BLACKSBURG FACULTY

Dr. Joyce Rothschild

Faculty

Dr. Joyce Rothschild is Professor of Sociology in the Government and International Affairs Program in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia since 2003.

In 1977, Rothschild graduated with a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was assistant professor at Boston College, on the research faculty at Cornell University, associate professor and chair at the University of Toledo. From 1991 onwards she has been a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the departments of Sociology and Government and International Affairs.

Dr. Rothschild’s main areas of research specialization include sociology of work and organizations, economy and society/ economic restructuring & global change, associational democracy, workplace and economic democracy, whistleblowers and dissent in the workplace, and gender and work.

In 1987, she won the C. Wright Mills Award for the most significant book of the year in the sociological profession for The Cooperative Workplace: Dilemmas of Organizational Democracy and Participation. This book develops a post-Weberian model of organization that, grounded in a 4th type of authority, is unified by its ultra-democratic and egalitarian aspirations. It identifies 9 conditions that foster collectivist-democratic organizations, or in their absence that undercut such organizations, in their efforts to get work done while still retaining their deliberative democratic form.