Dr Matt Vidal
Director of Doctoral Programmes and Reader in Sociology and Comparative Political Economy

Matt is Reader in Sociology and Comparative Political Economy in the Institute for International Management.
For a full list of Matt's publications and other work, see Matt Vidal's Curriculum Vitae as a pdf and Google Scholar page.
Matt’s research interests include the sociology of work, organizations and labor markets, political economy, comparative-historical sociology and social theory. His work has been published in Contexts, Critical Sociology, Human Relations, Industrial Relations, New Political Economy, Organization Studies, Socio-Economic Review, Sociology Compass, Socius and Work, Employment & Society. He is author (with David Kusnet) of Organizing Prosperity (EPI) and editor (with Marco Hauptmeier) of Comparative Political Economy of Work (Palgrave). Another one of his books is The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx. Oxford University Press (co-edited with Paul Prew, Tomas Rotta and Tony Smith). Forthcoming.
Matt is editor-in-chief of Work in Progress, a public sociology blog of the American Sociological Association on the economy, work and inequality. He is also commissioning editor of the Marxist Sociology Blog, another public sociology blog of the ASA. Matt is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Research in the Sociology of Work, was on the Editorial Board of Work, Employment & Society from 2010-15 and was co-editor (with Jon Hindmarsh) of the Organisations & Work section of Sociology Compass, 2009-13. He is the Chair of the Section on Marxist Sociology, American Sociological Association, 2017-18.
Academic background
Current research and collaborations
Matt is currently working on three book projects:
- Management Divided: Contradictions of labor management in American capitalism (under contract with Oxford University Press)
- From Spur to Fetter: Western capitalism from the industrial revolution to postindustrial stagnation
Current PhD / research supervisions
- Seyed Mousavi, “The social reproduction of Iranian elites” (first supervisor)
- Bo-Yi Lee, “Determinants of job quality” (co-supervisor)
- Giga Giorgadze, “The Dynamics of Public Healthcare Policy Change in Post-soviet Georgia” (co-supervisor)
- Ian Hill, “Teamwork and collaborative community in IT consulting and clinical medicine” (first supervisor)
Completed PhD / research supervisions
- Hsiao-Wen Ho, “Knowledge Transfer, Organisational Learning, and the Performance of International Strategic Alliances: A Co-evolutionary Perspective,” 2011 (second supervisor)
- Farhad Mehraban, “Supply Chain Knowledge Creation Applications of organizational knowledge creation theory,” 2013