Organizations & Society Series

The “Organizations & Society” series explores formal and informal organizational forms and is interested in how they create, produce, and deliver goods and services.  It assesses all types of such organizational forms (e.g., for-profits, not-for-profits, civic associations, and public ones) and examines their relationship and behavior to the world writ large.

Two pressing questions guide this interesting series:  1) how do individuals and groups interact within organizations, and 2) how do firms interact with one another and for sure with consumers, employees, communities, and institutions. To understand these complex processes, our program intentionally draws on across academic disciplines to study intergroup processes, power, stereotyping, and emotion.  Related, the program is keen on exploring how categories, identity, interpersonal and inter-organizational relationships, and stratification all shape organizations and their lives.

Institutions which our program collaborates on this important theme consist of Case Western Reserve University, Colorado College, Connecticut College, Northwestern University, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and Wesleyan University. 

Finally, courses offered through this program are relevant to general citizens rather than to the technical interests of research, management, and administration.  Phrased differently, it is largely meant for those students who desire to make sense out of themselves and the world they find themselves in (as profoundly stated by sociologist C. Wright Mills).  

Thank you,

Tim Nguyen, Professor and Academic Director