About

Corinne Bendersky is a Professor of Management and Organizations at UCLA Anderson. She is an expert in workplace conflict, status, and justice within teams and organizations. Her research explores how these dynamics influence organizational behavior and workplace culture, with a focus on understanding and improving team interactions and hierarchies. Bendersky's work resonates both in academic circles and in practical business applications, and she has authored many prize-winning papers. Her current research involves studying female firefighters, an elite group with only 3 percent representation in that occupation, aiming to understand gender bias and workplace diversity. Her research also covers topics such as workplace management, gender bias, organizational culture, and employment, with a particular interest in how status among group members affects teamwork and productivity. Bendersky's work emphasizes the importance of understanding social hierarchies and conflict in fostering productive and equitable work environments.

Research topics

• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Engineering ethics
• Management science
• Mathematics education
• Physics

Selected publications

• The Role of Reputational Costs in Dominant Leadership

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article

  Why do some leaders adopt competition and dominance as strategies to gain and maintain influence? This symposium emphasizes the pivotal roles of anticipated relational and reputational costs in shaping leaders' behavior on their path to the top. We argue that individuals carefully consider the anticipated social impact of their behavior on subordinates and peers across various organizational contexts. Specifically, the research presented in this session highlights how situational and interpersonal factors—such as worldviews of human nature, perceived gender norms, dominance-oriented leadership styles, and competition versus cooperation—inform leaders’ mental calculus. These considerations influence their decisions to exert influence by threat and coercion, strategies for internal and external promotion, preferences for maintaining distance from subordinates, and sense of autonomy.

  PublisherDOI

• Charles A. Myers (1913–2000)

  2025-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• The Paradox of Voice: How Employee Voice Can Exacerbate the Harms of Identity-Based Harassment

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  articleSenior author

  Despite efforts to foster inclusivity and diversity, identity-based harassment remains a pervasive issue in the workplace. Initially, we expected that employee voice – when individuals perceive their work environment as conducive to freely expressing ideas and opinions (Morrison, 2011) – to be an organizational characteristic that mitigates the detrimental effects of identity-based harassment. Counterintuitively, we discovered in three large datasets (total n = 2,286,047) that both a high voice climates and high levels of voice expression amplified the negative impacts of harassment experiences on employees’ job attitudes (engagement, morale, and satisfaction). We abductively identify, and then deductively test, that diminished sense of belonging is a social mechanism that explains why high voice exacerbates, rather than mitigates, the negative effects of harassment on job attitudes. We conclude by suggesting that identity-conscious voice mechanisms may be more effective at mitigating the negative effects of identity-based harassment on employees’ job attitudes and propose the next steps for examining this direction for the work using an experimental design.

  PublisherDOI

• Exploring the Frontiers of Group Interactions at Work: Power, Status, and Emotions

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024

  • Psychology
  • Social psychology
  • Mathematics education

  Today’s work groups face unique opportunities and challenges related to new ways of organizing and performing. This symposium aims to present an integrated set of studies exploring the frontiers of dynamic interactions within work groups, paying particular attention to the roles of power, status, and emotions. It features four research papers encompassing both theoretical and empirical approaches and using diverse methodologies and study contexts. To advance knowledge and provoke new directions in group research, we have also invited a distinguished scholar as the session discussant. Together, this symposium aims to encapsulate, encourage, and elicit scholarship that addresses a compelling set of questions concerning interaction dynamics in work groups, as well as how leaders and organizations may address their social, relational, and emotional opportunities and challenges. Team resilience in response to extreme events: Exploring the affective and relational dynamics Author: Kijan Vakilzadeh; U. of Kassel Author: Jan B. Schmutz; U. of Zurich Author: Zhike Lei; IMD Business School Author: Mirko Antino; Instituto U. de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) Falling on the sword: Blame-taking and status following team failure Author: So-Hyeon (Sophia) Shim; The U. of Melbourne Author: Brian Gunia; Johns Hopkins U. Within and beyond: Divergent effects of team power and status Author: Jamie L. Perry; Syracuse U. Whitman School of Management Author: Nicholas Hays; Michigan State U. Who is laughing now? Humor as a mechanism to negotiate status conflicts during organizational change Author: So-Hyeon (Sophia) Shim; The U. of Melbourne Author: Michael Jarrett; INSEAD

  PublisherDOI

• Experimental studies of conflict: Challenges, solutions, and advice to junior scholars

  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2023 · 7 citations

  • Sociology
  • Social Science
  • Psychology
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Perceived misalignment of professional prototypes reduces subordinates’ endorsement of sexist supervisors.

  Journal of Applied Psychology · 2022-07-28 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  (PPPA)-the extent to which a subordinate perceives their supervisor to share their beliefs about what it means to be a member of their profession-with sexist supervisors. Specifically, encouraging subordinates' to hold less masculine, more "balanced" professional prototypes, in which they see stereotypically feminine attributes as equally important to the job as stereotypically masculine ones, reduces PPPA with sexist supervisors. Lowering PPPA, in turn, reduces supervisor endorsement, even after accounting for the effects of other established mechanisms of supervisor endorsement. This research sheds new light on the psychology of followership and offers a new way to curb gender bias from the bottom up. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Consequences of Competition in Organizations

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022-07-06 · 1 citations

  article

  Competition is prevalent in organizations. For example, people often compete against their colleagues for status and recognition in the workplace or for opportunities for advancement. Workers also compete against others to get hired into organizations in the first place. It is thus both practically and theoretically important to understand the interpersonal consequences of competition–broadly construed–in organizations. We present five empirical papers that examine understudied or poorly understood areas of research related to organizational competition and provide novel insights into the consequences of competition on important organizational outcomes such as hiring, group decision making, organizational fit perceptions, and negotiation outcomes. The first paper draws on theories from the realm of the psychological consequences of competition and optimal distinctiveness to shed light on instances when workers are more likely to join groups in which their salient identities will be underrepresented. The second paper significantly extends rivalry theory by integrating it with other theories of motivation and performance and uncovers two key moderators of the effects of rivalry on performance. The third paper examines how feelings of (in)authenticity shape the experiences and behaviors of individuals following a status gain. The fourth paper draws on theories of regulatory focus and attribution to examine the impact that being an alternate choice has on newcomer socialization behaviors and outcomes, such as feedback seeking and performance. The fifth paper expands upon the conflict expression theoretical framework, evidencing why status claims may backfire and how challengers can manage the defender’s perceptions of the status negotiation. Together, we hope the papers in this symposium provide important insights into the consequences of competition in organizations and provide actionable insights for managers, while also spurring future research by academics. Organizational Competition: A Catalyst for Workplace Diversity and Desires for Uniqueness Presenter: Samantha Nicole Smith; Harvard Business School Presenter: Edward Chang; Harvard Business School Presenter: Erika Kirgios; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Katherine Milkman; U. of Pennsylvania The Role of Identity Authenticity in Shaping Group-Oriented Behaviors Following Status Gains Presenter: Sarah Doyle; U. of Arizona Presenter: Sijun Kim; Texas A&M U., Mays Business School Presenter: Hee Young Kim; Rider U. How Individual Skill and Risk of Status Loss Moderate the Effects of Rivalry on Performance Presenter: Tom Grad; Copenhagen Business School Presenter: Christoph Riedl; Northeastern U. Presenter: Gavin J. Kilduff; New York U. Alternate Choice Aftermath: Implications for Newcomer Socialization Presenter: Samir Nurmohamed; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Zoe Schwingel-Sauer; Ross School of Business, U. of Michigan Respect Affirmation: A Strategy for Claiming Status in Status Negotiation Presenter: Jieun Pai; U. of Virginia Presenter: Corinne Bendersky; U. of California, Los Angeles

  PublisherDOI

• Mistreatment from peers can reduce the effects of respectful treatment from bosses, and respectful peers can offset mistreatment from bosses

  Journal of Organizational Behavior · 2020 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology

  Summary The present studies examine the joint influence of interpersonal fairness from peers and authorities on participants' organizational behaviors (citizenship) and attitudes (commitment). In three experimental studies, we find that mistreatment from peers, in the form of interpersonal unfairness, reduces the benefits that authorities gain from treating the same employee with high interpersonal fairness themselves. We also find that the negative effect of mistreatment from authorities can be offset by high interpersonal fairness from peers. These results come about because the interpersonal fairness shown not only by authorities but also by peers influences people's sense of standing as organization members. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, as well as limitations and suggestions, for future research.

  PublisherDOI

• Balancing Professional Prototypes Increases the Valuation of Women in Male-Dominated Professions

  Organization Science · 2019-11-06 · 43 citations

  articleSenior author

  We tackle the persistent problem of people from specific demographic groups (e.g., women) being undervalued in professional contexts in which traits associated with their group do not align with the traits perceived to be essential for success (the professional prototype). We introduce the concept of balancing professional prototypes such that group membership becomes irrelevant to determining an individual’s prototypicality. Using a novel technique called prototype inversion, we emphasize the importance of professional traits typically associated with an underrepresented group, without dismissing those associated with the currently prototypical group. By balancing the prototype in this way, it becomes easier to recognize the professional potential of members of underrepresented groups, without incurring backlash from the currently prototypical group. We conducted a full-cycle research project to demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy in the extreme context of women in firefighting using qualitative and quantitative methods and participants from both the laboratory and the field.

  PublisherDOI

• 7. Workplace Justice, Zero Tolerance, and Zero Barriers Mary Rowe

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2019-09-17

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kristin Behfar

  London Business School

  12 shared

• Gergana Todorova

  California State University, Fullerton

  12 shared

• Karen A. Jehn

  11 shared

• Laurie R. Weingart

  10 shared

• Nicholas P. Hays

  Nestlé (Switzerland)

  8 shared

• Jieun Pai

  Imperial College London

  5 shared

• Neha Shah

  Microsoft (United States)

  4 shared

• Kathleen L. McGinn

  Harvard University Press

  4 shared