Harland Prechel examines issues that are central to organization, political and economic sociology including corporate political behavior, corporate change, environmental pollution, and corporate financial malfeasance. Dr. Prechel published a book entitled Big Business and the State: Historical Transitions and Corporate Transformation, 1800-1990s. His work demonstrates why scholars should be concerned with corporate behavior and how they can better contribute to the area of critical corporate research and expose corporate behaviors that have harmful effects on society. Dr. Prechel's current research is focused on how the transformation of political-legal arrangements permitted corporations to create structures that facilitated financial malfeasance. Dr. Prechel’s second line of research focuses on the largely unexamined effects of corporate characteristics and the political-legal arrangements in which they are embedded on environmental pollution. In addition to his book and four edited volumes, Dr. Prechel has published more than 30 book chapters and peer reviewed research articles on corporate-state relations, corporate change, the managerial process, corporate financial malfeasance, and corporate environmental pollution. Some of that research has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Prechel’s most prominent works include an analysis of corporate-state relations that moved beyond the state-centered and society-centered debate by demonstrated that state power and class power are historically contingent published in the American Sociological Review, an examination showing that corporations reduced the number managers and layers of managers in the 1980s by setting up controls over the managerial process using principles similar to those used by the scientific managers in the early 20th century to control the labor process published in the American Sociological Review, the transformation from the multidivisional form to the multilayer-subsidiary form in corporate America (with John Boies) published in Sociological Forum, and his examination (with Theresa Morris) of how the organizational and political-legal arrangements that emerged in the 1990s created incentives, dependencies and opportunities for managers to engage in financial malfeasance published in the American Sociological Review. This research received awards from the Organizations, Occupations and Work section of American Sociological Association, the theory section of the Academy of Management, and the American Society of Criminology. Dr. Prechel teaches courses in classical social theory, class in contemporary society, complex organizations, and political sociology. He has served as editor of Research in Political Sociology and on the editorial board of Contemporary Sociology. Dr. Prechel also coordinates the graduate concentration in political and economic sociology in the Department of Sociology. He bicycles 80-100 plus miles a week and is a die-hard fan of University of Kansas basketball.

Harland Prechel
Cornerstone Faculty Fellow
Glasscock Institute for the Humanities Fellow
Texas A&M University
Department of Sociology
TAMU 4351 Academic Building
Phone: (979) 845-6424
Fax: (979) 862-4057
E-mail: hprechel@tamu.edu

Selected Publications