sase mini-conference cfp “Regulation, Innovation, and Valuation in Markets for Health and Medicines” – deadline extended to Fri., Jan. 24, 2020

SASE annual meeting submissions are currently open, and the submission deadline has been extended to Fri. Jan. 24, 2020!  (The 2020 annual meeting will be held July 18-20 at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.)

For those studying organizations, innovation, health, medicines, markets, and/or inequality, I wanted to call attention to one of the mini-conference calls, organized by Kathryn Ibata-Arens and Etienne Nouguez.

Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) 2020, 18-20 July

University of Amsterdam

“Regulation, Innovation, and Valuation in Markets for Health and Medicines”

Mini-Conference Call for Papers

Conference Co-Organizers:

Kathryn Ibata-Arens, PhD

Vincent de Paul Professor of Political Economy

DePaul University

Etienne Nouguez, PhD

CNRS Researcher

Center For the Sociology of Organizations (SciencesPo/CNRS)

The world is experiencing rapid transformations in the development of new approaches to improving human health and the health of communities, healthcare provision, governance over the use and pricing of drugs and medicines, and medical innovations in biotechnology (genomics and stem cell-based therapies). For example, open innovation systems and sharing in the commons have introduced healing medicines and medical innovations (e.g. the Human Genome Project). At the same time, there is growing inequality in who gets access to medical care and medicines, and at what price.

 

Meanwhile, market competition has in part led to the opioid crisis of addiction in the United States, human subjects abuses in developing countries in the race to develop new drugs, and a decline in the discovery of radical new innovations in medicines for poor populations. This mini-conference aims to convene a group of related panels around issues in global health and medicines, to facilitate useful critical discussion and reflection on participants’ works-in-progress. Driving questions include:

 

-What theoretical advances are being made in understanding causal mechanisms in improving, or undermining human health and community health, for example, through state policy and firm and organizational strategy? What new frameworks and methods are being developed to identify key actors and explain actions (e.g. improving, or undermining health, broadly defined)?

 

-What is the evolving role of the state, healthcare systems and professions, and other actors (multilateral bodies, firms, non-profit organizations) in medical and medicine provision and innovation? Are we seeing a shift from traditional dominant blocks (North America and Europe) to new actors (Asia and the Global South)? Likewise, how have states and healthcare organizations been effective (or ineffective, indifferent) in the valuation and pricing of medicines (fair, equitable, and affordable access to life saving medicines)?

 

-What should be the responsibility, if any, of the global intellectual property rights regime as arbitrated by such powerful organizations as the World Trade Organization and global corporations in monitoring access and benefit sharing of profits resulting from research and development into new drugs and medicines?

 

-What are the roles for regulation and institutionalization of markets for such boundary-products between medicine and health food as probiotics, herbals, so-called nutraceuticals, and other dietary supplements – in ensuring the health and safety of consumers and patients?

 

-In what way is current research and policy aiming for “inclusive” innovation (e.g. in healthcare provision, new drug discovery) focused on distributive aspects versus stakeholder inclusion, or both (e.g. under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs))? What is the relative role for (social) entrepreneurs, large firms, and other actors?

 

Our mini-conference encourages submissions of papers exploring emerging frameworks and theories, as well as empirically rich original data from the developed and developing world and at various levels of analysis (e.g. local community, firm, state, multilateral institution). Scholars at all levels are welcome. In the spirit of innovation and creativity, the panels will have an interactive workshop format around discussant feedback and moderated audience participation. For more information, contact the co-organizers at medhealthSASE2020@gmail.com.

You can also download the full mini-conferenc call here: SASE2020HealthandMedicinemini-conferenceCFPK10-28-19

Grad students, post-docs, and other early career scholars, please also note: travel funding and a pre-conference workshop day are available, by a competitive selection process, for those who submit full papers for consideration and are accepted in a network or mini-conference.

state-of-the-field article “School choice’s idealized premises and unfulfilled promises” now available

Just before 2019 ends and we enter 2020, I’ve finally broken the superstition that whatever you do on New Years will be what you will do for the following New Years.  This year, a R&R converted into an accept and page proofs before New Years hit!

My co-authored paper with Megan Moskop is now available under the Organizations & Work section of Sociology Compass!  In this paper, using critical sociology and education research, we overview the variants of school choice systems in the US and their impacts on students, schools, and society.

Here’s the abstract:

School choice’s idealized premises and unfulfilled promises: How school markets simulate options, encourage decoupling and deception, and deepen disadvantages

Abstract

In school choice systems, families choose among publicly funded schools, and schools compete for students and resources. Using neoinstitutionalist and relational inequality theories, our article reinterprets recent critical sociological and education research to show how such markets involve actors’ enacting myths; these beliefs and their associated practices normalized white, privileged consumption as a basis for revamping public education as market exchanges between schools and families. Proponents argue that choice empowers individuals, focuses organizations on improving quality, and benefits society more broadly by reducing inequality and segregation. We argue that such school choice myths’ excessive emphases on individual decision‐making and provider performance obscure the actual impacts of school choice systems upon people, organizations, and society. First, rather than enlarging alternatives that families can easily research, select, and (if needed) exit, school choice systems often simulate options, especially for disadvantaged populations. Second, rather than focusing schools’ efforts on performance, innovation, and accountability, they can encourage organizational decoupling, homogeneity, and deception. Third, rather than reducing societal harms, they can deepen inequalities and alienation. Future research should examine both how markets are animated by bounded relationality—routines that enable them to form, maintain, and complete exchanges with organizations—and how activism can challenge marketization.

Please consider assigning this state-of-the-field article in your sociology of education, inequality, economic sociology, and/or organizations courses!  (If your institution doesn’t have access to Sociology Compass, please contact me directly for a copy.)

This paper began when Megan approached me during a March 2018  Future Initiatives “Publics, Politics, and Pedagogy: Remaking Higher Education for Turbulent Times” event at the Graduate Center.  After hearing me talk on a faculty panel about my research interests, Megan asked whether we could do an informal reading group on school choice readings.  We exchanged emails and agreed to meet in person to discuss readings.

At the time, Megan was working on her masters classes and thesis in urban education at the CUNY MALS program.  She was looking for a way to manage her growing collection of citations as she analyzed her past experiences with teaching 8th graders and their families about how to participate in the mandatory school choice market in NYC .

As a new entrant to research on learning and schools through my on-going ethnography of a democratic school, I had the sense that whatever was happening in the insurance market for older adults seemed to exist in other emerging markets for other age groups.  To understand the education options in NYC, I had attended a few NYC Dept. of Education and other orientations for families on how to select pre-K and higher program.  I found these experiences comparable to my observations of orientations for professionals and older adults about enrolling in Medicare: palpable waves of anxiety and disorientation were evident in the reactions and questions from these two differently aged audiences to workshops about how they were supposed to act as consumers felt similar.  I thus became interested in learning about research on the comparable school choice market for my ethnographic research on how intermediary organizations try to orient consumers to the health insurance market.  (Indeed, a side benefit of this collaboration was that the school choice readings helped amplify my development of the bounded relationality concept that ultimately appeared in Socio-Economic Review.)

Megan and I met regularly discuss readings that Megan had suggested and I had found through literature searches in sociology.  After several of these meetings, I raised the possibility of writing a state-of-the-field overview article.  Working on this draft helped us keep track of what we had learned.  It also helped us understand how to map existing research and to identify a void that our respective expertises and writing could address: synthesizing critical studies emerging from organizations and education.   For Megan, I hoped that this experience would give her a behind-the-scenes look at the academic production of research, so that she could decide whether to head this direction.

As we read more about school choice, I realized that we hadn’t come across a chart mapping the types of school choice systems currently in operation.  Megan thus worked hard at developing a table that describes and compares different types of school choice systems.  (In my opinion, this paper’s table is a handy first step for those trying to understand the school choice landscape.)

Meanwhile, I focused on applying an organizational framework to categorize research from the sociology of education and education fields.  As we worked on the drafts in response to writing group and reviewers’ and Sociology Compass section editor Eric Dahlin’s comments, we also realized that no one had systemically broken down the impacts of using market practices to distribute public goods across levels of individual persons, organizations, and society at large.

Along the way, thanks to Megan’s connections to education and activism, we got to learn directly from people about on-going activism and research.  For instance, youth organization IntegrateNYC sent representative Iman Abdul to talk to my “Future of NYC” honors college students about efforts to racially integrate NYC public schools.  Megan and I also attended Kate Phillippo’s talk about her research on school choice in Chicago from her latest book, A Contest Without Winners: How Students Experience Competitive School Choice (2019, University of Minnesota Press).

In all, writing this paper has been a great journey with a fun and insightful collaborator.  Had you asked me back in spring 2018 what the outcome of presenting at a CUNY event would have been, I could not have predicted this.  I am forever grateful that Megan came to talk with me!

Happy New Years, readers!  May the new year bring you joy, happiness, and health.

 

“Talk with your family about [Medicare] Part D over Thanksgiving dinner”: How markets require bounded relationality

 

Question: What do the following three scenarios have in common?

Scenario A.  Congrats, you’re turning 65 years old!

You’re turning 65 years old.  In the US, if you have worked enough units, you are eligible for Medicare; you must select health insurance by choosing among traditional Medicare and HMO plans.  You also need to choose insurance that will cover  your current or anticipated prescription medications.  Depending on where you live, this could involve comparing around 50 different plans.

You start by consulting the Medicare booklet and wading through the flood of mail from insurance providers.  Despite this information, you’re having difficulties understanding the differences among plans and determining how much plans will charge for your medications.  Moreover, you’re not quite sure which medications that you’ll need in the upcoming year.  Each year after this, you’ll have an almost two-month-long window for making these decisions – a period that is happening now, ending Dec. 7.

If you have a long life, you’ll have plenty of practice working with this market.  How do you select a plan appropriate to your needs right now and then in the future?

Scenario B.  Congrats, you’re getting ready to enter high school!

You are a student at a NYC public middle school.  Since students are not automatically assigned to public high schools, you and your family must choose from among 750 programs and rank order your choices.  (If you are two years old or older, your parents must do the same for public pre-K and kindergarten school programs.)  To learn about your options, you can look at a directory of descriptions of these programs and then research each school online.  If possible, you and your family will also attend information fairs and schools’ open houses and tours, where you might be asked to fill out additional forms or leave your information.

Some schools have different criteria for what kinds of prospective students they prioritize, and most selective programs don’t provide rubrics for how they rank prospective students – information crucial for ascertaining your chances of acceptance.  After you submit up to 12 rank-ordered choices, an algorithm, modelled after a medical residency matching program designed by a economist, will generate a match based on schools’ priorities and your listed options.  And, btw, charter schools and private schools have their own admissions processes and admissions deadlines.

How do you choose and rank public high school programs?  Should you try to maximize your choices by also applying to charter schools and, if you have the financial resources, private schools?

Scenario C.  Congrats, you’re rich!

You have amassed enviable, immense wealth.   But, your mattress is bursting, and you distrust regular banking.  And, for whatever reason, you’re not fond of having the state taking a portion to support the common good, social insurance, military spending, etc.  Thinking ahead, you worry about your family having unfettered access to your financial legacy; relatives might fritter away that wealth!  Also, you have a few relationships that other family members don’t (yet) know about, and you want to make sure that those loved ones are also taken care of after your inevitable passing.  So, what to do?

Answer: Most likely, you’ll need what I call “bounded relationality” to assist you with entering complex markets and making exchanges.   To explain what bounded relationality is, I’ll preview excepts from my advance, online first article “Bounded relationality: how intermediary organizations encourage consumer exchanges with routinized relational work in a social insurance market.”

The bounded relationality concept combines two of my favorite theories: (1) economic sociology’s relational work by Viviana Zelizer, Fred Wherry, and Nina Bandjel* and (2) Herbert Simon’s theory about how organizations compensate for people’s bounded rationality, or difficulties with making decisions.

During several years of my research on organizations that support older adults, I observed workshops and meetings for organizational representatives and professionals, including social workers, on topics such as how to select Medicare insurance plans.

At one of these workshops, a representative from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, described officials’ hopes that families would discuss prescription plans at family get-togethers: ‘We tried to say, “Talk with your family about [Medicare] Part D over Thanksgiving dinner,” but we don’t know if people did.’   His comment revealed how much the market relies upon relational work, or connections formed and sustained with other persons (Zelizer 2012) and organizations.

Using observations of US governmental, advocacy, and human service organizations’ (GAHSOs) talks, I show how these intermediary organizations endorsed “bounded relationality” when teaching conventions for participating in the market of social insurance.  Unlike conventional consumer goods and services markets, insurance options are difficult to evaluate and exchanges are challenging to switch.  Decisions are also consequential, with suboptimal decisions impacting personal well-being and requiring support or intervention by family members, if they are available.

Read more about bounded relationality after the jump: