Presidential Panels

Friday, August 1, 2:30-4:10pm

Organizer and Presider: Naomi Cassirer, International Labour Organization

Panel: Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead, International Labor Organization
Sangheon Lee, International Labor Organization
Naomi Cassirer, International Labor Organization
Deirdre McCann, International Labor Organization

Discussant: Lucio Baccaro, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The ILO is a specialized agency of the United Nations, formulating international labor standards and providing technical assistance on the full range of labor and employment issues. In this panel, ILO officials will discuss findings on changes in working conditions and job quality around the world, in the context of globalization. The panel will cover the elements that form the core of the employment relationship and determine the quality of working life; wages, working time, work organization, and work-family balance. The panel will speak both to research efforts and findings and to national and workplace policies and programs for improving the quality of work.

Sunday, August 3, 2:30-4:10pm

Organizer: Jennifer Platt , University of Sussex

Presider: Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley

Presenters: Michael Rose, University of Bath
Jennifer L. Pierce, University of Minnesota
Jennifer Platt, University of Sussex
Charles Crothers, Auckland University of Technology, Mervyn Horgan, York University, Toronto

The session will focus on the history of the sociology of work, mainly in the USA. In reviewing different aspects of that history, the papers will raise issues such as the field’s relation to general sociology, how far its changes over time have responded to changes in society or to changes internal to sociology, the extent of real change as topics, conceptualizations and methods have changed, and the factors which have led to such changes.

Sunday, August 3, 10:30am-12:10pm

Organizer and Presider: Steve Brint, University of California-Riverside

Presider/Discussant: Magali Sarfatti Larson, Temple University

Panel: Paul Adler, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
Mary Fennell, Brown University
William Sullivan, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

The classical professional model created labor market shelters through restrictive entry, rigorous training, and occupational licensing requirements. Sheltered markets allowed for higher income and workplace autonomy in return (at least in theory) for occupational regulation with client interests in mind.

The problem of asymmetric expertise is solved now in other ways: through a combination of graduate academic training, improved client access to knowledge, increased market competition and especially state regulation of professional practice. Are the discipline and specialization regimes typical of classical professionalism giving way to collaborative regimes directed by organizations and influenced by communities? Have we now entered a post-professional era?

Our panelists will look at the problem from different directions and pose important questions for research and policy.

Saturday, August 2, 2:30-4:10pm

Organizer and Presider: Alison Davis-Blake, University of Minnesota

Panel: Joe Broschak, University of Arizona
Susan Houseman, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Vicki Smith, University of California, Davis

Discussant: Rose Batt, Cornell University

This session is organized around three broad themes of the effects of outsourcing for individuals, organizations, and organizational fields. Our panelists, all well-respected scholars in the area of nonstandard work or outsourcing, will make a general set of comments about one or more of these levels of analysis. A theme that ties all of the panelists’ work together is that the consequences of outsourcing at the individual, organizational, and field level are all socially mediated and socially constructed. All of the panelists will provide some insights into how processes of cognition and social construction shape the consequences of the outsourcing of work.

Friday, August 1, 10:30am-12:10pm

Organizer and Presider: Daniel B. Cornfield, Vanderbilt University

Presenters: Thomas A. Kochan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rubén G. Rumbaut, University of California-Irvine
Teresa A. Sullivan, University of Michigan

The American Dream continues to be pursued by U.S. residents and individuals from all world regions, but persistent disparities shape life chances and public policy. Whether they consider themselves to be consumers, immigrants, or workers, individuals in pursuit of a material life style, identity, or social status encounter obstacles and opportunities along the paths they take toward achieving their Dreams. This panel discussion of the American Dream assesses the social and public policy implications of the disparities in attainment of the American Dream.

Saturday, August 2, 10:30am-12:10pm

Organizer: Magali Sarfatti Larson, Temple University

Presider: Arne Kalleberg, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Panel: Ronald Dore, Cavanazza, Veggio
Richard Sennett, London School of Economics
Arlie Hochschild, University of California-Berkeley