution
  • The adoption of conflict resolution practices in small and entrepreneurial firms
  • The link between conflict resolution methods and the level and nature of conflict in organizations
  • The impact of conflict resolution practices on employee, group, organizational, and societal outcomes
  • The implications of internal conflict resolution practices for employee access to justice
  • The relationship between legal, economic, and competitive pressures and workplace conflict and its resolution
  • Explaining individual usage patterns of various conflict resolution practices
  • Advances in the field of negotiation

To submit a paper for consideration, please go to http://ilr.sagepub.com and click on “Submit a Manuscript.” After you have logged into the manuscript submission website, be sure to fill in the “Special Issue” option.

Use the norm of reciprocity to get constructive feedback on your work

On By Guest ContributorIn Commentary, UncategorizedLeave a comment

By Howard Aldrich

In popular fiction, authors are often portrayed as isolated and tortured souls, locked away in a garret apartment or in a cabin in the forest, producing their great works without benefit of human companionship. In reality, writing is an extremely social activity, highly dependent upon an individual’s network of family and friends. Peer networks play in a particularly important role in moving writing from solipsistic doodling to prose that others want to read. Let me suggest one way in which social relationships are critical: finding people willing to offer critically constructive feedback on the work.

When your draft is completed, how will you know what reception it will receive from the intended readers? When I talk to academic writers about this question, I point out that the most risky action an author can take is to submit to a journal a paper that no one else has yet read. Although it seems incredibly shortsighted, I often talk to people who’ve done exactly that – – they claim that they really couldn’t find anybody they thought would be a good reviewer. Thus, to get feedback on their work, they plunged ahead and sent it out for review.

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Berlin Summer School in Social Sciences

On By Sarah MosseriIn Announcements, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Berlin Summer School in Social Sciences
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Linking Theory and Empirical Research
Berlin, July 17 – 28, 2016

We are delighted to announce the 6th Berlin Summer School in Social Sciences. The summer school aims at promoting young researchers by strengthening their methodological understanding in linking theory and empirical research. The two weeks’ program creates an excellent basis for the advancement of their current research designs.

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Member Request: Unpublished/In-press Studies of Social Class

On By Sarah MosseriIn Announcements, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Dear colleagues,

As part of an ongoing meta-analysis, I am writing to request any unpublished and in-press studies of social class. Because there are competing operationalizatons of this construct, this request may be a bit cumbersome. However, I am most interested in work that has used multiple measures from the following list:

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Call for Papers: The New Economy ASA Pre-Conference

On By Sarah MosseriIn Conferences, Seattle 2016, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Call for Papers

The New Economy

ASA pre-conference hosted by the Economic Sociology Section

Economic Sociology Section of the ASA is pleased to announce a one-day conference on The New Economy to be held on August 19, 2016 at the University of Washington, Seattle.

The crises of late-stage capitalism has led to a series of crises, including global threats to sustainability, security and democracy. It has also created technologies and opportunities that are giving rise to new forms of organization, new systems of work, new markets, new global flows of people, new goods and capital, and new institutional and cultural frameworks. These macro-level changes, in turn, result in profound transformations of social life at the microlevel: new social identities, new forms of adaption, and the new sites of struggle and resistance. The city of Seattle is a particularly fertile ground for addressing these concerns, given its rich and important history of innovation, labor movements and its position as one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S.

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Can you live up to the titles you choose for your papers?

On By Sarah MosseriIn Commentary, UncategorizedLeave a comment

By Howard Aldrich 

Which of these two papers, on the same theme, would you read first: “Patterns of Vandalism during Civil Disorders as an Indicator of Target Selection” or “Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities of the 2011 Riots”? The former is wordy and boring, not reflecting the passion and chaos that typically characterize riots, whereas the latter is cheeky and informative, conveying a sense of an author who’s keen to connect with readers. Sadly, the boring title was chosen by my co-author and I in 1972 for our otherwise well-executed study of civil disorders in US cities in the late 1960s, thus consigning it to the dustbin of academic history. It reported on the only large-scale longitudinal study of small businesses that were at risk of being targeted and convincingly showed that there was an implicit logic to the choice of targets by people involved. Despite being published in the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association, it has been cited only 64 times in the past 43 years. By contrast, the “Mad Mobs” book, published only a few years ago (2011), has already been cited 52 times.

IMG_20150517_154258
On a vaporetto in Venice

I believe some, but not all, of the difference in the perceived usefulness of these two papers reflects their authors’ choices of titles.

So, what makes for a “good” title? Let me offer four suggestions, based on my experience with writing dozens of titles, good and bad.

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Call for Reviewers: Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of Academy of Management

On By Sarah MosseriIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of Academy of Management is looking for reviewers. OMT received/ is receiving a large number of submissions using the following keywords

  • Occupations, Professions and Work
  • Inequality/Stratification
  • Organizational Design, Structure and Control
  • Status and Reputation
  • Work and Family

and is looking for reviewers to match these topics.

Graduate students, junior faculty, and other new scholars are welcome, as well as those not planning to attend the conference (although, as always, please consider submitting your work!).

You can sign-up to review at http://review.aom.org or submit at http://submission.aom.org.