About the Program
Organizations and markets have long been studied through a sociological lens that accounts for the social forces that enable and constrain action at the individual, group, and organizational levels. This work has developed in parallel in sociology departments and in business schools and encompasses a broad array of research methods ranging from ethnography to archival analysis. Given the explosion in digital trace data of social and economic interactions and the proliferation of computational and statistical methods for the analysis of such data sets, recent years have seen a surge of interest in computational approaches to the sociology of organizations and markets. The combination of sociological theory and computational methods is already starting to yield novel insights on topics as wide-ranging as innovation, entrepreneurship, careers and mobility, organizational culture, and labor market inequality.
The objective of the Designated Emphasis is to encourage and support theoretically grounded and methodologically sophisticated research on the sociology of organizations and markets. This training will be provided through course offerings in both Sociology and at Haas, as well as through participation in seminars and conferences organized by both groups.