Best Organizations

Walter W. Powell is an American sociologist known for research on organizations, institutions, networks, and the production of knowledge. With Paul J. DiMaggio, he helped formulate the influential concept of institutional isomorphism, explaining why organizations in the same field often become incre...

Joan Acker was an American sociologist and feminist theorist known for showing that organizations are not gender-neutral. Her concept of gendered organizations explained how workplace structures, job definitions, interactions, and expectations can reproduce gender hierarchy. She later developed the...

Charles Perrow was an American sociologist known for research on organizations, technology, and risk. In Normal Accidents, first published in 1984, he argued that systems combining complex interactions with tight coupling are inherently vulnerable to unexpected, cascading failures. His framework has...

Mayer N. Zald was an American sociologist who lived from 1931 to 2012 and made influential contributions to organizational sociology and the study of social movements. With John D. McCarthy, he developed the resource mobilization approach, which examines how movements acquire money, labor, leadershi...

Arthur L. Stinchcombe was an American sociologist known for work on organizations, stratification, economic sociology, and historical research. His 1965 essay Social Structure and Organizations introduced the liability of newness, the idea that young organizations face distinctive risks because thei...

Diane Vaughan is an American sociologist whose research focuses on organizations, misconduct, decision-making, and the social production of failure. Her study of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster developed the concept of normalization of deviance, explaining how departures from expected sta...

Frank Dobbin is an American sociologist and Harvard University professor whose research focuses on organizations, employment practices, economic institutions, and inequality. He has examined how corporations interpreted equal employment opportunity law and developed personnel systems intended to man...

Michel Crozier was a French sociologist whose work focused on bureaucracy, organizations, power, and institutional change. In The Bureaucratic Phenomenon, first published in French in 1963, he used empirical studies of French workplaces to explain how rigid rules can create uncertainty, informal pow...

Christine L. Williams is an American sociologist whose research focuses on gender, work, occupations, and organizations. She introduced the term "glass escalator" to describe advantages that men may receive in occupations dominated by women, including faster movement toward higher-status or manageri...