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Disappearing Organization? Reshaping the Sociology of Organizations (Part 1)

Monday, 16 July 2018: 10:30-12:20
Location: 205C (MTCC NORTH BUILDING)
RC17 Sociology of Organization (host committee)

Language: English

This session proposal relates to a publication project. We plan a monograph issue of Current Sociology which showcases recent developments in the sociology of organizations, mapping out the most productive relationships between organization studies and core theoretical and empirical concerns in the discipline of sociology.

For some time now there has been a downcast among sociologists interested in organizations: The ideas and competences of organizational sociology have been increasingly coopted and reshaped by management and business studies. But the price paid for this has often been, with some exceptions, silo effect and an uncoupling from core sociological concerns such as power, inequality or social justice. Yet, the potential for significant contributions here remains strong, if the organization as an important social phenomenon is once more taken seriously. Only by uncovering the tangible and intangible aspects of organizing social reality are we in a position to reclaim a sociological “stance” on the study of organizations (Du Gay, 2014).

Contributions to this session will establish a clear connection between organizational phenomena and big social issues. The papers address the following questions:

  1. What qualifies organizations as social actors? What characterizes the organizational take on social reality?
  2. What does the organizational perspective contribute to the study of big social issues such as social inequality, big data, globalization, violence, the financial crises or migration?
  3. How might insights about emerging phenomena in sociology enliven the study of organizations as social actors?
  4. What is missing in the sociology of organization? Where is there potential for theory building?
Session Organizers:
Kathia SERRANO-VELARDE, University of Heidelberg, Germany, Cristina BESIO, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, Germany and Paul DU GAY, CBS Copenhagen, Denmark
Chair:
Uli MEYER, Technische Universität München, Germany
Oral Presentations
Prodigal Offspring: Sociology and Organisation Studies
Alan SCOTT, University of New England, Australia
The Decline of Organizational Sociology? An Empirical Analysis of Research Trends in Leading Journals across Half a Century
Michael GROTHE-HAMMER, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, Germany; Sebastian KOHL, Uppsala University, Sweden
Distributed Papers