Research Interests

• Entrepreneurship, Innovation
• Organization and Management Theory
• Institutional Theory
• Institutional Logics
• Cultural Entrepreneurship
• Creative Industries
• Action Learning

Courses Taught at Texas A&M

• SOCI/MGMT 376: Entrepreneurial Perspectives
• SOCI 377: Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar
• SOCI 450/MGMT 478: Social Entrepreneurship
• SOCI/MGMT 476: Entrepreneurship Practice
• SOCI 607: Institutional Analysis, Individuals, Organizations, Societies
• SOCI 607: Sociological and Organizational Perspectives on Entrepreneurship

Bio

Patricia H. Thornton is Grand Challenge Initiative Faculty and Professor of Sociology and Entrepreneurship and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Society and Organizations, HEC, Paris. She formally held positions in Sociology and at the Fuqua School of Business and Sociology, Duke University and Sociology at Stanford University. She has been a visiting distinguished professor at HEC, Paris, a visiting scholar at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France and at Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University.

She has received scholarly awards including the best paper award by the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management, the W. Richard Scott award by the Organizations, Occupations and Work section of American Sociological Association, and the George R. Terry award, the highest honor granted by the Academy of Management for outstanding contribution to management knowledge. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 1993 from Stanford University.

Her research interests focus on how institutions and organizations affect attention and behavioral strategy in three domains, innovation and entrepreneurship, inclusiveness and diversity, and the solution to grand challenges.

Professor Thornton has written extensively on the topic of how institutional logics affect individual and organizational attention and behavior. Her research with colleagues William Ocasio and Michael Lounsbury is the basis of a key research program, the institutional logics perspective, in management and other social and physical sciences disciplines.

She developed the entrepreneurship curriculum for the Markets and Management Program at Duke University and most recently spearheaded the development of the interdisciplinary minor in innovation and entrepreneurship open to all students at Texas A&M University.

Representative Publications

• Thornton, Patricia H. and Kim Klyver, 2018 “Who is More Likely to Walk the Talk? The Symbolic Management of Entrepreneurial Intentions by Gender and Work Status,” Special Issue on Culture, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, Journal of Innovation, Organization, and Management, pp 1-26.
• Durand, Rodolphe and Patricia H. Thornton, 2018 “Categorizing Institutional Logics, Institutionalizing Categories: A Review of Two Literatures,” Academy of Management Annals, 12 (2) 1-27.
• Jourdan, Julien, Rodolphe Durand and Patricia H. Thornton, 2017. “The Price of Admission: Organizational Deference as Strategic Behavior,” American Journal of Sociology, 123 (1) 232-275.
• Thornton, Patricia H., William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury 2012. The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process, Oxford University Press., 2013 recipient of the George R. Terry award for outstanding contribution to management knowledge, Academy of Management.
  • 2020 Chinese translation published by Zhejiang University Press, PRC.
• Thornton, Patricia H. 2002. “The Rise of the Corporation in a Craft Industry: Conflict and Conformity in Institutional Logics,” Special Issue on Institutional Theory, Academy of Management Journal, 45 (1) 81-101.
• Thornton, Patricia H. 2001. “Personal Versus Market Logics of Control: A Historically Contingent Theory of the Risk of Acquisition.” Organization Science, 12 (3) 294-311, May-June.
• Thornton, Patricia H. 2002. “The Rise of the Corporation in a Craft Industry: Conflict and Conformity in Institutional Logics,” Special Issue on Institutional Theory, Academy of Management Journal, 45 (1) 81-101.
• Thornton, Patricia H. 2001. “Personal Versus Market Logics of Control: A Historically Contingent Theory of the Risk of Acquisition.” Organization Science, 12 (3) 294-311, May-June.
• Thornton, Patricia H. and William Ocasio 1999. “Institutional Logics and the Historical Contingency of Power in Organizations: Executive Succession in the Higher Education Publishing Industry, 1958 to 1990,” American Journal of Sociology, 105 (3) 801-843, November.
  • Reprinted in Institutional Theory in Organization Studies edited by Royston Greenwood, Kerstin Sahlin, Roy Suddaby, and Christine Oliver, Sage Publications.
• Thornton, Patricia H. 1999. “The Sociology of Entrepreneurship, Annual Review of Sociology, 25:19-46.
  • Reprinted in 2004 in New Developments in Sociology, edited by Richard Swedberg.
  • Reprinted in 2013 in Concepts of Entrepreneurship, edited by Hector O. Rocha, David B. Audretsch, and Julien Birkinshaw, Edward Elgar.

Representative Awards

• George R. Terry Award, highest honor granted by the Academy of Management, for outstanding contribution to management knowledge
• W. Richard Scott Award, for best research paper, Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of American Sociological Association
• Best Research Paper Award, Organization and Management Theory Division, Academy of Management