The “sociological citizen” relational interdependence in law and organizations

Silbey, Susan S.; Huising, Ruthanne; Coslovsky, Salo

doi:10.3917/anso.091.0201

Cited by 59 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…For example, to accomplish civil rights reform, industrial psychologists needed to work with business managers to change their screening and promotion practices (Dobbin 2009;Stryker, Docka-Filipek, and Wald 2012). To implement environmental reform, safety experts needed to work with scientists to change their research practices (Silbey et al 2009). And to implement microfinance reform, international development experts needed to work with bankers to change their lending practices (Canales 2014).…”

Section: Generalizability and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To implement pharmaceutical reform, clinical trials researchers need to work with clinicians (Heimer and Gazley 2012). To implement environmental reform, safety experts need to work with scientists (Silbey, Huising, and Coslovsky 2009). And to accomplish judicial reform related to drug use, probation officers need to work with clinicians specializing in substance abuse (McPherson and Sauder 2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Brokerage Professions and Implementing Reform in an Age of Experts

Kellogg¹

2014

Am Sociol Rev

161

129

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In this comparative ethnographic case study of the implementation of a reform related to the Affordable Care Act in two community health centers, I find that professionals may not compete to claim new tasks (and thereby not implement reform) if these tasks require them to acquire information unrelated to their professional expertise, use work practices that conflict with their professional identity, or do impure or low-value tasks that threaten their professional interests. In such cases, reform may be implemented if lower-status workers fill in the gaps in the division of labor between the professions targeted by the reform, playing a brokerage role by protecting each profession's information, meanings, and tasks in everyday work. When the new tasks represent professionally ill-defined problems, brokers can be more effective if they use buffering practices rather than connecting practices-managing information rather than transferring it, matching meanings rather than translating them, and maintaining interests rather than transforming them-to accomplish reform. By playing a buffering role in the interstices between existing professional jurisdictions, lower-status workers can carve out their own jurisdiction, becoming a brokerage profession between existing professions that need to collaborate with one another for reform to occur. Public health activists argue that because low-income people's health problems often occur long before they get to their doctor, for the Affordable Care Act to be successful, patients need access to primary care physicians and to enabling programs that address the social determinants of health. Activists across the country have received funding for these programs (American Public Health Association [APHA] 2010). KeywordsMLP reform is an enabling program designed to improve the health outcomes of traditionally disadvantaged groups by changing the everyday practices of health center doctors and legal aid lawyers.Health center doctors typically treat low-income patients' medical problems; with the implementation of 3 MLP reform, they also address the social and legal problems that affect patients' health (e.g., if a patient's apartment lacks heat, it will be difficult for the patient to recover from an ear infection). Lawyers, in working with low-income clients, often use individual cases to bring legal reform for large numbers of the poor; with the implementation of MLP reform, they gain new access and treatment points for vulnerable clients by expanding legal screening, and they increase their ability to solve legal problems related to health for large numbers of the poor by getting doctors to assist with reform efforts.To implement MLP reform, both doctors and lawyers need to change how they screen clients, determine their eligibility for treatment, and treat them. Doctors must learn from lawyers to screen patients for unmet social and economic needs in areas such as income, housing and utilities, education, immigration, and personal and family stability; they must also refer ...

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Section: Generalizability and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Brokerage Professions and Implementing Reform in an Age of Experts

Kellogg¹

2014

Am Sociol Rev

161

129

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“…Since employees who are eligible for these employee rights programs suffer the same vulnerabilities as those who are eligible for work-family programs-women, minorities, or disabled employees are often perceived as less competent than other employees, and if they do use the programs, highlight their membership in traditionally disadvantaged groups and thus may invite their supervisors to question their commitment, abilities, and marketability (e.g. Albiston, 2007;Edelman, Erlanger, & Lande, 1993;Harlan & Robert, 1998;Heimer & Staffen, 1998;Morrill, 1995;Silbey, Huising, & Coslovsky, 2009) -our findings suggest that initial assignment to a powerful supervisor would likely promote positive career outcomes for users of these other kinds of employee rights programs as well. However, the timing of program use may be important.…”

Section: Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Initial Assignment Effect

2011

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One of the great paradoxes of inequality in organizations is that even when organizations introduce new programs such as work-family programs designed to help employees in traditionally disadvantaged groups succeed, employees who use the programs often suffer negative career consequences. This study helps to fill a significant gap in the literature by investigating how local employer practices can enable employees to successfully use programs designed to benefit them. Using a research approach that controls for regulatory environment and program design, we analyze unique longitudinal personnel data from a large law firm to demonstrate that assignment to powerful supervisors upon organization entry improves career outcomes of later users of a reduced-hours program. Additionally, we find that initial assignment to powerful supervisors is more important to positive career outcomes-employee retention and performance-based pay-than are such factors as supervisor assignment at the time of program use. Initial assignment affects career outcomes for later program users through the mechanism of improved access to reputation-building work opportunities. These findings have implications for research on work-family programs and other employee-rights programs and for the role of social capital in careers.2

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“…These types of organizations were an active area of research in the immediate postwar decades but were eclipsed after 1980 by the emphasis on privatization and simulated market mechanisms in what became known as the new public management (for a flavor of the older literature, see for example : Hawkins, 2001;Kaufman, 1960;Kelman, 1981). The older literature is now being resurrected and expanded by a generation of younger scholars, many of whom are students at MIT (Silbey, Huising and Coslovsky, 2009;Pires, 2008). The lessons of that literature, as well as very recent material gathered in interviews conducted in France and in different Latin American countries, are discussed in several articles which Andrew Shrank and I have written separately and together Schrank, 2006, 2008;Schrank and Piore, 2007;Piore, 2009).…”

Section: Two Models Of Labor Market Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible Bureaucracies in Labor Market Regulation

Piore¹,

Skinner²

2011

The Idea of Labour Law

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This paper compares and contrasts the U.S. and French systems of labor market regulation. The U.S. system is specialized: Regulating authority is dispersed among a host of different agencies each with a relatively narrow jurisdiction, and as a result with responsibility for a very limited domain. Authority is further divided between the federal and the state governments. The French system is a unified or general system: A single agency is responsible for the enforcement of the whole labor code. As a result, the French system is a street-level bureaucracy in which considerable power and authority rests with the line agents, the work inspectors themselves. The structure of the system (quite paradoxically in the light of the centralization generally attributed to the French state) gives the inspectors virtually complete autonomy in the geographic area to which they are assigned. As a result, and contrary to the contrast generally drawn between civil law and common law countries, at least in the literature of economics, the French system is considerably more flexible and able to adjust to variations in economic and social conditions across the territory but also over time than is the U.S. system. The contrast is of broader importance because the French system was adopted by Spain (and Italy) and from there spread to Latin America, where the issue of labor standards enforcement has become central to bilateral trade treaties with the United States. The paper goes on to discuss the various managerial issues posed by the two systems and the problems of reconciling their contrasting dynamics in a unified global trading regime. The Problem: The Need for Flexibility in a Regulatory Framework This paper is addressed to the problem of labor market flexibility. The problem arises most immediately in the context of the revival of labor market regulation and a renewed effort to enforce labor standards which have been allowed to atrophy over the course of time. The revival is part of a broader reaction against the neo-liberal agenda and the Washington Consensus, an approach to public policy which places almost exclusive reliance on the competitive market and simulated market mechanisms. The reaction is especially intense in Latin America, but it is actually very widespread. And the skepticism about market-based solutions has been reinforced by the current crisis which has drawn even the United States, the intellectual fountainhead of the old Consensus, into active intervention not only to limit and control the impact of the market, but actually to guide its operation. Even before the crisis, however, virtually every major country-with the notable exceptions of Mexico and the United States-had increased the resources and personnel devoted to labor inspection in the course of the last five years. In labor market policy, however, the reaction is taking place without addressing the basic problem to which the Washington Consensus was itself a response: The inflexibility and rigidity of governmental regulations and the way in which th...

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The “sociological citizen” relational interdependence in law and organizations

Cited by 59 publications

References 29 publications

Brokerage Professions and Implementing Reform in an Age of Experts

Brokerage Professions and Implementing Reform in an Age of Experts

The Initial Assignment Effect

Flexible Bureaucracies in Labor Market Regulation

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