Thomas Roulet is an organisational and economic sociologist, and Senior Lecturer in Organisation Theory at the Cambridge Judge Business School. He is a Fellow in sociology at Girton College. Before joining Cambridge, he held positions at King’s College London, the University of Bath, the University of Oxford, and Columbia University in New York.
His work mostly focuses on negative social evaluations at different levels of analysis (practice, individual, organisational), which gets him to study a variety of phenomena including stigma, scandals, deviance, misconduct or dirty work. He has published in a variety of outlets in management and social sciences. In a recent book, ‘The Power of Being Divisive: Understanding Negative Social Evaluations’ (Stanford University Press, 2020), he unpacks why negative evaluation might paradoxically be beneficial.
He also mobilises and contributes to institutional theory - in particular material and micro-foundational approaches to institutions – and systemic approaches to ethics. In terms of methods, he has engaged in debates around the ethicality of covert participant observation (Roulet et al., 2017, in Organizational Research Methods). He applies those various lenses to examine the world of work and social relations in organisations.
His work has been covered in a variety of media outlets including the Financial Times, the Economist, the Economic Times, ITV News, Bloomberg or the BBC. He writes a column for Forbes on the future of work, leadership and communication.
