About

Professor Frank Dobbin is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1980 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1987. His research focuses on organizations, inequality, economic behavior, and public policy. Dobbin's work explores how corporate personnel managers define discrimination and how various diversity management strategies impact organizational diversity. His book, 'Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn't,' examines evidence-based approaches to diversity, highlighting that mentoring programs, diversity taskforces, and recruitment initiatives have been effective, whereas diversity training and performance evaluations signaling bias have not. His research has been widely covered by major media outlets. In economic sociology, Dobbin's work is both historical and contemporary, analyzing modern industrial strategies, the diffusion of markets and democracy, and the revival of organizational studies. He is also involved in directing initiatives such as SCANCOR/Weatherhead in International Organizational Studies and co-coordinating the MIT-Harvard Economic Sociology Seminar.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Economics
• Business
• Neoclassical economics
• Engineering
• Public administration
• Public relations
• Law
• Anthropology
• Economy

Selected publications

• Retooling Career Systems to Fight Workplace Bias: Evidence from U.S. Corporations

  Daedalus · 2024-01-01 · 21 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The civil rights movement spurred U.S. companies and universities to implement antidiscrimination programs. Beginning in the early 1960s, employers adopted anti bias training as their first line of defense against bigotry. Even then, there was substantial evidence that this approach was unlikely to lessen bias. In this essay, we discuss social science research on the effects of antibias training, as well as research on systemic approaches to reducing institutional discrimination based on insights from contact theory. As sociologist Samuel Stouffer and psychologist Gordon Allport, the progenitors of contact theory, might have predicted by the end of World War II, we find that interventions to change career systems to maximize intergroup contact can promote workplace equity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Under the Radar: Visibility and the Effects of Discrimination Lawsuits in Small and Large Firms

  American Sociological Review · 2022-03-11 · 23 citations

  article

  Research on how discrimination lawsuits affect corporate diversity has yielded mixed results. Qualitative studies highlight the limited efficacy of lawsuits in the typical workplace, finding that litigation frequently elicits resistance and even retribution from employers. But quantitative studies find that lawsuits can increase workforce diversity. This article develops an account of managerial resistance and firm visibility to reconcile these divergent findings. First, we synthesize job autonomy and group conflict theories to account for resistance that occurs when dominant groups perceive non-dominant groups to be attempting to usurp managerial authority, in this case through litigation. Second, we integrate insights from organizational institutionalism, which suggests that highly visible firms seek to demonstrate compliance with legal and societal norms. Drawing on this theory, we predict that only large, visible firms will see increases in diversity following lawsuits, and, by the same token, that the most visible workplaces of those large firms, their headquarters, will see the greatest changes. We test our hypotheses with data on litigation and workforce composition from a diverse set of 632 firms that were sued by the EEOC between 1997 and 2006. This study shows that understanding the consequences of lawsuits across firms, and across organizations within them, is key to tackling workplace discrimination.

  PublisherDOI

• Getting to Diversity

  Harvard University Press eBooks · 2022 · 50 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Anthropology

  Management experts Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev sift through decades of data to show why workplace diversity training fails and what works. Arguing that it’s time to focus on changing systems rather than individuals, the authors make data-driven recommendations for diversifying management and creating workplaces where everyone can thrive.

  PublisherDOI

• 7 Bake In Systems Change: Diversity Managers, Task Forces, and Goals

  Harvard University Press eBooks · 2022-08-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Metaphors of industrial rationality: the social construction of electronics policy in the United States and France

  2022-09-29 · 3 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In the last decade or so a few analysts have situated cuItural meaning at core of rationalized institutions. The Birmingham school has explored science horn a constructivist perspective (see also Latour 1907). Nee-. institutional students of organizations have charted the social c o n ~t r u c t i ~~ of rationalized corporate stratrgies (Meyer and Rowan 1977; Fligstein 1W). ~t a more macro-level studies have traced the rise of rationality a d the social construction of the modem nation-state (Anderson 1983: Thomas and Mvleyer 1984). In t l ~a t vein the prcscnt study explores the effects o f instltutiona~ized constructions of industrial rationality on the policy-malung process in modern nations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Getting to Diversity

  Harvard University Press eBooks · 2022-09-13 · 9 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How to Stop the Clock: The Effects of Tenure Clock Extensions on Faculty Diversity

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022-07-06

  article

  Work-life policies designed to accommodate mothers often undermine their career advancement. We propose a theory of “organizational policy universalism,” arguing that work-life policies will be more effective at reducing gender inequality when they are universally applied. We examine tenure-clock extensions, adopted to mitigate career penalties faced by faculty who are caregivers. We suggest that tenure-clock extensions will better reduce inequality when they reduce the salience of motherhood through policy universalism. Three types of tenure-clock extensions embody policy universalism—tenure-clock extensions available to men and women rather than only to women, extensions that apply automatically to all parents rather than requiring parents to opt in, and extensions with guidance for promotion reviewers to evaluate policy users and non-users equally. We examine the effects of tenure clock extension policies with and without features of universalism on faculty diversity at 508 U.S. colleges and universities. The findings show that universal policies are more effective at increasing the share of women among tenured faculty. While decision makers often seek to help disadvantaged groups with targeting policies, universal policies may be more effective at mainstreaming these initiatives, reducing gender inequality in organizations.

  PublisherDOI

• 3 Democratize Recruitment: Cast a Wider Net

  Harvard University Press eBooks · 2022-08-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE ECONOMY

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021 · 27 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Economy
  PublisherDOI

• The New Economic Sociology

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021-01-01

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Economic sociology is a rapidly expanding field, applying sociology's core insight--that individuals behave according to scripts that are tied to social roles--to economic behavior. It places homo economicus (that tried-and-true fictive actor who is completely rational, acts only out of self-interest, and has perfect information) in context. In this way, it places a construct into a framework that more closely approximates the world in which we live. But, as an academic field, economic sociology has lost focus. The New Economic Sociology remedies this. The book comprises twenty of the most representative and widely read articles in the field's history--its classics--and organizes them according to four themes at the heart of sociology: institutions, networks, power, and cognition. Dobbin's substantial and engagingly written introduction (including his rich comparison of Yanomamo chest-beaters and Wall Street bond-traders) sets a clear framework for what follows. Gathering force throughout is Dobbin's argument that economic practices emerge through distinctly social processes, in which social networks and power resources play roles in the social construction of certain behaviors as rational or optimal. Not only does Dobbin provide a consummate introduction to the field and its history to students approaching the subject for the first time, but he also establishes a schema for interpreting the field based on an understanding of what economic sociology aims to achieve.

  Publisher

Recent grants

• Affirmative Action at Work: Corporate Compliance Activites and Workforce Composition

  NSF · $175k · 2001–2003

Frequent coauthors

• Alexandra Kalev

  Tel Aviv University

  33 shared

• James G. March

  17 shared

• Steele Jack

  Stanford University

  16 shared

• H Robert

  16 shared

• Vadim Radaev

  National Research University Higher School of Economics

  16 shared

• Mariya Neuvazhaeva

  Stanford University

  16 shared

• Igor Chirikov

  16 shared

• Joel Mokyr

  16 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Sociology

  Harvard University

  1986

• B.A., Sociology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1981