Graduate Sociology at SUNY Albany

Area of Specialization: Work, Economy & Organizations

The University at Albany Sociology Department is an excellent place to study work, economy, and organizations. Several faculty focus their research in this area and many others address work-related themes in the context of research on family, community, gender, race/ethnicity, and demographic trends. Many graduate students choose a work- or organizations-related subfield as one of their two areas of specialization. The faculty have exceptionally broad research interests in this area, employ a wide range of methodologies in their research, and draw research questions from diverse theoretical orientations. Among the research topics that faculty and graduate students have addressed recently are: bureaucracy and its alternatives, cross-cultural comparisons of work and organizations, economic stratification, entrepreneurship and its social supports, institutionalization, gender and work, labor markets, the medical division of labor, occupational mobility, organizational innovation, racial-ethnic inequality in the workplace, the school- to-work transition, the state and its impact on organizations and institutions, and work and family issues.

Courses regularly taught in the Sociology Department

• Soc 553 Social Stratification
• Soc 642 Sociology of Work
• Soc 654 Complex Organizations and Bureaucracy
• Soc 666 Special Topics: Gender, Race, and Work

Other Special Topics Courses may be offered periodically, such as economic sociology, or occupations and professions, if there is student demand for them. Related courses are often offered in other departments and colleges as well, such as in public administration, business, history, and psychology.

Recent Dissertations

• Morett, Christopher. 2006. "Work, Flexibility, Work Culture and Gender."
• Hulbert, Melanie. 2005. "Lessons From The Office: The Organizational Implementation of Work-Family Policies."
• Nagi, Omar. 2005. "Productivity Measures as a Source of the Displacement of Social Goals."
• McCormick, Charles. 2004. “The Big Project That Never Ends: Role and Task Negotiation Within an Emerging Occupational Community.”
• Tice, Jennifer. 2004. “Harnessing Organizational Change: The Effect of Four Elements on Organizational Outcomes.”
• Laube, Heather. 2003 “Professional Goals and Political Commitments: Challenges for Feminist Academic Sociologists.”
• Popp, Anne Marie. 2003. “Childhood Nutrition Assistance Program: An Organizational Analysis.”
• Torlina, Jeff. 2003. “The Meaning of Working for Working Class Men: Recasting the Image of Blue Collar Work.”
• Wallingford, Kristen. 2003. “Markets, Networks and Identity: An Analysis of the Culturally Embedded Structure of Lesbian and Gay Businesses.”
  

Faculty in Work, Economy, and Organizations

FACULTY EMERITUS

Richard H. Hall
Ph.D. Ohio State University

Professor Hall has retired after many years as a Distinguished Service Professor in the sociology department. Professor Hall has had a strong interest in work and organizations throughout his career. He served two terms as editor of Work and Occupations. He recently completed research on work satisfaction in China and the U.S. Earlier, he conducted several studies of the nature of the professions and developed a widely used scale on professional attitudes. He has studied the effect of organizational arrangements on the manner in which work is conducted in health maintenance organizations. He has also had a strong interest in the interface between work and organizations. Professor Hall is the author of a famous textbook in organizational sociology, Organizations: Structures, Processes, and Outcomes, published by Prentice Hall. This text is currently in its Ninth Edition (2004), and is now co-authored with Pamela S. Tolbert.

REGULAR FACULTY

Elizabeth Popp Berman
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

Professor Berman studies organizations, economic sociology, and science and technology. She also has interests in the professions, historical methods, and institutional theory. Her current research asks why universities have transformed their relationship with the marketplace in the last few decades, and argues that this change was driven by the state, and resulted indirectly from policymakers’ adoption of a new frame which emphasized the role of innovation in driving economic growth. She is beginning a project that explores how new ideas about the economy emerge and are eventually translated into policy.

Representative publications:

• Berman, Elizabeth Popp. 2008. “Why Did Universities Start Patenting? Institution-Building and the Road to the Bayh-Dole Act.” Social Studies of Science 38.
• Berman, Elizabeth Popp. 2008. “The Materiality of Patent Law: Explaining the Passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.” In Living in a Material World: On the Mutual Constitution of Technology, Economy and Society, edited by Trevor Pinch and Richard Swedberg. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Berman, Elizabeth Popp. 2006. “Before the Professional Project: Success and Failure at Creating an Organizational Representative for English Doctors.” Theory and Society 35:157-191.

Christine E. Bose
Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University

Professor Bose's academic interests lie in the areas of stratification, labor market studies, development issues, and gender studies. She has published in the areas of occupational prestige, gender and status attainment, employment and poverty among Latinas, gender and job satisfaction in China, the social impact of household technology, women's work at the turn of the century, global issues in carework, and on gender and development in Latin America. Professor Bose has published seven books related to gender and employment. The first is on women and occupation prestige scales; the second volume is on women's employment policy; the third is on the hidden aspects of women's work; and two others place a special emphasis on employment in the formal and informal economies of Latin America. Her most recent books are Women in 1900, Gateway to the Political Economy of the Twentieth Century (Temple 2001) and Global Dimensions of Gender and Carework (Stanford 2006).

Representative publications:

• Bose, Christine E. and Marzán, Gilbert. 2003. “Exodus from the Northeast: Changing Economic Opportunities for Puerto Rican Women and Men.” Latino(a) Research Review 5(2-3): 59-76.
• Bose, Christine E. 2001. Women in 1900: Gateway to the Political Economy of the 20th Century. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Bose, Christine E. and Rachel Bridges Whaley. 2001. “Sex Segregation in the U.S. Labor Force.” In Gender Mosaics: Social Perspectives, edited by Dana Vannoy. Boston: Roxbury.
  

Karyn Loscocco
Ph.D. Indiana University

Professor Loscocco's research focuses on work inequality, the structure of work and non-work lives, employee reactions to work, and the unique employment status of small business owners. Past publications have challenged the view that blue collar workers are instrumentally oriented to their work, looked at age and gender patterns in work structures and work attitudes within the U.S. and in Japan and China, examined the impact of internal labor markets on employee commitment to work, and addressed gender inequality in the small business sector. Professor Loscocco recently conducted a study of self-employed women and men to examine economic outcomes, definitions of success, and linkages between work and family lives. Other current research looks at the connections between work and family over the life course, and how race and gender intersect to affect work experiences. Professor Loscocco has served on the editorial boards of Work and Occupations and the Journal of Vocational Behavior.

Representative publications:

• 2007. Loscocco, Karyn and Glenna Spitze. “Gender Patterns in Provider Role Attitudes and Behavior.” Journal of Family Issues 28:934-954.
• 2005. Saidel, Judith R., and Karyn Loscocco. “Agency Leaders, Gendered Institutions, and Representative Bureaucracy.” Public Administration Review 65:158-170.
• 1997. Loscocco, Karyn A. “Work-Family Linkages among Self-Employed Women and Men.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 50:204-226.
  

Lawrence Raffalovich
Ph.D. Indiana University

Professor Raffalovich studies social inequality, economic sociology, and quantitative research methods. Recent publications investigate the distribution of national income between property owners and wage earners in the capitalist democracies, and the impact of political and economic institution on this aspect of economic inequality. Current projects include research on the relationship between income inequality and economic development, and on the characteristics of families at different locations on the family income distribution.

Representative publications:

• Lawrence E. Raffalovich, Shannon M. Monnat, and Hui-shien Tsao. 2007. “The Family Income Distribution: Income Components and Demographic Characteristics.” Presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, August, 2007.
• Lawrence E. Raffalovich and Elena Vesselinov. 2004. “The Power of Property in Comparative Perspective”. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 20:361-384.
• Lawrence E. Raffalovich. 1999. "Growth and Distribution: Evidence From a Variable-Parameter Cross-National Time-Series Analysis”. Social Forces 78:415-432.

James Zetka
Ph.D. Northwestern University

Professor Zetka is interested generally in occupations and professions, organizational theory, industrialization, and technological innovation. His recent research focuses on how and why radical innovations were introduced into the occupational division of labor governing American medicine. He has studied endoscopic technologies used in gastrointestinal medicine extensively. He is currently working on a project examining a host of radical innovations introduced into obstetrics and gynecology, including psychopathology as a diagnostic category, the primary care role, endoscopic and laparoscopic technologies, subspecialties, and women recruits.

Representative publications

• Zetka, James R., Jr. 2008. “Radical Logics and Their Carriers in Medicine: The Case of Psychopathology and American Obstetricians and Gynecologists.” Social Problems 55: forthcoming.
• Zetka, James R., Jr. 2003. Surgeons and the Scope. Ithaca, NY: ILR, Cornell University Press.
• Zetka, James R., Jr. 2001. "Occupational Divisions of Labor and Their Technology Politics: The Case of Surgical Scopes and Gastrointestinal Medicine.” Social Forces 79: 1495-1520.
  

-From 2007 brochure