Harland Prechel's research and teaching interests are in the fields of political sociology, comparative and historical sociology, class, the corporation, economic sociology, environmental sociology, and social theory. He has authored a book that integrates many of these interests, Big Business and the State: Historical Transitions and Corporate Transformation, 1880s-1990s (2000). He has authored or co-authored numerous articles in leading journals that include "Steel and the State" (1990), "Economic Crisis and the Centralization of Control Over the Managerial Process" (1994), and "The Effects of Organizational and Political Embeddedness on Financial Malfeasance in the Largest U.S. Corporations" (2010, which received the Best Paper of the Year Award from the Organizational and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. His published (or forthcoming) articles appeared in American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Social Forces, The Sociological Quarterly, Sociological Forum, Political Power and Social Theory, and Social Science Quarterly. He is now concentrating on two dimensions of his research program. The first, which includes a book, examines the effects of corporate characteristics and corporate political embeddedness on financial malfeasance. The second is a study of the relationship between corporate structures and political embeddedness on environmental pollution. He is a previous editor or Research in Political Sociology and is a current member of the Editorial Board of Contemporary Sociology. He bicycles 100 plus miles a week and is a die-hard fan of University of Kansas basketball.