research

Extended Organizations: Finding the Boundaries and Naming the Contents

February 1, 2012

Can you help me out with a messy research-related question? What are the best ways to set boundaries around subsets of an “extended organization”, and then give these subsets names so that they are easy to talk about? The problem seems on the surface looks like a question of semantics (i.e., what to call it). [...]

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Do Social Technologies help organization members think more holistically?

December 14, 2011

While it’s true that I’m an unabashed advocate for social technologies as tools for transforming organizations, there are lots of reasons why we’d want social technologies in our workplaces and ‘together places’. Social technologies help increase engagement and make organizational democracy easier — just to name the top two reasons. But the biggest reason to like [...]

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Why Do Meritocracies Hurt Women?

November 7, 2011

When it comes to discriminating against women, you’d think that only sexist organizations would be involved.   But did you ever imagine that meritocracies would encourage managers to discriminate against women? Research conducted by Emilio Castilla and Stephen Benard, published last year in Administrative Science Quarterly, documents a disturbing dynamic that the authors call “The Paradox [...]

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Re-creating Organizational Reputation Using Social Media: Not quite outdated ideas

January 14, 2011

As much as I love academic writing, conducting studies and developing theories, all of this work shares one acute problem – it takes forever to get from first draft to print. My just-published journal article with Adelaide King took about 8 years from idea to print, while the germinal paper on Organizational Identity & Identification [...]

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Authentic Twitter: Are exclamation points unprofessional?

January 20, 2010

Exclamation Points: An Authenticity Issue Last week, I got a bit of crap from I was chided by one of my colleagues for sending a 4-line email with three (three!!) exclamation points. This colleague also pointed out that I occasionally sprinkle my tweets with exclamation points. This is a problem. These exclamation points, s/he explained, [...]

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Why Does Social Media Interaction Lead Us To Protect an Organization’s Reputation?

December 2, 2009

I have been struggling to write a (scholarly) book chapter on Corporate Reputation, social media and authenticity. As I have been writing myself around and around the issue(s), there is one thing that I cannot get my finger on, and that is: Why does having interacted with an organization through social media make us feel [...]

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Evidence of a Mommy Track Bump: Returnees are seen as more motivated

October 21, 2009

This just in from the The Journal of ‘I’m Not Sure I Can Believe It’ … Well actually, from the The Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies: Research published in the August 2009 issue suggests that coming back to full-time work after a few years on the Mommy Track can make you look “unusually” motivated [...]

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Why do some CEOs “leave money on the table” when they choose layoffs?

April 20, 2009

In my MBA classes, we called it "Leaving Money On The Table". In business practice, we call it a "missed opportunity". Managers "leave money on the table" when they fail to ask for something that a customer will give them readily and without extra charge. Managers "leave money on the table" when they take an [...]

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Rant: Minimally Sufficient Research Can Maximine Insights

March 15, 2009

I confess a nagging frustration with certain trends in my academic discipline, Organizational Theory. While good research on organizations and organizational behavior fascinates and delights my nerdy self, boring and poorly executed research makes me lay my head on my desk in despair. Sometimes I even consider resigning from the editorial boards I was so [...]

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