guest blogger, Michael Sauder
I want to thank our recent guest blogger, Mario Small, who was finishing a book while doing this. I can’t wait to see it in print. You can learn more about Mario’s fascinating research on organizations and inequality at his website.
As part of our ongoing efforts to provide the best blogging in organizational theory, we’re excited to welcome Michael Sauder as our newest guest blogger. Michael is a sociologist at the University of Iowa. Michael’s research focuses on status and reputational rankings in organizational fields, examining the effects that rankings have on organizational activities. Last summer I blogged about his paper (coauthored with Wendy Espeland) published in AJS that looks at the effects of law school rankings. Michael has more excellent papers on the way. He has forthcoming papers in the American Sociological Review and Administrative Science Quarterly.
I’m happy to welcome Michael to orgtheory!
orgtheory.net 
Welcome Michael.
I am a big fan of the blog and of your paper with Wendy Espeland.
I hope you plan a post regarding your similarities to and differences from the folks in the Social Studies of Finance. You don’t use the term performativity in your paper on law schools, preferring instead reflexivity. So I wonder what you think is the differentiator between your work and theirs.
I look forward to reading lots of terrific posts.
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Alison Kemper
June 9, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Welcome! Glad to have you aboard!
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Fabio Rojas
June 9, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Wow, feel the Big 10 love. A coup for the orgtheory collective. Welcome Mike!
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Peter
June 9, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Great to have you!
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tf
June 9, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Our goal, of course, is to get a blogger from every Big 10 school. If you count Fabio twice (Michigan and Indiana) we’re almost halfway there.
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brayden
June 9, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Thanks for the welcome, everyone.
Alison: This is a good question, but I don’t know if I have much to add to the very nice discussion on performativity that took place here last year. I really like the work of, for example, MacKenzie and Callon, and (not surprisingly, given my interests) I tend to agree with a lot of the arguments–although I do side with those who find the term a bit “loose” and maybe unnecessary given the available vocabulary.
So why reactivity (and, yes, I realize that “reactivity” faces the same potential criticism of being “unnecessary given the available vocabulary”)? Personally, I like the term reactivity for what I study because of its historical grounding in the methods literature; I like how it draws attention to how measurements are never neutral and the fact that this is as true outside of the social science laboratory as it is in it. Similarly, I like the root of the word: “react” invokes the right ideas about what the measures are setting in motion. I should also say that we chose the term before “performativity” became quite so popular; the paper was a in process for a long time and much of our discussion was actually over the differences between “reactivity” and “reflexivity.” I point this out because we definitely weren’t trying to make any kind of statement by not using performativity.
Sorry for the long reply–I hope it is somewhat helpful.
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Michael
June 10, 2008 at 6:10 am
[…] Posted in brayden, sociology by brayden on August 18th, 2008 Michael Sauder, recent orgtheory guest blogger and sociologist at the University of Iowa, is on fire! Following up on his AJS paper with Wendy […]
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influential interlopers « orgtheory.net
August 18, 2008 at 2:35 am
[…] in this article that should be of interest to org theorists and institutionalists, especially given former guest blogger Michael Sauder’s important work (with Wendy Espeland) on the U.S. News & World Report rankings of law schools. […]
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new yorker piece on the michelin ratings « orgtheory.net
November 30, 2009 at 4:49 pm