About

I am an organizational theorist and economic sociologist who investigates the importance of status recognition in labor market outcomes. Specifically, I focus on how personnel management systems, including talent recruitment and performance assessment, shape careers and impact the long-term.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Economics
• Public relations
• Microeconomics
• Engineering
• Marketing
• Business
• Management
• Finance

Selected publications

• Organizational Field Interventions in Well-Being: Challenges and Impact

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article

  Employee well-being is essential not only for individual health and satisfaction but also for organizational effectiveness and sustainability. Employees with higher levels of well-being are more engaged, productive, and committed, while those with poor well-being often experience burnout, reduced performance, and increased absenteeism, negatively affecting organizational outcomes (Schabram & Heng, 2022; Spreitzer et al., 2005). Managerial strategies play a pivotal role in shaping the workplace environment and improving well-being (Grant et al., 2007; Guest, 2017). This symposium features four field experiments conducted in real-world settings—such as warehouses, veterinary clinics, banks, and private companies across several countries—offer valuable insights into how managerial interventions can address workplace challenges. By testing strategies like participatory voice mechanisms, corporate social responsibility program, work-life balance support, and four-day work week, these studies provide robust, causal evidence of what works and why. Specifically, Kowalski et al. demonstrate the value of worker voice in reducing turnover in e-commerce fulfillment centers. Portocarrero and Rodell highlight the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) interventions in enhancing employee engagement, showing that workplace empathy, cultivated through CSR activities, motivates employees to volunteer more. Bond, Yang, and Sah investigate whether combining organizational culture interventions with personalized well-being and job crafting strategies for managers more effectively reduces burnout among veterinary staff compared to organizational culture interventions alone. Lastly, Fan et al. assess the transformative impact of a four-day workweek on employee well-being, linking reduced hours to enhanced mental and physical health through better work-life balance and reduced fatigue. Together, these studies underscore the importance of innovative, evidence-based interventions in fostering healthier, more sustainable workplaces. Can Involving Employees Reduce Turnover? A Field Experiment on Employee Voice and Exit Author: Alex Kowalski; Cornell University Author: Erin Kelly; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Author: Hazhir Rahmandad; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Author: Kirsten Siebach; Johns Hopkins University The Effects of Employee Exposure to Community Impact Activities on Emotions and Engagement Author: Florencio F. Portocarrero; London School of Economics and Political Science Author: Jessica Beth Rodell; University of Georgia Organizational Interventions to Alleviate Burnout and Promote Well-Being Author: Brittany Bond; Cornell University Author: Duanyi Yang; Cornell University Author: Sunita Sah; Cornell University Does Work Time Reduction Improve Worker Well-being? Evidence from Global Four-Day Workweek Trial Author: Wen Fan; Boston College Author: Juliet Schor; Boston College Author: Orla Kelly; University College Dublin Author: Guolin Gu; Boston College

  PublisherDOI

• Structured Management and Cooperative Norms in Reducing Performance Appraisal Inflation

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Accurate performance appraisals are essential for effective human resource management, driving employee development, fair reward distribution, and overall organizational success. However, the inflation of performance ratings, particularly for low performers, remains a persistent challenge that undermines these goals. This study investigates the role of managers’ structured management approaches and their perceptions of organization’s cooperative norms in shaping the accuracy of performance appraisals. Using data from a multinational pharmaceutical company, we employ a mixed-methods approach—combining an anchored vignette case study with survey and administrative data, along with supplementary qualitative analysis—to examine how these factors influence managers’ appraisal decisions. Our findings reveal that managers’ use of structured management practices—such as clear guidelines, monitoring, and data-driven decision-making—significantly reduces the likelihood of performance rating inflation. However, we also find that managers’ perceptions of their organization’s cooperative norms can lead to inflated ratings if managers prioritize maintaining relational harmony over objective assessments. This research highlights the need for organizations to carefully balance structured management practices with the social dynamics within teams to ensure appraisal accuracy, providing valuable insights for enhancing the effectiveness of performance management systems.

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond the Individual: Trickle Effects in Line Managers’ HR Implementation

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  articleSenior author

  In recent years, the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM) has increasingly recognized the pivotal role of line managers in delivering human resource (HR) management practices. However, existing research predominantly centers on individual characteristics of line managers, such as abilities and motivation, as predictors of their HR implementation behaviors, often overlooking the wider organizational context in which they operate. This study leverages social learning and social information processing theories to explore how the HR implementation behaviors of line managers’ supervisors permeate down the organizational hierarchy, creating “trickle-down effects.” Additionally, it investigates the “trickle-around effects,” where the HR implementation behaviors of line managers’ peers influence others within the same hierarchical level. Finally, this study uncovers the distinct factors that drive trickle-down effects, influenced by social learning from higher hierarchical levels, and trickle-around effects, stemming from the influence of peers in similar positions. The purpose is to theorize and demonstrate how trickle-down and trickle-around effects interact and collectively shape the HR implementation behaviors of focal line managers. Our aim is to provide a more holistic understanding of the intricate dynamics in line managers’ HR practice implementation, moving beyond the existing literature’s emphasis on their individual characteristics.

  PublisherDOI

• Novel Perspectives on Gender and Careers

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  article

  Despite an increased societal focus on gender equity, gender disparities in career outcomes persist. The persistence of gender disparities in career outcomes despite heightened societal interest in gender equity may indicate that there is more to be learned about how the gendered nature of work and family systematically advantages men. In this proposed symposium, four papers will provide the audience with novel perspectives on gender and careers. The symposium will begin with a paper presenting a new approach to understanding gender differences in the work performed by men and women and associated gender differences in career advancement by focusing on the skill requirements of jobs. The second presentation will then demonstrate how gender differences in mentoring low-performing junior employees – which can be conceptualized as a type of non-promotable work – is a factor that contributes to gender disparities in career advancement. Then, the remaining two papers will focus on motherhood and work, as motherhood is a key factor associated with gender disparities in careers. Specifically, the third paper will present novel insights into whether and when mothers decide to seek to reenter the labor market after taking time out of the workforce. Finally, the fourth paper will present research on an accountability intervention demonstrated to be effective at reducing bias against mothers in hiring decisions. Overall, our session aims to contribute to the grand challenge of gender disparities in work-related outcomes by furthering our understanding of both challenges and potential solutions relevant to women’s careers. Gender Differences in Job Requirements: Evidence Within Careers and Across Cohorts Author: Shoshana Schwartz; Christopher Newport U. Author: Peter Cappelli; U. of Pennsylvania Author: Yang Yang; Rowan U. Gender Differences in Managerial Supervision of Low Performing Jr Employees at a Fortune 500 Firm Author: Elizabeth Lauren Campbell; Rady School of Management, U. of California San Diego Author: Ming De Leung; U. of California, Irvine Author: Tingting Nian; - When Do Women Seek Reemployment? Perceived Challenges and Constrained Preferences Author: Tiantian Yang; U. of Pennsylvania Accountable for Bias: An Experimental Intervention to Decrease Motherhood Penalties in Hiring Author: Emma Williams-Baron; Stanford U. Author: Claire Daviss; Stanford U. Author: Erin Macke; Stanford U.

  PublisherDOI

• The Implications of Gendered Expectations for Worker Outcomes

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  article

  Whereas feminine stereotypes center on communal characteristics such as helpfulness and cooperativeness, male stereotypes center on agentic characteristics including competence and assertiveness (Abele, 2003; Fiske & Stevens, 1993). Broad beliefs and specific stereotypes about gender do more than just describe common gender differences in behavior, they also prescribe how men and women ought to behave (Gorman, 2005; Heilman, 1983; Perry, Davis-Blake, & Kulik, 1994). Such prescriptions may lead to gender inequality by shaping expectations in two distinct ways. First, evaluators assessing both men and women are apt to interpret behaviors demonstrated by male and female candidates based on the consistency of these behaviors vis-à-vis dominant gendered beliefs (e.g., Correll, Weisshaar, Wynn, & Wehner, 2020). Second, gendered beliefs shape people’s understanding about how others expect them to behave, thus, at times, leading individuals to conform to what they see as the desired, or expected, behaviors based on their gender (e.g., Correll et al., 2017). The aim of this symposium is to deepen and expand our understanding of how such gendered beliefs and expectations both shape the how men and women are evaluated by others and lead men and women to engage differently, specifically in ways that often disadvantage women. This symposium brings together economic sociologists, strategic management scholars, and organizational behavior scholars using a wide range of methods (e.g., observational, natural language processing, experimental) to uncover the processes leading to gender inequalities in the workplace. In line with the annual meeting theme, Putting the Worker Front and Center, each of the papers in this symposium focuses on worker behavior and the ways these behaviors can lead to gender differences in outcomes. Furthermore, the papers in this symposium examine these gender dynamics both at the hiring interface and over time among existing employees within organizations, thus offering insights about worker experiences with inequality at numerous critical moments for organizations seeking to create equitable workplaces. Differential Effects of Transparency: How Transparency Shapes Male and Female Evaluative Behavior Author: Mabel Abraham; Columbia Business School Author: Brittany Bond; Cornell U. Catching Negativity: Gender and the Dynamics of Emotional Contagion in Email Author: Sanaz Mobasseri; Boston U. Questrom School of Business Gender Differences in Career Advancement When Re-entering the Workforce After Entrepreneurship Author: Tristan L. Botelho; Yale School of Management Author: Daniel Fehder; USC Marshall School of Business Author: Milan Miric; U. of Southern California -Marshall School of Business The Intersectional Implications of the Gender Composition of Applicant Pools Author: Claire Daviss; Stanford U.

  PublisherDOI

• Striking Out Swinging: Specialist Success Following Forced Task Inferiority

  Organization Science · 2023 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Psychology

  Organizing work around specialized professionals leverages their deep expertise and mastery of particular skills. However, as work becomes more flexible, organizations often require specialists to perform some work outside their specialization. These tasks, which distance specialists from the area of their greatest contribution, could diminish their performance by being distracting or tiring or by creating negative comparisons with others who are more proficient in that work. Contrary to these perspectives, we find robust evidence that specialists’ performance can be enhanced, rather than diminished, after work outside their specialization. Using archival data from 22 years of Major League Baseball (MLB) games and interviews with former MLB players and coaches, we find that specialized players perform better in their specialty after obligatory tasks outside of their specialization. We argue that this occurs through a process we call forced task inferiority, in which underperformance in tasks outside their specialty frustrates specialists, generating heightened arousal and drive that they can channel into better performance in their specialty work. The results are robust to alternative mechanisms, such as tasks outside a specialist’s area of specialization leading to learning, breaking monotony, or threatening the specialist’s professional identity. This research advances knowledge about managing specialists and flexible work arrangements by showing that when tasks are particularly sequenced, specialists’ performance can be enhanced, rather than diminished, by doing work outside their specialty. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1680 .

  PublisherDOI

• Essays on status recognition and its consequences for top-talent mobility and productivity

  DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) · 2020-01-01 · 1 citations

  dissertationOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, May, 2020

  Publisher

• Pride Without Prejudice: The Burden of Under-Recognition in Organizations

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Public relations

  Public recognition is a powerful strategic tool for motivating individuals. Yet because high status recognition derives its desirability from scarcity, public recognition inevitably invites social comparisons. Since status recognition commonly corresponds with performance and accompanies tangible rewards, it is challenging to isolate pure social comparison costs. Leveraging a natural experiment in a large multinational organization, I provide novel evidence that employees are distinctly sensitive to status recognition beyond any material, career, or reputation concerns. When denied status recognition, employees are much more likely to exit the organization, despite receiving higher monetary rewards as recompense for nominal under-recognition. This study demonstrates the serious risks of using status recognition as an employee performance motivator. The analysis has broad implications for the strategic decisions organizations face when trying to motivate employees through nonmonetary reward systems.

  PublisherDOI

• Networks for the Unemployed?

  2019-11-26 · 5 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Past research has argued that hiring personnel use current employment as a signal of worker quality. If firms tend to keep high ability workers, then those who are not employed will tend to be “lemons,” labor market leftovers who are of uncertain quality. To the extent that employers rely on employment as a signal, then well-qualified, but out-of-work job seekers will be stigmatized simply by being out of work. “Networking” is a common prescription both for job seekers to overcome the negative signals of being out of work and as a means for knowing what skills to keep current. The importance of both these purposes of networking only increase the longer a job seeker has been out of work. For networking to work, however, someone must be willing to provide a connection for the unemployed person. This begs two important questions: 1) will potential referrers also view unemployment as a negative signal? and, 2) does the willingness to help depend on the strength of the network tie? This chapter uses a survey vignette experiment to study how potential referrers react to the signal of unemployment, and how their decisions to refer job candidates depend on whether the potential referral is a friend vs. stranger. Referrers generally do react negatively to unemployed job seekers. However, despite the risk to their reputation, friends are more likely to refer the unemployed, and do so without distancing themselves from the unemployed candidate. This suggests that networking can indeed solve the lemons problem confronting unemployed job seekers. Keywords: Unemployment, labor market, social networks, referrals

  PublisherDOI

• Recruiting Hay to Find Needles: Recursive Incentives and Innovation in Social Networks

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Erik Duhaime

  4 shared

• Patrick De Boer

  University of Zurich

  4 shared

• Thomas W. Malone

  3 shared

• Roberto M. Fernandez

  3 shared

• Ethan Poskanzer

  University of Colorado System

  3 shared

• Peter Reuter

  3 shared

• Beau Kilmer

  3 shared

• Jonathan P. Caulkins

  Carnegie Mellon University

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• William H. Newman All-Academy Award for Best Paper Based on…
• Louis R. Pondy Best Dissertation Paper (2020)
• Finalist, INFORMS/Organization Science Best Dissertation Pro…
• Keynote Speaker, CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas…