191 - 200 of 228 results for: SOC

This course presents a selection of influential ways of thinking about culture, media, technology, and institutions in contemporary societies. It is organized around different disciplinary and methodological traditions, including symbolic interactionism, Foucault, Bourdieu, feminist theory, neo-institutionalism, the sociology of translation, the e/valuation perspective, and racial capitalism, with a specific focus on how these concepts shed light on the interplay between media, culture, and institutions.

Why are some organizations more competitive than others?  This is one of the defining questions of the interdisciplinary research field known as strategic management.  In this seminar, we will survey the field of strategic management as seen through the lens of organization theory, touching on the four main theoretical approaches that have developed there.nnMost work in strategic management pays little attention to particular theoretical perspectives, and is organized more by the topic - the phenomenon being studied - such as market exit, growth, performance, mergers and acquisitions, innovation, and the like.  I have catalogued the research in strategic management both according to theoretical perspective and topic, and that structure is developed in this course.  Our goal is to help you to identify theoretical perspectives as you try to understand the strategy field.

Topics vary each quarter but may include: theories and processes of migration and immigrant incorporation; historical and contemporary perspectives on race, ethnicity, and immigration; immigration law and policy; transnationalism; nations and nationalism.

Doctoral Research Seminar on Technology & Organizations

For students doing advanced research. Group comments and criticism on dissertation projects at any phase of completion, including data problems, empirical and theoretical challenges, presentation refinement, and job market presentations. Collaboration, debate, and shaping research ideas. Prerequisite: courses in organizational theory or social network analysis.

The social science literature on organizations assessed through consideration of the major theoretical traditions and lines of research predominant in the field. For PhD students only.

Designed for graduate students who are writing dissertations about American public opinion. Students participate in all phases of the research process and include questions on nationally representative surveys. Enrollment requires permission of the instructors. See the Notes for additional information.

Designed for graduate students who are writing dissertations about American public opinion. Students participate in all phases of the research process and include questions on nationally representative surveys. Enrollment is limited to members of the Laboratory for the Study of American Values.

In this course, we seek to understand economic markets as cultural institutions. Far from natural or inevitable entities, markets are social constructions that rely upon - and reproduce - particular shared understandings about how the world is and should be. In this course, we consider the cognitive, expressive, and normative aspects of culture in order to analyze the existence of markets, the forms they take, and the justifications for the effects they have. We begin by exploring the cultural constitution of market goods and actors. How do some, but not other, objects come to be exchanged via the market, and why do companies and consumers look and act the way they do? We then dig deeper into the key cultural forms and processes that enable and constrain economic phenomena. In what ways do classification, quantification, narrative, metaphor, and so on give rise to the market as we experience it, and who has the power to shape the way these processes take hold? Next, we delve into two special cases: money, which some hold to be impervious to social considerations, and cultural objects, which some hold to be impervious to market logic. Both turn out to be much more complicated. In the final part of the course, we explore cultural aspects of organizations and economic policymaking. The course readings are largely empirical research, so we will also critically discuss how sociologists use data and methods to build evidence