In keeping with traditional sociological concerns about order and disorder, this essay addresses the dark side of organizations. To build a theoretical basis for the dark side as an integrated field of study, I review four literatures in order to make core ideas of each available to specialists in the others. Using a Simmelian-based case comparison method of analogical theorizing, I first consider sociological constructs that identify both the generic social form and the generic origin of routine nonconformity: how things go wrong in socially organized settings. Then I examine three types of routine nonconformity with adverse outcomes that harm the public: mistake, misconduct, and disaster produced in and by organizations. Searching for analogies and differences, I find that in common, routine nonconformity, mistake, misconduct, and disaster are systematically produced by the interconnection between environment, organizations, cognition, and choice. These patterns amplify what is known about social structure and have implications for theory, research, and policy.
The legal and administrative apparatus responsible for the social control of organizations relies extensively on the deterrent effects of punishment. This strategy presumes a rational choice model of organizational misconduct that de-contextualizes decision making, emphasizing consequences while ignoring how preferences are formed. I raise three challenges to the rational choice/deterrence model of social control: 1) research and theory on decision making, 2) a sociological paradigm that situates individual action in a structure/culture/agency nexus that influences interpretation, meaning, and action at the local level, and 3) an analysis of the Challenger launch decision at NASA as situated action, showing how structure, culture, and history shaped preferences and choice. These challenges suggest a need to reorient regulatory activity toward the social context of decision making. I conclude with a research agenda to explore the relationship between situated action, preference formation, rational choice, and decisions to violate in organizational misconduct.Management decisions in the business world that value competitive and economic success more highly than the well-being of workers, consumers, or the general public so often have come to public attention that today's most widely accepted model of corporate criminality portrays managers of profit-seeking organizations as "amoral calculators" whose illegal actions are motivated by rational calculation of costs and opportunities (Kagan and Scholz, 1984). Driven by pressures from the competitive environment, managers will violate the law to attain desired organizational goals unless the anticipated legal penalties (the expected costs weighed against the probability of delaying or avoiding them) exceed additional benefits the firm could gain by violation.The amoral calculator model locates the cause of business misconduct in the calculations of individual decision makers. It reflects the logic of sociological rational choice theory (Hechter, 1987;Friedman and Hechter, 1988; J.S. Coleman, 1990; Hechter and Kanazawa 1997), but with one important distinction. When decision makers' calculations of costs and benefits are tainted by self-interest, economics, or politics so that intentional
This symposium brings together the theory and practice of public sociology. The introduction sets out the meanings of public sociology, emphasizing its plurality and its relation to multiple publics. From there, it frames public sociology in relation to policy, professional, and critical sociologies. This constellation of the division of sociological labor varies over time and between countries. We argue for a normative model of antagonistic interdependence, which holds all four types in equilibrium. The core of the symposium contains six autobiographical case studies of the practice of public sociology, all from Boston College. In different ways, each case study responds to the issues raised in the introduction. The conclusion to the symposium is a manifesto for public sociologies, setting out the implications of the case studies for sociology's relation to society. discipline, beginning on their own doorstep at Berkeley. It was the return of the repressednot for the first time, nor for the last. What applies to the discipline applies to the individual. Sociologists often enter the discipline with questions of social justice and inequality uppermost in their minds, stimulated by their undergraduate teachers. Graduate school seeks to expel that moral moment through a variety of disciplinary techniques-standardized courses, regimented careers, intensive examination, the lonely dissertation, the refereed publication, all captured by the all-powerful CV. Moral commitment takes cover, goes underground. It may reappear in private life or blossom forth after tenure-if one gets that far. Again, moral commitment is not banished, only repressed. It's still there like a subterranean geyser, forcing its way to the surface, driving sociology onto new terrains. What would happen if, rather than repressing the moral moment of sociology, we were to give it room to breath, recognize it rather than silence it, reflect on it rather than repress it? Would it inspire the development of science, or spell its demise? Would it enhance the legitimacy of sociology, or end its credibility? How vulnerable is science to an examination of its foundational values, to deploying its findings in the policy arena, to promoting dialogue about issues of public concern? While there are always risks and dangers in bringing sociology to a wider non-academic audience, the potential benefits are great-both to sociology and its non-academic audiences. Indeed, perhaps we have no alternative. At least, such is the presumption of this discussion paper. The first step is to name it-public sociology-a sociology that seeks to bring sociology to publics beyond the academy, promoting dialogue about issues that affect the fate of society, placing the values to which we adhere under a microscope. What is important here is the multiplicity of public sociologies, reflecting the multiplicity of publics-visible and invisible, thick and thin, active and passive, local, national and even global, dominant and counter publics. The variety of publics stretches from our stu...
Emirbayer and Johnson critique the failure to engage fully Bourdieu's relational analysis in empirical work, but are weak in giving direction for rectifying the problem. Following their recommendation for studying organizations-in-fields and organizations-as-fields, I argue for the benefits of analogical comparison using case studies of organizations as the units of analysis. Doing so maximizes the number of Bourdieusian concepts that can be deployed in an explanation. Further, it maximizes discovery of the oft-neglected links among history, competition, resources, sites of contestation and struggle, relations of dominance and domination, and reproduction of inequality. Perhaps most important, case studies can identify the connection between macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors in the formation and shaping of habitus. To support my claims empirically,
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