Publications
Foley, Meraiah, Sue Williamson and Sarah Mosseri. 2020. “Women, Work and Industrial Relations in Australia Annual Review.” Journal of Industrial Relations. DOI: 10.1177/0022185620909402
Sarah E. Mosseri. 2019. Finding middle ground: the relationship between cultural schemas and working mothers’ work-family strategies, Community, Work & Family, DOI: 10.1080/13668803.2019.1682968
Gorman, Elizabeth H. and Sarah Mosseri. 2019. “How Organizations Shape Gender Difference and Inequality at Work.” Sociology Compass, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12660.
Foley, Meraiah, Sue Williamson and Sarah Mosseri. 2020. “Women, Work and Industrial Relations in Australia Annual Review.” Journal of Industrial Relations. DOI: 10.1177/0022185620909402
Sarah E. Mosseri. 2019. Finding middle ground: the relationship between cultural schemas and working mothers’ work-family strategies, Community, Work & Family, DOI: 10.1080/13668803.2019.1682968
Gorman, Elizabeth H. and Sarah Mosseri. 2019. “How Organizations Shape Gender Difference and Inequality at Work.” Sociology Compass, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12660.
Active Research Projects
The Australian Women's Working Futures (Collaborative Project)
Significant ink has been spilled regarding how trends of automation, financialization and globalization threaten the future quantity and quality of jobs. Surprisingly, dominant narratives about the "future of work" seem to draw from the past, generally imagining future workers in traditionally masculine terms. Yet globally, women currently make up almost 40% of the formal labor force, and estimates of women's informal labor force participation are even higher. Further, women-dominated fields such as healthcare, are projected to grow in the coming decades. This project addresses the striking invisibility of gender in discussions about the future of work by bringing young women's voices to the fore. Using original survey data from a representative sample of approximately 2,000 Australian working women, aged 16-40 years old, and supplementary focus group data, this research illuminates women's current work experiences and their aspirations and anxieties about the future of work. While identifying important aspects regarding the gendered dimensions of the future of work, this research also highlights important areas of variation among different groups of women.
The research is a collaboration among interdisciplinary scholars at The University of Sydney.
Significant ink has been spilled regarding how trends of automation, financialization and globalization threaten the future quantity and quality of jobs. Surprisingly, dominant narratives about the "future of work" seem to draw from the past, generally imagining future workers in traditionally masculine terms. Yet globally, women currently make up almost 40% of the formal labor force, and estimates of women's informal labor force participation are even higher. Further, women-dominated fields such as healthcare, are projected to grow in the coming decades. This project addresses the striking invisibility of gender in discussions about the future of work by bringing young women's voices to the fore. Using original survey data from a representative sample of approximately 2,000 Australian working women, aged 16-40 years old, and supplementary focus group data, this research illuminates women's current work experiences and their aspirations and anxieties about the future of work. While identifying important aspects regarding the gendered dimensions of the future of work, this research also highlights important areas of variation among different groups of women.
The research is a collaboration among interdisciplinary scholars at The University of Sydney.
Trust Fall: The Processes and Politics of Trust in Contemporary Work (Book Project)
Americans report high levels of interpersonal trust at work despite a documented proclivity toward distrust outside the workplace. Why do people trust coworkers and employers, particularly given widespread job insecurity, labor market inequality and workplace discrimination and harassment? This research draws on fourteen months of ethnographic workplace observations and 122 in-depth interviews with workers and managers to examine the paradoxical case of trust at work. Contending that a prolonged, inter-organizational managerial discourse orients individuals toward trust at work, I reveal how people “do” trust – and to what end – in four distinct service-sector settings: a restaurant, a marketing firm, a high-tech consulting start-up and the NYC ride-hail circuit. I conclude that interpersonal trust represents a previously under-examined mechanism of normative control that I dub "relational control," which is made more salient by the erosion of traditional work structures and the increasingly transient nature of jobs.
This research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Bankard Fund for Political Economy.
Americans report high levels of interpersonal trust at work despite a documented proclivity toward distrust outside the workplace. Why do people trust coworkers and employers, particularly given widespread job insecurity, labor market inequality and workplace discrimination and harassment? This research draws on fourteen months of ethnographic workplace observations and 122 in-depth interviews with workers and managers to examine the paradoxical case of trust at work. Contending that a prolonged, inter-organizational managerial discourse orients individuals toward trust at work, I reveal how people “do” trust – and to what end – in four distinct service-sector settings: a restaurant, a marketing firm, a high-tech consulting start-up and the NYC ride-hail circuit. I conclude that interpersonal trust represents a previously under-examined mechanism of normative control that I dub "relational control," which is made more salient by the erosion of traditional work structures and the increasingly transient nature of jobs.
This research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Bankard Fund for Political Economy.
Dynamics of Contestation in American Work Contexts
In a series of three papers, I examine the processes through which workers and worker groups contest (or don't) the structural and cultural constraints that shape their work lives:
In a series of three papers, I examine the processes through which workers and worker groups contest (or don't) the structural and cultural constraints that shape their work lives:
- Within elite work environments that demand all-encompassing work devotion, what is the discursive space for talking about leisure? Pulling on 65 in-depth interviews with high-status professionals in management consulting, finance, tech and media, I investigate how employees resist and reproduce cultures of overwork through everyday 'water cooler' talk. Initial findings from this research have been presented at national and international conferences, and a manuscript is currently in preparation.
- With Allison Pugh, I probe the cultural context surrounding U.S. workers' documented acquiescence to work intensification. We explore the contesting discourse available to workers by analyzing the critique of overwork in newspapers, magazines and - employing methodological innovation - on social media. In a manuscript currently in progress, we outline the volume and form of public critique and discuss the implications of the available cultural vocabulary for worker resistance. This manuscript is being revised for journal submission.
- With Elizabeth Gorman and Joris Gjata, I trace the abdication of self-regulation by the U.S accounting profession in the wake of the Enron collapse. Reviewing the legislative history of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, including the transcripts of over a dozen Congressional hearings, we argue that external regulation of the profession was a product of accounting self-interest and a decades-long negotiation between the profession, the state and outsider groups (i.e., corporate clients, law professionals and investors). We demonstrate how these processes were shaped by the history of profession's self-regulation and the legitimacy crises created by accounting scandals at the time. This manuscript is currently being prepared for journal submission.