Sarah A. Soule

Who is Sarah A. Soule?

Sarah A. Soule's research examines state and organizational-level policy change and diffusion, and the role social movements have on these processes. Current projects include an NSF-funded analysis of advocacy group effects on environmental legislation in the US; an analysis of how protest impacts multi-national firm-level decisions regarding divestment in Burma; a study of how protest affects the outcomes of shareholder resolutions; and an analysis of how protest affects stock prices of targeted firms. She has just finished a book with Cambridge University Press, entitled Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility. And, she recently completed a book (with David Snow) called, A Primer on Social Movements. Recent published work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and the Annual Review of Sociology.

Sarah A. Soule is a Professor of Organizational Behavior. She received her BA in Sociology from the University of Vermont in 1989, and her PhD in Sociology from Cornell University in 1995. She joined the faculty of Sociology at the University of Arizona in 1995, and in 2006 she moved to the Sociology Department at Cornell University. In 2008, she joined the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her major areas of interest are organizational behavior, social movements, and political sociology, and her research is situated at the intersection of all these areas. In particular, she seeks to understand how social movement theories can shed light on organizational processes, and how organizational theories can inform studies of social movements.