About

Brandy L. Aven is an Associate Professor of Organizational Theory, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business. Her role involves teaching and research in these areas, contributing to the academic community through her expertise. Her contact email is aven@andrew.cmu.edu, and she is part of the faculty and research faculty profiles at Carnegie Mellon University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Public relations
• Computer Science
• Law
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Organizational Practices and Labor Market Inequality

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article

  This symposium investigates how organizational structures and practices shape labor market inequalities, featuring four cutting-edge studies that illuminate the mechanisms fostering or hindering inclusion. It offers two unique contributions to this critical conversation. First, the papers explore a range of mechanisms—including applicant interviews, referral-based hiring, task allocation, and promotion systems—that directly affect career trajectories for members of URGs. By uncovering these processes, the studies offer actionable strategies for recalibrating organizational practices to achieve more equitable outcomes. Second, the papers draw on a diverse array of data sources and empirical settings, ranging from startups to established firms and from academic job seekers to corporate leadership, leveraging both quantitative and qualitative methods. This breadth ensures a nuanced and comprehensive understanding of how organizational practices operate in varied contexts. Do Employers Change their Recruitment Choices Based on Past Interview Outcomes Author: Santiago Campero Molina; University of Toronto Strength in Numbers: Under-Represented Groups, Social Capital and Getting a Referral in Big Tech Author: Elena Obukhova; McGill University Author: Sharon Koppman; University of California Irvine Belonging in the Balance: Networks, Demographics, and the Making of Organizational Identity Author: Brandy Aven; Author: Evelyn Ying Zhang; Nanyang Technological University Premium or Penalty? Differential Effects of Gender and Race on Internal Promotions to Top Management Author: Tiantian Yang; University of Pennsylvania

  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Communication Networks on Shared Social Identity and Group Performance

  Small Group Research · 2025-03-24 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  We investigate whether communication networks influence group performance by affecting a group’s shared social identity. We hypothesized that a group’s communication network would influence members’ shared social identity by affecting similarities in individuals’ connections within the group. We manipulated the density and centralization of communication networks in a laboratory experiment. Density had a more positive effect on a shared social identity and group performance when networks were lower in centralization, which led to more similar patterns of connections, than in networks higher in centralization. Further, shared social identity mediated the effect of the network on group performance.

  PublisherDOI

• Doing it Differently: Gender and Relationships at Work

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  articleSenior author

  The papers in this symposium examine how gendered expectations impact how organizational actors build professional relationships and the consequences of such relationships. The papers introduce new theory at levels “below” (Brands et al., 2022: 602) the network (e.g., dyadic level; Woehler et al.). They focus on, and in several cases, observe, the mediating mechanisms that drive relationship and network formation (e.g., Zhang et al.; Strassman & Harrison) and the impact of those relationships (e.g., Stuart et al.). They also study contexts underexplored in the gender and networks literature (e.g., Kang). Together, the papers in this symposium expand work on gender and professional relationships by focusing on the mechanisms driving workplace relationships and breaking conventions regarding the units of analysis and contexts typically investigated. His & Hers Gratitude Author: Evelyn Ying Zhang; Nanyang Business School, NTU Singapore Author: Wu Liu; Hong Kong Polytechnic U. Author: Xiaofei Hu; Hong Kong Polytechnic U. Author: Xinwen Bai; Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Decoding Gender Dynamics in Network Mobilization Author: Meredith Lauren Woehler; Purdue U. Author: Huan Wu; - Author: Kinshuk Sharma; U. of North Texas As One or As One? Author: Jamie Strassman; U. of Texas at Austin Author: David A. Harrison; U. of Texas at Austin Gender and Friendship Network in a Korean Firm Author: Diane Kang; U. of Kentucky Pathways to Power Author: Colleen Stuart; Johns Hopkins U. Author: Gayoung Kim; Carnegie Mellon U. Author: Brandy Aven; Carnegie Mellon U.

  PublisherDOI

• Cognitive versatility and adaptation to fluid participation in hospital emergency department teams

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2024-02-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Role-based frameworks have long been the cornerstone of organizational coordination, providing clarity in role expectations among team members. However, the rise of “fluid participation”—a constant shift in team composition and skill sets—poses new challenges to traditional coordination mechanisms. In particular, with fluid participation, a team’s roles can oscillate between disconnected and intersecting, or between lacking and having overlap in the capabilities and expectations of different roles. This study investigates the possibility that a disconnected set of roles creates a structural constraint on the flexible coordination needed to perform in volatile contexts, as well as the mitigating role of cognitive versatility in a team’s strategically-central member. Utilizing a sample of 342 teams from a hospital Emergency Department, we find that teams with a disconnected role set are less effective than teams with an intersecting role set as demonstrated by longer patient stays and increased handoffs during shift changes. Importantly, the presence of a cognitively versatile attending physician mitigates these negative outcomes, enhancing overall team effectiveness. Our findings remain robust even after accounting for other variables like team expertise and familiarity. This research extends the Carnegie School’s seminal work on fluid participation by integrating insights from psychology and organizational behavior, thereby identifying key individual attributes that can bolster team coordination in dynamic settings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• License to Broker: How Mobility Eliminates Gender Gaps in Network Advantage

  Administrative Science Quarterly · 2024-01-19 · 6 citations

  article

  Brokerage in intra-organizational networks is critical to performance, but women exhibit less brokerage in their social networks and receive lower performance returns to the brokerage they exhibit than men do. We uncover a condition under which the gender gaps in network advantage are entirely negated: mobility. When women move between units of the organization, they increase their brokerage more than mobile men do. Further, such mobility eliminates the gender gap in returns to brokerage. Using a rich dataset including the personnel records, monthly performance, and email communications of thousands of employees in a large financial institution, we find support for our arguments by comparing the networks and objective performance of those who changed jobs with matched non-movers prior to and following each job change. In probing why this might be the case, we find that women movers are more likely to maintain communication ties to colleagues from their previous roles and that these persistent ties give them a discernible and gender-role-congruent explanation for connecting otherwise disconnected units and benefiting from network brokerage. Our results illuminate important mechanisms by which social network dynamics and mobility affect gender inequality and performance in organizations.

  PublisherDOI

• Michèle Lamont. Seeing Others: How Recognition Works—and How It Can Heal a Divided World

  Administrative Science Quarterly · 2024-09-20

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Organizing for misconduct: A social network lens on collective corporate corruption

  Research in Organizational Behavior · 2023-02-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Text-Based Measure of Transactive Memory System Strength

  Small Group Research · 2023-07-02 · 7 citations

  article

  We develop a method to assess the three indicators of transactive memory systems (TMS)—specialization, credibility, and coordination—through computer-aided text analysis. First, human coders assessed group transcripts for phrases representative of these indicators. From those phrases, we identified words that occurred frequently to develop a dictionary of TMS indicators. In total, we analyzed 262 groups composed of 1,091 individuals. Both the human-coded and dictionary-based assessments of TMS indicators are significantly related to a popular survey-based assessment of TMS. Our approach could be used to advance understanding of TMS by analyzing it in contexts where administering surveys is not feasible.

  PublisherDOI

• Constrained or Free? How Networks Enable and Reduce Path-Dependent Behavior

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  article

  Path dependency has long been viewed as fundamental aspect of organizational behavior, with scholars largely viewing social networks as a constraint on path dependency (Merton 1968; Granovetter 1985). In this symposium, we bring four papers together that challenge this conceptualization. Each paper interrogates the ways social structure may or may not enable actors to ‘break free’ from their present trajectories. Negro, Kovacs, and Carroll study how receiving a major career award influences the reconfiguration of musicians’ networks and their future projects. In a study on VCs in China, Aven, Shen, and Zhang study how network configurations influence funding success among innovative, young start-ups. Using an agent-based model, Byun studies the way organizations may come to negate the influence of social structure in labor markets through various hiring designs (aka “logics”). Finally, Choi, Ierokomos, and Sterling place a field experiment that suggests that there are limits to how actors behave based on information retrieved outside of embedded relationships. Taken together, these papers reveal new mechanisms through which the presence and absence of social networks may lead economic actors to remain on the same path or arrive on a new trajectory. Constrained or Free? How Networks Enable and Reduce Path-Dependent Behavior Author: Brandy Aven; Carnegie Mellon U. Author: Jiwon Byun; Stanford Graduate School of Business Author: Balazs Kovacs; Yale School of Management Author: Adina D. Sterling; Columbia Business School

  PublisherDOI

• Networks and Diversity in the New Era of Organizational Teams

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  article

  Taking a network perspective to study teams has been popular and fruitful in the past decades. Yet, the changing nature of how work teams are organized and managed in the new era brings unprecedented challenges to this line of work. For example, nowadays, many teams have fuzzy boundaries. And social exchanges and collaborations between groups are far more frequent and intensive than they traditionally were. Teams are also becoming increasingly diverse due to the globalization trend and the recognition of the value of diversity. These changing features of teams are likely to influence or interact with intra- and inter-team networks and exert a collective, integrated impact on individual members’ and teams’ cognitions, behaviors, and outcomes, which have not been thoroughly understood and examined. Our symposium highlights the recent efforts to investigate new emergent features of teams and explore how they interact with networks within and between teams. Two papers directly tap into the members’ social relations within and between teams, the diversity of these social relations, and associated team performance outcomes. Another two papers look at dynamic entrepreneurial teams, where each team constitutes the entire organization. Each explores a different element of diversity as a function of how networks are strategically used in these budding firms. The fifth paper switches the gear to focus on individuals’ intrapersonal diversity and network structural features and provides insights into how their linkage may shape team dynamics. Complementarities of Members’ Structural Roles in Team Success: The Moderating Role of Experience Author: Shihan Li; Heinz College - Carnegie Mellon U. Author: Brandy Aven; Carnegie Mellon U. The Social Underpinnings of Effective Organizational Interteam Relations Author: Martin J. Kilduff; UCL School of Management Author: Andreas Wilhelm Richter; U. of Cambridge Author: Ronald Clarke; Rennes School of Business Multicultural Experience and Social Network Brokerage Author: Eva Hsin-Lian Lin; London Business School Author: Raina A. Brands; UCL School of Management Author: Adrienne Wood; U. of Virginia Author: Adam M. Kleinbaum; Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business Showcasing strategies: The Role of Entrepreneurial Networking in Quest for Venture Capital Funding Author: Damiano Maria Morando; Imperial College Business School Author: Anne L.J. Ter Wal; Imperial College Business School Author: Stefano Breschi; Bocconi U. Recruiting for your team: Network hiring and match-specific performance in firms Author: Ines Black; - Author: Sharique Hasan; Fuqua School of Business, Duke U.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Evelyn Zhang

  Nanyang Technological University

  6 shared

• Adam M. Kleinbaum

  Dartmouth College

  5 shared

• Jeremy Koster

  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

  5 shared

• Alessandro Iorio

  Bocconi University

  4 shared

• Sanaz Mobasseri

  4 shared

• H. C. Hillmann

  University of Mannheim

  4 shared

• Ishani Aggarwal

  Fundação Getulio Vargas

  3 shared

• Patrick Bergemann

  University of California System

  3 shared

Education

• PhD, Sociology

  Stanford University

  2010