Retired Associate Professor
McGuinn Hall 429
Telephone: 617-552-4140
Email: paul.gray@bc.edu
SOCY1093 - Comparative Social Change
SOCY2210 - Research Methods
SOCY2215 - Social Theory
SOCY5511 - Ethnography
INTL4941 - International Studies Senior Seminar
SOCY4931 - Important Readings in Sociology
SOCY4961 - Senior Honors Seminar
SOCY7710 - Social Inquiry Research Seminar
Qualitative research methods, corporate-community relations, work and technology, adult education in the workplace, and labor relations and social change. I am very interested in working with students in the general areas of development and modernization, social change, complex organizations, business and society, sociology of education, and action research.
I have published articles in several journals, including: Industrial Relations, Urban Life, Changing Work, the Journal of Voluntary Action Research, and Symbolic Interaction. I am also the author of Unions and Leaders in Ghana and first author (with John Williamson, David Karp, and John Dalphin) of The Research Imagination, a methods text published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. In addition, I have co-authored, with colleagues David Karp and Lynda Lytle Holmstrom, a series of articles based on a study of family dynamics and the college choice-making process.
In addition to my research activities I also am an organizational consultant and executive coach. In this work I explore the connections between social change and business, especially the rise of a new industrial relations paradigm and the increasing emphasis on corporate social responsibility, both within the firm and in the outside community. I have been very active in promoting, and working within, the Joint Degree (Ph.D./MBA) Program offered by the Carroll Graduate School of Management and the Department of Sociology at Boston College.
My consulting clients have included Battelle, Bristol-Myers Squibb; Motorola, Sapient, Newton Wellesley Hospital, the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, and William Berry.
I currently serve as Associate Editor of the journal, ACTION RESEARCH.