Tag: new publication

New Publication: “Competence over Partisanship” by Greer Mello

On By JY LinIn PublicationsLeave a comment

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: “Location Matters: Everyday Gender Discrimination in Remote and On-Site Work” by Laura Doering & András Tilcsik

On By Neha JangetiIn Announcements, PublicationsLeave a comment

Doering, Laura, and András Tilcsik. 2025. “Location Matters: Everyday Gender Discrimination in Remote and On-Site Work.” Organization Science 36(2):547–71. doi: 10.1287/orsc.2022.16949.

Read Article: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16949

Abstract: Remote work has dramatically transformed professional environments, sparking considerable scholarly interest in its impact on employees and organizations. Contributing to this burgeoning literature, we investigate how remote versus on-site work affects women’s experiences of gender discrimination. Given that work location can alter the gendered nature of interactions, we focus on everyday gender discrimination: slights and offenses that occur in interactions and are perceived by recipients as reflecting gender bias. Integrating gender frame theory and scholarship on virtual work, we argue that the gender frame tends to be less salient in remote settings. Thus, we predict that women experience less everyday gender discrimination when working remotely than on-site. Moreover, because the gender frame is likely to be more salient during on-site work for younger women and those who work with mostly men, we expect that these women experience a particularly pronounced reduction in everyday gender discrimination when working remotely. To test these predictions, we developed a new measure of everyday gender discrimination and conducted an original survey of 1,091 professional women who work in the same job both remotely and on-site. We find that women consistently report less everyday gender discrimination in remote versus on-site work. This effect is particularly pronounced for younger women and those who interact mainly with men. Overall, this study advances research on how work location shapes workers’ outcomes and experiences, enriches the literature on the trade-offs women face in virtual and on-site settings, and extends scholarship on the contextual factors shaping workplace discrimination.

New Publication: “Sousveillance Work: Monitoring and Managing-Up in Patrimonial Hollywood” by Julia M. Dessauer

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Dessauer, J.M. Sousveillance Work: Monitoring and Managing-Up in Patrimonial Hollywood. Qual Sociol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-024-09580-y

Abstract: How do workers come to know what their bosses need and want? This paper shows how laborers in patrimonial work environments learn to serve their bosses through bottom-up observation, rather than top-down instruction. The author uses the case of assistants in Hollywood to introduce the concept of sousveillance work, which is the labor of monitoring, anticipating, and fulfilling a boss’s mutable needs and wants. Drawing on 60 + interviews with professionals in Hollywood, the author reveals how sousveillance work helps assistants manage-up and mitigate volatility wrought by their patrimonial superiors. The concept of sousveillance work adds to research on labor and uncertainty in creative industries, and also helps to reveal how patrimonial systems are sustained in contemporary work environments.





New Publication: “The intergenerational reproduction of self-direction at work: Revisiting  Class and Conformity” by Kaspar Burger, Francesca Mele, Monica Johnson, Jeylan Mortimer & Xiaowen Han

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Kaspar Burger, Francesca Mele, Monica Johnson, Jeylan Mortimer, and Xiaowen Han. 2025. “The intergenerational reproduction of self-direction at work: Revisiting Class and Conformity.”  Social Forces. Online First https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article/doi/10.1093/sf/soaf016/7996444?utm_source=advanceaccess&utm_campaign=sf&utm_medium=email

Abstract: In his path-breaking monograph, Class and Conformity, Melvin Kohn reasoned that parents prepare their children for the same conditions of work that they themselves experience. Kohn and his colleagues’ research focused on the influence of parental self-direction at work on parental child-rearing values and practices, as well as the self-directed values of children. The intergenerational transmission of occupational self-direction from parents to the succeeding generation of adult children, strongly implied by Kohn’s analysis, has not been empirically tested. Using two-generation longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study (N = 1139), we estimate a structural equation model to assess the intergenerational continuity of occupational self-direction. We find evidence supporting a key inference of Kohn’s analysis: that self-direction at work, a primary feature of jobs of higher social class standing, is transmitted across generations via self-directed psychological orientations, operationalized here as intrinsic work values. Intrinsic values also significantly predicted second-generation educational attainment, contributing further to the reproduction of socioeconomic inequality. The findings enhance understanding of the intergenerational transmission of advantage.

YDS data are publicly available at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research archive, University of Michigan (ICPSR 24881).

New Publication: Work After Lawful Status: Formerly Undocumented Immigrants’ Gendered Relational Legal Consciousness and Workplace Claims-making

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Tenorio, Luis Edward. “Work After Lawful Status: Formerly Undocumented Immigrants’ Gendered Relational Legal Consciousness and Workplace Claims-making.” Law & Society Review. 58(3): 383-414.  https://doi.org/10.1017/lsr.2024.29

Abstract: Undocumented status impedes immigrants’ workplace claims to legal rights and better treatment. But what happens when they obtain lawful permanent residency – does the reluctance to make claims in the workplace change? If so, how? Drawing on timeline interviews, I examine changes in the relational legal consciousness and reported workplace claims-making of 98 formerly undocumented Latino immigrants. Most respondents reported increased willingness to engage in, and follow through with, workplace claims. However, gendered differences emerged. Men’s claims largely revolved around wage negotiations, moving to a better paying position, and enforcement of legal rights with an attached monetary value. They were also more likely to frame claims as legal rights. In contrast, women’s claims largely revolved around better work treatment, access to job benefits, and workplace accommodations. They were also more likely to frame claims as moral rights. I explain these outcomes as a function of three relational mechanisms: lawful status being understood relative to experiences being undocumented; gendering in the legalization process; and social ties promoting gendered expectations of lawful permanent residency. My findings highlight the importance of gendered differences in relational legal consciousness and how lived reference points (e.g., prior undocumented experience) inform how legal consciousness changes over time.

New Publication: “Beyond the ‘wow’ factor: the analytic importance of boredom in qualitative research” by Tair Karazi-Presler & Edna Lomsky-Feder

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Karazi-Presler, Tair and Edna Lomsky-Feder. 2024. “Beyond the ‘Wow’ Factor: The Analytic Importance of Boredom in Qualitative Research.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2024.2400154

Abstract: In this paper, we perceive boredom as a potential resource for creativity in qualitative research. We present three main arguments. First, boredom is often an inevitable stage on the way to research excitement and can even serve as an important clue leading to analytic surprises. Second, there is a methodological need to reflect on boredom in order to understand the researcher’s perception of meaningfulness and meaninglessness. Particularly, we show how the ‘interview society’, characterized by the dominance of the therapeutic discourse, shapes researchers’ expectations regarding what is considered ‘interesting’ or ‘boring.’ Finally, the researcher’s experience of boredom may provide insights into the very phenomenon under investigation. We flesh out these arguments by showing how the researcher’s boredom during interviews reflects the interviewees’ emotional style, expected of (women) managers in the neoliberal culture: emotional restraint and a façade of rationality and objectivity.

New Publication: Inequality and the Status Window: Inequality, Conflict, and the Salience of Status Differences in Conflicts over Resources

On By Dilan ErenIn PublicationsLeave a comment

New Publication by Kevin T. Leicht at RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Read the article here.

Abstract The study of the relationship between social status and inequality has a distinguished history. Inequality scholars outside this tradition have paid more attention to social status in response to a set of seemingly persistent paradoxes that defy easy explanation. I add to the tradition by developing the concept of status windows and status windows overlap to partially account for differences in the relationship between social status and inequality processes in low- and high-inequality environments. These concepts are tied to the functioning of social status in creating and maintaining inequality and to the characteristics of social networks that develop in (especially) high-inequality environments. I examine how the concepts of status windows and status window overlap can help explain some paradoxes in responses to heightened social inequality and recommend that research focus on understandings of status windows and status windows overlap to understand why social inequality continues unabated in some places.

New Publication: Within-job gender pay inequality in 15 countries

On By Dilan ErenIn Announcements, PublicationsLeave a comment

Led by Andrew Penner, the Comparative Organizational Inequality Network (COIN) has published a paper in Nature, Human Behaviour  that compares gender pay gaps and their firm, occupation, job segregation components and within job pay gaps using administrative data for fifteen countries. 

Read the article here.

Abstract Extant research on the gender pay gap suggests that men and women who do the same work for the same employer receive similar pay, so that processes sorting people into jobs are thought to account for the vast majority of the pay gap. Data that can identify women and men who do the same work for the same employer are rare, and research informing this crucial aspect of gender differences in pay is several decades old and from a limited number of countries. Here, using recent linked employer–employee data from 15 countries, we show that the processes sorting people into different jobs account for substantially less of the gender pay differences than was previously believed and that within-job pay differences remain consequential.

New Book: Everitt on Teacher Orientation and Training

On By Sarah MosseriIn Announcements, UncategorizedLeave a comment

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new book (Rutgers University Press) from OOW member, Judson Everitt.   Everitt is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Loyola University Chicago.  The book is titled, Lesson Plans: The Institutional Demands of Becoming a Teacher.
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