12th Likert Dissertation Poster Session Friday, March 31 ... · Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizational Studies University of Michigan 12th Likert Dissertation Poster Session

Interdisc ip l inar y

Committee on

Organizat ional

Stud ies Univers ity o f Mich igan

12th Likert Dissertation Poster Session Friday, March 31st, 2017

Abstracts

Name: Jon Atwell

Department/Program: Sociology and Complex Systems

E-Mail Address: [email protected]

Website: jonatwell.com

Year in Program: 7 Title: Analytical Approaches to the Production of Shared Practices, Symbols and Meanings Abstract:

Conventions are solutions to social coordination problems that are not formally agreed upon. They are

also arbitrary in the sense that an alternative behavior would also solve the coordination problem. These

emergent norms are essential for well-functioning groups, organizations, and societies, yet the processes

by which they emerge are still little understood. In particular, it is not clear under what conditions a large,

decentralized group can create a new convention. Following recent research, this project explores this

question through large group behavioral experiments. Previous research treats network topology as the

sole independent explanatory factor, but I present here evidence that small amounts of information about

the behavior of others in the network can radically change the prospects for the emergence of

conventions in small-world and random network topologies. This finding offers a resolution to a puzzle

regarding why topologies with reasonable average shortest path lengths have not supported the

emergence of conventions in previous research. It also suggests information from sources that are often

treated as analytically superfluous can significantly alter outcomes and that cultural learning and

resources are more diffuse that network-centered research would suggest.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Sheila Brassel

Department/Program: Psychology/Personality & Social Contexts


Year in Program: 2 Title: Lay Perceptions of Sexual Harassment toward Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Minorities Abstract:

Gender identity and sexual orientation minority employees commonly experience sexual harassment in

the workplace. In order to better understand this mistreatment, the present study used an experimental

design to examine perceptions of the motivations for and acceptability of sexual harassment toward

transgender, lesbian, and gay individuals, and the impact of perceived acceptability on beliefs about

appropriate responses to the harassment (i.e., reporting or confronting the harasser). We tested four

motivations believed to underlie harassment: power, prejudice, gender policing, and sexual attraction.

Compared to those in the lesbian/gay and control target conditions, participants who read a scenario

depicting sexual harassment toward transgender targets perceived the harassment as less acceptable

when they viewed it as more motivated by power and prejudice, and less by attraction. Perceptions of

the harassment as less acceptable were associated with increased likelihood of recommending that the

target tell a supervisor or file a formal complaint. Implications for organizational policy and interventions

addressing the sexual harassment of gender identity and sexual orientation minority employees are

discussed.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Lindsey Cameron

Department/Program: Management & Organizations


Year in Program: 4 Title: Man vs. Algorithim: Organizationl Control and Work Design in the Gig Economy Abstract:

Uber. TaskRabbit. Postmates. Over the past five years platform work, which relies on web technology to

instantly link labor and employers, has become part of the lexicon of work, radically reshaping

organizations, employment relationships, and workers’ lives. Over the past decade the number of workers

choosing to work outside of traditional organizations has more than doubled, with more than 15% of the

US workforce working as “free agents” moving between gigs or short-term assignments (Katz and Krueger,

2016). For organizations, platform work continues the global trend of outsourcing by providing a means

to control work processes by breaking work down to its smallest component, the task. For workers,

platform enabled work offers increased autonomy, allowing workers the freedom of choosing when and

where to work. Yet how does control and worker autonomy function outside the traditional organizational

context? Perhaps even more than traditional organizations, due to lack of physical co-presence, platforms

must monitor and evaluate workers. Workers, in turn, must navigate the challenges of working

independently with minimal, if any, contact with supervisors, co-workers, or customers. In this paper, I

explore this tension by addressing the research question “How do platform workers sustainably execute

their work on a day-to-day basis?”. By exploring micro-moments of working life, this study sheds light on

how control and agency are embodied, experienced and enacted in the everyday in the organization-less

environment. This study has implication for literatures on control, work discretion, precarity and, more

broadly, the overall study of the emerging gig economy.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Lyndon Garrett

Department/Program: Management and Organizations


Year in Program: 5 Title: Being in relation: Unlocking human connection through play Abstract:

Organizational scholarship is increasingly realizing the individual and organizational value of fostering high

quality connections (HQCs) at work. However, minimal work has explored the conditions and practices

that foster HQCs (Stephens, Heaphy, & Dutton, 2011). HQCs are short-term, dyadic interactions that

produce feelings of vitality, positive regard, and mutuality for both participants. Mutuality, referring to

the feeling of full engagement with another “borne out of mutual vulnerability and mutual

responsiveness” (Stephens et al., 2011), is the least understood component of HQCs, and perhaps the

most elusive in organizational contexts. The impersonal nature of organizational role structures,

reinforced by norms of professionalism, often produce a sense of artificiality in workplace interactions,

stifling the feeling of “seeing and being seen” (Kark, 2012) central to mutuality. To more fully understand

the experience of mutuality and how it is achieved, I conduct a qualitative study of community theatre, a

context in which achieving mutuality in scripted role performance is critical to a show’s success. Drawing

on over 800 hours of observations and 68 interviews across six different community theatre productions,

I find that actors infuse the rehearsal and performance process with moments of play as a way to

reanimate their connections with each other. Specifically, I observed three forms of play—diversionary

play, serious play, and absorptive play—through which actors progressively move from mechanical role

performance toward their goal of being authentic and mutually responsive in their roles. I unpack the

capacity of play to make roles a vehicle of mutuality and HQCs.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Ashley Hardin

Department/Program: Management & Organizations


Website: ashleyehardin.com

Year in Program: 5 Title: Getting acquainted: How learning about colleagues' personal lives impacts workplace interactions, for better and worse Abstract:

In my dissertation, I introduce the concept of personal knowledge, discuss how it is formed, explore how

it is used, and examine potential boundary conditions of its effects. In Chapter 1, I motivate the need for

this investigation by highlighting an unresolved workplace tension: the simultaneous deep need for

human connection and fear of letting others know one’s self. In Chapter 2, I draw on theories of relational

schema, person perception, and interpersonal dynamics to develop an understanding of how the quantity

of personal knowledge acquired impacts the way the known colleague is perceived and treated. I argue

that through blurring the work-life boundary, colleagues gain personal knowledge about one another,

which changes the way they interact in both positive and negative ways. In Chapter 3, through three field

studies across diverse samples of university staff, cross-industry dyads, and consulting teams, I

demonstrate that having greater levels of personal knowledge leads to a more individuated, humanized

perception of the known colleague, which results in increased responsiveness and decreased social

undermining. Further, I show that this effect holds over and above alternative relational mechanisms of

liking, trust, and respect. I also reveal that the positive effect of personal knowledge on responsiveness is

not mitigated by perceptions of value incongruence or work-to-life interference. Finally, in Chapter 4, I

discuss the theoretical implications of my dissertation for the relationships at work and work-life

literatures.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Sarah Huff

Department/Program: Psychology


Year in Program: 4 Title: Identity and Conflict: When and how integrating multiple selves can be beneficial for interpersonal relations Abstract:

Increasing diversity of ethnicities, opinions, and values provide mounting opportunities for contact that

might lead to intolerance. Previous work on interpersonal and intergroup tolerance has largely focused

on societal or contextual interventions targeted at reducing intolerance. The goal of this dissertation is to

delve into the relationship between identities within individuals to improve relations between individuals.

Specifically, I test the hypothesis that individuals with higher levels of identity integration—or those who

perceive their different social identities as more blended and harmonious—will exhibit greater tolerance

towards others holding different values and norms. The first three studies examine this hypothesis using

bicultural identity integration (or perceived blendedness and harmony between multiple cultural

identities) and generalized identity integration (or perceived blendedness and harmony between one’s

social identities in general) as predictors for increased interpersonal tolerance towards individuals who

share contrasting opinions. The fourth study is a dyadic negotiation in which interpersonal tolerance is

measured by willingness to compromise and generalized identity integration is measured as a predictor

of more interpersonal tolerance. Finally, the fifth study examines this hypothesis by measuring intergroup

tolerance in bicultural individuals who have been given information that the dominant group holds either

negative or positive opinions about their group. Intergroup tolerance in this case is measured as

willingness to engage with dominant group members and bicultural identity integration is expected to

increase interpersonal tolerance, even in the presence of negative information. Theoretical and practical

implications for increasing interpersonal and intergroup tolerance will also be discussed.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Amira Ibrahim

Department/Program: CPEP


Year in Program: 4 Title: The influence of individual differences in math anxiety on learning novel mathematics content Abstract:

Math anxiety is a major obstacle leading many students to opt out of higher mathematics education and

disproportionately affects females than males. To create effective interventions for increasing female

participation in mathematics; we need to understand how math anxiety affects learning of mathematics

information. Previous studies have demonstrated that math anxiety is associated with decreased

mathematics achievement and decreased motivation. However, little research has examined the effects

of math anxiety during learning of novel mathematics content.

Math anxiety is hypothesized to negatively impact math performance by acting as a burden on working

memory (WM) resources. The learning strategies used to learn novel mathematics content also vary in

the working memory resources they require. The aims of my dissertation are two-fold: 1) to determine

the nature of the interaction between math anxiety and different study strategies during learning of new

mathematics content, and 2) to assess the efficacy of learning materials designed to engage math anxious

individuals while learning. In experiment 1, I found evidence that high math anxious individuals are not

benefited by passively viewing examples (a low WM activity) during learning, but instead require active

practice (a high WM activity) with applying the novel mathematics information. I speculate that the

examples, although low in WM demands, are not beneficial to math anxious individuals because they lead

to shallow processing of the information, if not outright disengagement. In my remaining experiments, I

attempt to replicate this effect and test the efficacy of a worked example-active problem solving hybrid

learning strategy.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Christopher Dean Lee

Department/Program: School of Education (Educational Studies - Teaching and Teacher Education)


Year in Program: 6 Title: Resistance in the Core: A Mixed Methods Investigation Into Teachers' Professional Learning Networks in the Context of Reform Abstract:

This mixed methods study focuses on how informal learning operated in the context of a formal

Professional Learning Community (PLC) reform initiative. Given the breadth and depth of evidence for

the positive effects of PLCs on teacher learning, one might reasonably expect the formal learning related

to PLCs to be both predominant among and preferred by teachers. The quantitative evidence suggests

that the PLC reform was correlated with new learning ties, but my analysis of the qualitative evidence

revealed that PLC groups tapped into preexisting informal learning network structures with little to no

reference to their informal nature. In one local learning network affected by this reform, one key group

of teachers reported negative affect with regard to the formal PLC reform, more positive descriptions of

informal learning incidents than formal learning incidents, more negative descriptions of formal learning

incidents than informal learning incidents, and a preference for informal learning over formal learning. If

reforms of teachers’ professional learning are to succeed, accounting for and privileging teachers’

preexisting informal learning is necessary.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Christian A. Martell

Department/Program: Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education


Year in Program: 3 Title: Marketing Race in Higher Education: A Study of College Viewbooks Abstract:

College viewbooks, the colorful brochures sent to thousands of prospective students annually, remain the

most common marketing tool for higher education institutions today. Unlike other marketing materials,

which can be quickly erased, removed, or edited, college viewbooks are permanent fixtures that capture

a sliver of time in an institution’s history. As such, viewbooks serve as symbolic markers of what an

institution wishes to portray to the outside world in that moment. These guides can also have real

materials effects, such as dissuading prospective students of color from applying to institutions where

they believe they may not belong. Research that considers how and why race is marketed through college

viewbooks, as well as how these viewbooks are received by prospective students, can further our

understanding of college choice and have real implications for expanding college access for historically

underrepresented students. While a few studies have considered the visual and textual portrayal of race

in the pages of these pieces, none have considered the intent behind their creation or how they are

perceived by prospective applicants. This three-paper dissertation will employ content analysis, narrative

inquiry, and experimental design to further our understanding of how people of color are portrayed in

viewbooks, why marketing professionals create these portrayals, and how students perceive these

portrayals. Using critical race theory and an institutional logics perspective, this set of studies will further

our understanding of how race is marketed in higher education and what it means for the permanence of

racism.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Michael Prentice

Department/Program: Anthropology


Year in Program: 7 Title: Ranks and Files: The semiotics of management in South Korea Abstract:

My dissertation is based on ethnographic research inside a Korean steel conglomerate carried out

between 2014-2015 in Seoul. My research looks at the genres of communication used by managers and

how they mediate organizational hierarchies, such as between different ranked employees and different

office units. The dissertation argues that in contrast to the image of Korean management as highly vertical

and top-down in nature, communication is highly fractured in practice. Even though they are at the top

of a chain, managers often have a limited capacity to make decisions, see information, or direct others

work. Despite a non-vertical reality, images of “flat” organizations and communications have become

extremely popular in Korea. In the presentation, I will show four examples that display the heterogeneity

of office communication: 1) decision-making, 2) PowerPoint production, 3) internal surveys, and 4)

shareholder meetings. I will also show 4 ways that communication is being consciously changed: 1) title-

flattening, 2) two-way communication, 3) town-hall meetings, 4) mentoring. This dissertation shows that

while large organizations are often premised on salient images of communication, these images do not

reflect the actual practice. Nevertheless, images come to structure organizational reform efforts.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Sara Ryoo

Department/Program: Strategy / PhD


Year in Program: 6 Title: Anything lost inside the black-box? A study of learning by teaching in post-merger integration Abstract:

The development of knowledge and capabilities has long been the center of attention among strategy

scholars. Scholars in organizational studies have often focused on two major learning mechanisms:

experiential learning and vicarious learning. This study introduces an additional learning mechanism that

has been neglected in the management literature. In this paper, I attempt to identify the learning benefits

of mergers, which are distinct from synergy effects, that incumbents may take advantage of during their

interactions with their newly joined affiliates. I argue that the integration process provides the parent firm

with an opportunity to teach the acquired firm the parent’s systems and routines, which subsequently

triggers an opportunity for the parent to re-evaluate and reinforce their current capabilities. Traditional

studies in organizational learning build upon the premise of acquisition of new knowledge related to

improving a focal activity. This paper adopts a different angle by proposing the possibility of firms learning

from their own capabilities and improving without the pre-requisite of acquiring new knowledge. Using

data from the U.S. commercial banking industry from 1998 to 2013, I examine a learning by teaching effect

associated with bank holding companies who acquire new banks and the conditions that facilitate the

efficacy of the proposed mechanism. In the empirical analysis, I find evidence that subsequent to an

acquisition, there is improvement in loan quality of the parent firm’s pre-existing affiliates especially when

the parent and acquired firm share similar capabilities. This paper finds its novelty in exploring and

developing a construct of learning by teaching and its pragmatic implication for managers who are

involved in post-merger integration.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Guy Shani

Department/Program: Strategy


Website: www.guyshani.info

Year in Program: 6 Title: Our Fates Entwined: Socio-cognitive Sources of Control in Corporate Governance Abstract:

In my dissertation I examine how the exercise of board control at one firm can influence governance at

other firms by affecting the social cognitions of other corporate leaders about their own board. Existing

corporate governance research has focused on the dyad-level relationship between management and the

board or other constituencies of the same firm, and has raised a variety of questions about the efficacy of

boards as a control mechanism. I develop a novel theoretical framework in which the actions of a single

board, such as the dismissal of a CEO, can reverberate across multiple firms and affect the behavior of

other CEOs that are likely to be aware of the dismissal. The theory developed in the first chapter suggests

that a CEO is likely to experience sanctions against a fellow CEO in a way which generates deterrence by

increasing the salience of the board’s power over management, and describes contingencies under which

such CEOs are likely to preemptively alter their behavior in order to avoid similar sanctions. This

perspective uncovers a much broader effect of boards than has been identified in prior research by

considering how a single act of control by a board at one firm can bolster control at multiple other firms,

while incurring costs only at the originating firm. Whereas existing governance literature emphasizes

reactive forms of control, such as dismissing a CEO at a firm that is already in decline, the theoretical

perspective introduced here suggests a proactive form of control in which CEOs react to control at other

firms by engaging in behaviors aimed at preempting a similar fate. In the second chapter, I extend this

theoretical framework by considering how subjective feelings of common fate among CEOs can cause

sanctions aimed at one CEO to have unintended consequences for strategic preferences due to intergroup

biases that are activated by relatively automatic cognitive processes of self-categorization. Overall this

dissertation develops a cross-level perspective on governance that suggests how micro level socio-

cognitive sources of control can affect corporate governance across industry boundaries, at the field level.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Emily Vargas

Department/Program: Department of Psychology, PhD Psychology


Year in Program: 3 Title: With Liberty and Sexism for All: Perceived Identity Conflict and the 2016 Presidential Election Abstract:

Women are highly underrepresented at elite leadership positions, including politics (Pew, 2015). Drawing

on research on role incongruity, stereotypes and identity management, we develop a new measure,

Perceived Identity Conflict (PIC) to assess people’s perceptions of conflict experienced by Hillary Clinton

and Donald Trump when managing their gender and leadership identities. Using this measure, we found

that PIC of Hillary Clinton was negatively related to assessments of her leadership ability (Study 1).

Importantly, this relationship was significantly stronger for perceivers rating Hillary Clinton than for

perceivers rating Donald Trump. This was true controlling for perceivers’ political orientation, gender, and

other demographic variables (Study 2 & 3). Our studies suggest that Clinton was more disadvantaged by

PIC than was Trump. It is possible that higher levels of PIC make salient stereotypes of women as unfit for

leadership, negatively affecting women even when they exhibit stereotype-inconsistent traits and

behaviors.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Sangseok You

Department/Program: School of Information


Website: www.sangseokyou.com

Year in Program: 5 Title: Technology with Embodied Physical Actions: Understanding Interactions and Effectiveness Gains in Teams Working with Robots Abstract:

Teams are increasingly adopting robots for various purposes, including saving human lives in first-

responder situations and delivering medical services to areas where it is hard to send human experts.

However, the adoption of robots transforms teamwork and creates new dynamics among team members

that are unprecedented in human teams. Despite the long history of information systems research

examining different technologies used by teams, little research has focused on how robots are reshaping

teamwork dynamics and how teams can enhance outcomes when incorporating robots into their

teamwork. In this dissertation, I will address this gap by investigating several ways to improve the

effectiveness of teams working with robots. The dissertation involves several experiments in which teams

consist of multiple robots and individuals. Various psychological and emotional dimensions of team

processes, including trust, team efficacy, and perceived similarity, will be measured to test their impacts

on team outcomes such as performance, viability, and satisfaction. This dissertation will contribute to the

current field of research by developing an understanding of interactions among team members as well as

between humans and robots in order to find ways to improve team effectiveness. It will also provide

direction for designers of these robots and for managers of human-robot teams.


Committee on

Organizat ional



Abstracts

Name: Chen Zhang

Department/Program: Management & Organizations, Ross School of Business


Website: http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/zhangchn

Year in Program: 4 Title: Exploring Work Activities as both Constraints and Opportunities in Enhancing Workday Energy and Well-Being: A Look at Meetings and Instant Messaging Abstract:

I examine conditions under which interactive work activities in knowledge work, particularly meetings and

instant messaging (IM) conversations, may facilitate workday energy replenishment and well-being

enhancement, despite the constraints they may create for micro breaks at work. In today’s workplaces,

people are increasingly faced with heightened work demands and prolonged work hours (Michel, 2011;

Reid & Ramarajan, 2016). It has thus become more and more challenging for people to replenish their

energy resources (as manifested in high vigor and low fatigue) to sustain work performance and maintain

personal well-being during a workday. Furthermore, opportunities for replenishment through nonwork

activities (e.g., relaxing activities) are limited at work. An important question thus surfaces: Can some

work activities themselves serve as a pathway to replenishing energy and enhancing well-being, despite

the constraints they create? I explore ways in which meetings and IM conversations may have such

potential in the context of knowledge work.

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12th Likert Dissertation Poster Session Friday, March 31 ... · Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizational Studies University of Michigan 12th Likert Dissertation Poster Session