Rogers Hollingsworth

Bio

Rogers Hollingsworth, Ph.D. joined the Kauffman Foundation as a senior scholar in May 2011. Hollingsworth is an internationally renowned scholar on the topics of innovation, the sociology of capitalism, and organizational structure. Since 1964, he has been a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has held the following appointments: professor in the Departments of Sociology, History, and the Industrial Relations Research Institute. He also has been an affiliated faculty member in the Department of History of Medicine, and chairperson of the Graduate Program in Comparative History. Most of Hollingsworth's scholarship has focused on institutional change within and across countries. Two major questions have arisen from his work: (1) why do particular institutional arrangements and specific types of organizations emerge; and (2) what consequences follow from these institutional and organizational arrangements. He has published extensively on these issues. Hollingsworth has been engaged in a complex, cross national, and historical research agenda that attempts to explain why countries vary in their capacity to be innovative in science-based industries during the twentieth century. This research brings together the theoretical perspectives of his previous scholarship on institutional analysis, industrial sectors, major discoveries in biomedical science, and the governance of capitalist economies. Funders of his research include the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, the Dutch government, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Humboldt Foundation (Germany), the Swedish Council for Research on Higher Education, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. These interests have evolved into another large-scale research program in which Hollingsworth has been the co-principal organizer and investigator: The Study of Rare Events with Large Global Consequences (e.g., nuclear accidents, conflicts among and disintegration of nation states, crashes of financial markets, epidemics, climate change). Hollingsworth received a B.A. from Emory University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He also holds several honorary degrees.