Research Interests
WorkOrganizationsOutsourcingOrganizational SocializationTeamworkCareer AdvisingTeaching and Learning
Opportunities
Work Study Positions Available: No
Grant Funded Positions Available: No
Course-Credit Research Opportunities Available: Yes
Independent Studies are available to sophomores and above most semesters. They constitute SOC 490, a sociology elective course, and can be 1-3 semester hours. Contact me by mid-semester of the preceding semester to discuss an independent study course.
Volunteer Research Positions Available: No
Biography
I have ongoing scholarly interests in the growing contingencies workers face in their jobs and employment relations. This is because of my background. I grew up as part of the working class in Kenosha, Wisconsin during deindustrialization, characterized by heavy job losses in my community and many others across the US. This experience significantly impacted my ongoing research interests in changes in work and organizations and technology in the workplace (a prime culprit in the reengineering of work, producing greater employment contingencies, and the job losses described above).
For my master's thesis, I conducted ethnographic research of blue-collar temporary work. For my PhD, I interviewed information technologists and human resource professionals about the outsourcing of their work and jobs. I continued doing qualitative research on the outsourcing of professional work and, in 2019, I published a book about its effects on social relations, culture, jobs, and professional work. It’s called Working Lives and in-House Outsourcing: Chewed Up By Two Masters (2019).
I have used my interests in changes in work to contribute to scholarship in academic and career advising with collaborator Dr. Leigh S. Shaffer. In 2018, our article “The Professionalization of Academic Advising: Where are We in 2010?” was awarded the first Leigh S. Shaffer Award by NACADA for significant advances made to the academic field of academic advising. Our article “Career Advising in a VUCA Environment” has also been well cited.
https://meridian.allenpress.com/nacada-journal/article/30/1/66/36326/The-Professionalization-of-Academic-Advising-Where
https://meridian.allenpress.com/nacada-journal/article/31/1/64/36320/Career-Advising-in-a-VUCA-Environment
Because of my background and professional interests in college teaching and pedagogy, recently I conducted three years of survey research (2017-19) on teamwork in undergraduate Introduction to Sociology courses. My collaborator, Susan Brudvig (Professor of Business Informatics at Northern Kentucky University), and I have one paper that was recently published in Teaching Sociology: “Encouraging Productive Behavior in Student Teams With Interventions (2023), 51(2):127-138.” Susan and I also recorded a podcast, published on the American Sociological Association webpage, explaining the issues that commonly arise in student group work, the interventions we instituted, and the positive effects they had on interactional fairness, students’ perceptions of others, and their satisfaction with teamwork in the course.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0092055X221108105
https://journals.sagepub.com/page/tso/podcasts
In spring 2021, in collaboration with Dr. Johnna Capitano (Professor of Management @ WCU), I began qualitative research on contractor and consultant socialization (or onboarding). In 2021 and 2022, Dr. Capitano and I conducted 51 interviews with three types of subjects: 1. Contractors and consultants (or “non-standard workers”); 2. Agency representatives; and 3. Department representatives at client organizations. In 2022 and 2023, we presented analysis at four conferences: Labor and Employment Relations Association Annual Meeting (June 2022), Society for the Study of Social Problems Conference (August 2022), Eastern Sociological Society Conference (February 2023), and Society for the Study of Social Problems Conference (August 2023). In 2023, we plan to write and submit a journal manuscript that describes contractors’ and consultants’ proactive socialization into roles, relationships, and organizations at client organizations.
