Page 7 - Flipbook: Sociology Shortcuts Issue 3

“My name is Rachel

and I’m a non-academic

sociologist…”

Embedded Sociologists are increasingly � Human Resources: Sociologists can play a
common in the contemporary workplace, even crucial role in areas like diversity and social
in areas like the Tech Industry where inclusion / exclusion within companies. They
sociologists bring their academic expertise to can also have an important input into developing
bear in a range of roles covering areas like: non-discriminatory organisational cultures –
understanding, for example, why a particular
� Public policy: analysing, understanding, organisation or industry is unappealing to
monitoring and measuring the impact company women, people of colour or those from less-
or industry policies have on different social privileged backgrounds.
groups.
� Training: These roles cover a wide range of
� Corporate Social Responsibility: helping to areas and ideas, but examples might include
develop industry and organisational policies sociological insights into developing inclusive
around areas like education (such as the digital corporate cultures, diversity training,
divide), social environments (the impact organisational impacts on the social environment
different corporate polices on things like free and the like.
speech, harassment and bullying have on
different communities) and inequality (how � Research: While a conventional knowledge of
technological developments “alleviate or research methods – including methodological
compound racial and socioeconomic concepts like reliability, validity and
inequities”). representativeness – can be useful to
organisations, sociological understanding can be
� Compliance: developing and monitoring brought to bear on things like the impact of
ways companies and organisations comply with different media technologies and a range of
their legal and moral obligations to their social media questions: why people use different
customers and workforce. identities, online ethnography, social well-being
and so forth.

While this list isn’t exhaustive , it is indicative of the kinds of careers
and roles sociologists can have outside a relatively narrow range of
“public service” occupations.

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