His doctoral dissertation was on Multiple Goals and Staff Relations: A Comparative Study of Correctional Institutions for Juvenile Delinquents.
[2] He was a professor of sociology, social work, and business administration at the University of Michigan, where he taught from 1977, eventually holding a position of Distinguished Senior Faculty Lecturer in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts; in 2001 he became a professor emeritus.
[2] Zald served as chairs of the Collective Behavior and Social Movements section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 1982-83 and also for the Section on Occupations & Organizations in 1985-1986; he served as a vice president for the ASA in 1986-87.
The term social movement organization (SMO) entered the literature through the work of Zald and Roberta Ash (now Garner) (Zald, Mayer N. and Roberta Ash, Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay and Change.
[7] Zald’s article with McCarthy, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” published in the American Journal of Sociology in May 1977, has been described by Jeff Goodwin as one of the most influential and frequently cited articles in the field and in the discipline.
[3] Zald and McCarthy called "attention to the rising trend of professional activism in social movements and [applied] general principles of organizational dynamics to"[who said this?]
[8] Zald wrote more than 60 articles in all and wrote and edited nearly two dozen books; as of May 2012 his CV listed 21 Books and Monographs, 67 Empirical Studies and Theoretical Essays, 44 "Review Articles and Commentaries" and 5 "Pamphlets and Reports".