Sociology Lens

Category: Sociology of Organizations & Work

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Upholding Equity Across Different Campuses

            In the past decade the United States has witnessed an influx of conversations regarding sexual assault on college campuses. Cases like Brock Turner and Chanel Miller or Emma Sulkowicz became national examples of the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses as well as universities’ failures to protect survivors and seek justice.  While there is much work left to be done, there seems to be a more concrete understanding of the frequency of sexual assault and the injustice...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Research Brief / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Sociology of the Family

Pregnancy and childbirth in prison

“I’ve got baggy tops, so I just always have to hide my bump, and like most people couldn’t recognise that I’m pregnant, so that’s a good thing”. With a prison population of approximately 9000 women in England, it is estimated that approximately 600 pregnancies and 100 births occur annually.  Despite there being an extensive literature on the sociology of reproduction, pregnancy and childbirth, there has been scarce qualitative research looking specifically at pregnant prisoners. Our recently published open access paper:...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Sociology of Organizations & Work

25 Years of Gender, Work and Organisation- ‘Embodying the political resistance we live’

At the start of Gender, Work and Organization’s 25th Anniversary year, we reflected on the journal’s trajectory and outlined an editorial direction for the journal (Pullen, Lewis and Ozkazanc-Pan, 2019). Ending this year, we ask ourselves what a journal focusing on critical approaches to gender requires in the current socio-political climate? It is tempting to revisit our contributions to the journal and outline what we might like to see submitted in the future; we might like to cross-reference developments in...

Class & Stratification / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Is there a long-term impact of social background on graduates’ careers?

It is a well-known finding that children’s social background affects their educational attainment. But does parental background still matter for attaining a more prestigious job after graduating from university? In a recently published article, we examined graduates’ occupational trajectories to identify a potential long-term impact of social background on individuals’ working careers. We argued that the influence of family background on graduates’ careers might vary across the life course, and it is, therefore, important to take into account changes across...

News / Political & Economic Sociology / Population & Demography / Research Methodologies / Science & Technology / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Social Welfare / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The Campbell Collaboration selects Wiley as new publishing partner

    John Wiley and Sons Inc. and the Campbell Collaboration are pleased to announce that the Campbell Library has selected Wiley as its publishing partner beginning in 2019. Campbell is the pre-eminent international network publishing high quality, transparent, reliable and policy-relevant evidence syntheses and maps in the social sectors to promote positive social and economic change by enabling evidence-based policy and practice. These systematic reviews and evidence maps are published in Campbell Systematic Reviews, a fully open access online...

Opinion / Social Welfare / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Honesty is the best policy in healthcare, but how to make it a reality?

In healthcare, as in all walks of life, things go wrong. However, the consequences of an activity going wrong in healthcare can be a matter of life or death. How a healthcare professional and their employer deals with an error is critical to maintain public trust and ensure that a mistake is not repeated. The tragic events of Mid-Staffordshire Foundation Trust and the Hyponatremia related deaths in Northern Ireland have bought into sharp relief the importance of professionals being open...

Class & Stratification / News / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Social Movements / Social Change / Social Theory / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The British Journal of Sociology: New Design Volume 70

As an editorial team we are keenly aware of the momentous changes that are taking place in the world of journal publishing, and fully intend to keep our own practices as a journal and as editors – everything from what we publish to how we review, and how quickly – under constant scrutiny in order to ensure that we stay as up to date and as relevant as we can be. So, it is with great pleasure that we announce...

Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Theory / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The Power in Writing a Good Note

Why study bureaucracy? Institutions and practices that we have tended to take for granted have recently been subjected to a new awareness and interest. For instance, Timothy Snyder, in his recent book On Tyranny (2017) argued for the importance of government institutions and their capacity to preserve the rule of law when faced with the rise and coming to power of authoritarian populist parties. Others, including key political scientists such as Francis Fukyama, Bo Rothstein, Paul DuGay add to this and point...

Applied Sociology / Opinion / Social Identity / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Mirror, mirror on the wall… which one of the healthcare team am I? Understanding healthcare practitioners’ professional identities and what role professional regulation plays

In this article, Policy Adviser Michael Warren outlines some of the themes and challenges that arise from the Professional Standards Authority’s work on understanding professional identity and regulation. The research can be found here. Think of it, someone comes up to you and asks: “who are you?”. Where do you start? It’s a query that calls into question your entire identity. One place to start is your occupation, or ‘professional identity’. You may even have more than one professional identity,...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / People / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Interview with Professor Alison Pullen, Editor-in-Chief of Gender, Work and Organization

  Alison  Pullen  is  Professor  of  Management  and  Organization  Studies at Macquarie  University,  Australia,  and  at the time of the interview, Otto Mønsted  Visiting Professor at Copenhagen  Business  School,  Department  of  Organization. Over the course of her career, Alison’s work has been concerned with analyzing and intervening in the politics of work as it concerns gender discrimination, identity politics, and organizational injustice.  Alison is joint Editor-in-Chief of Gender, Work and Organization, Associate Editor of Organization and sits on the editorial...

Opinion / Social Identity / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Employee well-being and versions of corporate-driven orthorexia

Context In 1997, Steven Bratman [2] launched the concept of ‘orthorexia’, derived from the Greek “orthos”, meaning “correct or right” and “orexis”, meaning “hunger or appetite”. He described his own “pathological fixation on eating proper food”; including ritualized eating of vegetables picked no more than 15 minutes before consumption, and chewing each mouthful at least 50 times before swallowing. Following this, social discourse [1, 5, 12] has defined healthy nutrition as eating simply, ‘pure’, ‘clean’, wholesome, non-processed diets; diets which...

Opinion / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Corruption, Formal and Informal

In a 2014 review article for Sociology Compass, David Jancsics outlined a ‘minimal consensus’ on what constitutes corruption, drawn from his survey of literature on corruption in sociology, economics, organizational studies, political science and anthropology. The four poles of this consensus, Jancsics suggests, are that corruption is the “informal/illegal and secret exchange of formally allocated resources”; that “at least one corrupt party has to have formal membership/affiliation or at least a contractual relation with the organization from which the resources...

Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Responsibility in Recognition

Officials need to be held responsible for recognizing and acknowledging systems of inequality and injustice within their organizations. As leaders, as deans, as CEOs, as presidents, as the heads of operations for companies, educational institutions, governments, etc. individuals and teams of individuals holding leadership positions should be held accountable for the systems of inequality that are allowed to persists under their leadership. A now infamous example of such an instance is the University of Missouri’s former president Timothy Wolfe. Wolfe’s...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The VA Backlog

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs handles the claims, benefits, and memorial services for veterans as well as provide services for their spouses and dependents. However a long-standing problem with this office is the expected turn around with claims processing that often leaves many veterans and their families without adequate healthcare or other benefit support. Given the debate in the United States with the Affordable Care Act and its comparability to other Western Hemisphere countries that have initiated universal healthcare,...

Opinion / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Top stories

What does ‘disruptive innovation’ disrupt?

At the end of last week, Ellen MacArthur’s second Disruptive Innovation Festival came to a close, having dedicated the first three weeks of November “to exploring the ideas and innovations which are shaping our changing economy, connecting participants directly with the world’s most forward-looking start-ups, entrepreneurs, designers, thought-leaders and policymakers via a unique collaborative online format.” While the Festival was in full swing (although not apparently in response to it), Lee Vinson, a Science & Technology Studies professor at Stevens...

Books and arts / Class & Stratification / History of Sociology / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Buying Time: Stefano Sgambati’s Sociology of Money, Debt & Finance

Writing for the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog yesterday, David Graeber warned that we may be heading towards yet another crisis of the kind we saw in 2007–08. In his Comment, Graeber takes to task George Osborne’s 2015 Mansion House speech (or rather the logic underpinning it), in which Osborne made a commitment to run a budget surplus in ‘normal times’, much to the consternation of dozens of academic economists. It seems that the utterly misleading and moralizing analogies so...