41 - 50 of 61 results for: OB

This course covers research and theory on the origins and function of social norms. Topics include the estimation of public opinion, the function of norms as ideals and standards of judgment, and the impact of norms on collective and individual behavior. In addition to acquainting students with the various forms and functions of social norms the course will provide students with experience in identifying and formulating tractable research questions.

Social movement actors have helped initiate some of the major social, cultural, and political changes of the modern era. It is hard to imagine a major political or social reform that did not find its origins in a social movement or collective action. Social movement scholarship has flourished in political sociology and has recently gained a foothold in organizational theory as an explanation for innovation and organizational change. The purpose of this course is to provide you a roadmap for you to roam the terrain of movements and organizations, and be prepared to generate original research ideas that extend inquiry in your chosen area of research.nOrganizations and industries are frequent targets of collective action. Social movement activists frequently target organizations (e.g., corporations, universities) in order to bring about political and social change. Because most organizations are not democracies, movements must find ways to penetrate their closed boundaries if they are to have an influence inside organizations. At the same time, social movements make good use of organizations to carry out their own goals, creating structures that help them carry out their goals, reproduce their missions and tactics, and effectively generate collective action. Social movement organizations develop as vehicles for social change. One purpose of this course is to examine the complex relationship between social movements and organizations. nIn order to understand the empirical link between movements and organizations, we will rely on social movement and organizational theory. Like the phenomena they seek to explain, these theories are strongly intertwined. Since the 1970s, organizational theory has strongly influenced social movement theory. Mayer Zald, John McCarthy, and others imported ideas from the burgeoning field of organizational theory to move social movement scholarship beyond naïve conceptions of collective action and crowd behavior. Under the umbrella of resource mobilization and political process theory, organizational theory strongly influenced our understanding of the structural underpinnings of collective action. In recent years, social movement scholars have also begun examining the culture and social psychological dimensions of social movement organizations. nDuring most of the 1980s and 1990s, the link between social movement theory and organizational theory was a one-way road. Social movement scholars did most of the conceptual borrowing and organizational theorists, for the most part, ignored political sociology. However, in the last decade the opposing lane has been opened. The rise of economic sociology – a large theoretical domain interested in the overlap between market, political, and social processes – and a growing demand among organizational theorists (especially in institutional theory) for mechanisms that explain purposeful, strategic action (i.e., agency) created fertile grounds for social movement theory. In the first part of the 2000s, leading scholars from both fields began holding conferences and workshops and a few articles were published seeking to show the value of social movement concepts to organizational theory. This effort to link the two literatures has been well received. As more scholars began importing social movement concepts to explain organizational phenomena, organizational scholarship turned its attention (again) to issues related to power, politics, and contestation. The convergence of the two research streams has also begun to spur theoretical innovation, especially in bridging structural and cultural explanations for organizational change.nIn this course we will cover topics that explore how movements use organizations to propel change and that examine how movements help generate social change by targeting organizations. We will also evaluate the theoretical developments at the nexus of these two literatures, identifying the major innovations as well as looking for new research opportunities.

What is culture, and how can we model it? This course will survey theoretical frameworks for studying culture from a multidisciplinary perspective, ranging from evolutionary biology through sociology to economics. We will explore various methods for measuring culture and modeling cultural processes, including ethnography and survey data. Our focus, however, will be on measurement and modeling strategies that are made possible by the internet revolution and big data, including agent-based modeling, natural language processing and machine learning. Our class discussions will transition between theoretical abstraction and hands-on data analysis.

For students who seek experience and advanced training in empirical research methods. Analysis of experimental data with methods ranging from simple chi-square to multiple regression models, including an introduction to mixed models. Uses the free statistical computing package R. Prerequisite: An intro stats class (Same as Psych 252 -- Co-taught with Ewart Thomas).

This seminar investigates the ways in which categories emerge in markets and shape market behavior. It covers recent theoretical and empirical work on the sociology of categories and its foundations in cognitive science. Particular attention is given to formalization.

This pro-seminar is primarily for OB-macro PhD students who are developing dissertation ideas. The focus is on the theoretical argument underpinning the dissertation research. Students will regularly present and comment upon one another's ideas. Students can and are encouraged to take the pro-seminar multiple times.

This course will focus on psychological processes that occur within individuals that cannot be seen but whose existence can be inferred on the basis of people's behavior. Such processes, referred to as individual processes, include personality, emotions, perception, and learning. This course aims to introduce students to both theoretical and applied background on individual processes, with a special emphasis on their assessment, importance for person-job fit, and career planning. The course will include a hands-on section aimed at practicing test/survey development and delivering it in the online environment.

This seminar is intended for Ph.D. students who want to explore theoretical ideas and empirical findings related to intergroup processes, including conflict and cooperation; stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination; diversity, social identity, and group-based ideologies. The class is centered on graduate-level discussion of psychological and organizational perspectives on this broad topic. Participants are expected to (a) complete all readings and be prepared to discuss them in class; (b) submit weekly reaction papers based on the readings; (c) co-lead a portion of the class discussions; (d) write a final paper and present its main ideas to the group.

This is a course in the design of social research, with a particular emphasis on research field (i.e., non-laboratory) settings. As such, the course is a forum for discussing and developing an understanding of the different strategies social theorists employ to explain social processes, develop theories, and make these theories as believable as possible. In general, these issues will be discussed in the context of sociological research on organizations, but this will not be the exclusive focus of the course. A range of topics will be covered, for example: formulating and motivating research questions; varieties of explanation; experimental and quasi-experimental methods, including natural experiments; counterfactual models; conceptualization and measurement; sampling and case selection; qualitative and quantitative approaches. This course is particularly oriented toward developing an appreciation of the tradeoffs of different approaches. It is well suited to Ph.D. students working on qualifying papers and dissertation proposals.