Frank Dobbin

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

Selected publications

• Why diversity programs fail

  Harvard business review · 2016-01-01 · 338 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  After Wall Street firms repeatedly had to shell out millions to settle discrimination lawsuits, businesses started to get serious about their efforts to increase diversity. But unfortunately, they don’t seem to be getting results: Women and minorities have not gained much ground in management over the past 20 years. The problem is, organizations are trying to reduce bias with the same kinds of programs they’ve been using since the 1960s. And the usual tools—diversity training, hiring tests, perf…

  Publisher

• Why Doesn't Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia

  Anthropology Now · 2018-05-04 · 323 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Starbucks' decision to put 175,000 workers through diversity training on May 29, in the wake of the widely publicized arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia store, put diversity training back in...

  PublisherDOI

• The promise and peril of sexual harassment programs

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2019-06-03 · 123 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Two decades ago, the Supreme Court vetted the workplace harassment programs popular at the time: sexual harassment grievance procedures and training. However, harassment at work remains common. Do these programs reduce harassment? Program effects have been difficult to measure, but, because women frequently quit their jobs after being harassed, programs that reduce harassment should help firms retain current and aspiring women managers. Thus, effective programs should be followed by increases in…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Civil Rights Revolution at Work: What Went Wrong

  Annual Review of Sociology · 2021 · 70 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The civil rights and women's movements led to momentous changes in public policy and corporate practice that have made the United States the global paragon of equal opportunity. Yet diversity in the corporate hierarchy has increased incrementally. Lacking clear guidance from policymakers, personnel experts had devised their own arsenal of diversity programs. Firms implicated their own biased managers through diversity training and grievance systems and created a paper trail for personnel decisio…

  PublisherDOI

• The Hazards of Expert Control: Chief Risk Officers and Risky Derivatives

  American Sociological Review · 2017-05-31 · 55 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  At the turn of the century, regulators introduced policies to control bank risk-taking. Many banks appointed chief risk officers (CROs), yet bank holdings of new, complex, and untested financial derivatives subsequently soared. Why did banks expand use of new derivatives? We suggest that CROs encouraged the rise of new derivatives in two ways. First, we build on institutional arguments about the expert construction of compliance, suggesting that risk experts arrived with an agenda of maximizing…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

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

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Robert J. Sampsonh-113
• Theda Skocpolh-79
• Michèle Lamonth-57