Research Overview

I am an organizational ethnographer and field researcher who studies organizational inequality, social hierarchies, and related topics in the sociology of work and occupations. I use observation and interviews to uncover empirical puzzles and generate new insights for organizational theory. I approach my qualitative research as hypothesis-generating, and immerse myself in the social worlds of my participants — whether that be public defenders in their work representing indigent clients or tech workers in their endeavors to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion within the firm.

 

PUBLISHED PAPERS

(Not) Paying for Diversity: repugnant market concerns Associated with transactional approaches to diversity recruitment

Job Market Paper, Published at Administrative Science Quarterly
Single-authored

In a 20-month ethnographic study, I examine how a technology firm, “ShopCo” (a pseudonym), considered 13 different hiring platforms to attract minority engineering talent. I find that when choosing to adopt hiring platforms focused on racial minority candidates, but not when choosing to adopt hiring platforms where the modal candidate on the platform is white, ShopCo decision-makers expressed distaste with the perceived (a) objectification, (b) exploitation, and (c) ‘race-based targeting’ of racial minorities. These repugnant market concerns influenced which types of platforms ShopCo adopted to recruit racial minorities. ShopCo eschewed hiring platforms that emphasized time, quantity, efficiency, opportunity, and compensation as benefits to candidates (an instrumental approach to candidate recruitment—typically used for white candidates) in favor of platforms that emphasized individuality, ethics, equity, authenticity, and commitment as benefits for candidates (a non-instrumental approach to candidate recruitment). I consider the implications of my findings—specifically, this new demand-side constraint of repugnant market concerns—for organizations looking to create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces.  

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Triadic advocacy work

Published in Organization Science
Co-authored with Prof. Katherine C. Kellogg

Scholars of street-level bureaucracy and institutional research have focused primarily on the relationships between advocates and their larger bureaucratic and social systems, assuming that advocates have little need to satisfy their beneficiaries. We find otherwise in our 2-year ethnographic study of public defenders advocating for disadvantaged clients in interactions with district attorneys. In our analysis of  82 advocacy opportunities, we demonstrate that when existing bureaucratic and social systems put beneficiaries at a disadvantage, advocates may be concerned about managing fraught relationships with their beneficiaries in addition to navigating barriers within the bureaucratic and social systems. We further show a tension between the two; ironically, engaging in advocacy work on behalf of beneficiaries can lead to beneficiary mistrust. As a result, advocates engage in triadic advocacy work—managing impressions with their beneficiaries while also influencing powerful actors within the system on behalf of these same beneficiaries. Understanding the process by which advocates navigate this tension is critical to understanding beneficiary outcomes. By reconceptualizing advocacy work as a triadic process among advocate, bureaucratic system, and beneficiary, rather than as a dyadic process between advocate and bureaucratic system, this paper develops new theory about how advocates can attempt to garner benefits that advance the rights and opportunities of the disadvantaged.

Working papers

Was that a microaggression? A theory of target sensemaking and the multilevel factors that shape it

Revise & Resubmit at Academy of Management Review
Co-authored with Prof. Basima Tewfik

Because workplace microaggressions are highly problematic for targets and the organizations of which targets are a part, scholars have called for their eradication. Eradicating microaggressions from the workplace begins with knowing what is likely to be interpreted by a target as a workplace microaggression and what is not. Yet, this is not easy given that past work has shown that the same action or statement may be perceived as a microaggression by one target, but not another. To make theoretical progress, we develop an understanding of how, when, and why targets construe a communicator’s message or act at work as a workplace microaggression. Acknowledging that this sensemaking process does not occur in a vacuum, we make a series of propositions that outline macro-environmental, organizational, relational, and target factors that may modulate how a target interprets a communicator’s transgression at work. Finally, we consider interactive effects among our moderators and explicate how time may play an important role in our theory. In building our model, we offer contributions primarily to the literature on microaggressions, workplace inequality, and discrimination more broadly.

 

An Organizational Dilemma: A Framework for Considering and Countering Racism by Formal Organizations

Under 1st Round Review at American Journal of Sociology
Coauthored with Prof. Ray Reagans and Prof. Ezra Zuckerman Sivan

We propose a theory that makes three refinements to Schelling’s threshold model of racialized cascade dynamics to clarify how formal organizations can host stable, racially-integrated spaces (SRIS) and thus potentially serve as tools for dismantling systemic racism. The first and second refinements produce two dimensions by which organizational forms vary in their support for SRIS: i) whether they offer validation for a (racialized) primary identity and ii) whether they concentrate key rights in managers or disperse them to members. The third refinement is to delineate how inferences about the racialization of a space derives not just from racial composition but also managerial policies (on climate and recruitment) as these shape members’ inferences about the meaning of race. Two key implications are: a) Relative to other organizational forms, firms have moderately high potential for supporting SRIS; b) The effectiveness of managerial policies varies with the extent of Black representation, as the same policies will have different meanings depending on whether or not individual Blacks are likely to be treated as racialized objects rather than racialized agents. 

 
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From Slip Ups to Screw UPs: How to successfully diffuse microaggressions at work

Second Dissertation Paper
Single-authored

Organizational leaders are increasingly aware of the ‘business case’ for diversity—or the idea that more diverse companies are more innovative, creative, and have higher share prices. Implicit in the ‘business case’ for diversity is the idea that employees are able to collaborate effectively. And yet, the literature on social hierarchies indicates that race and gender influence how dominant and marginalized group members interact and collaborate in the workplace. As organizations become more diverse –in terms of race and gender – how can organizational leaders ensure their teams and workgroups are equipped to collaborate effectively? I utilize a unique dataset of racial- and gender-based microaggression incidences that I observed at ShopCo to uncover how to successfully resolve these incidences in a way that is rectifying for the marginalized group member, without being alienating for the dominant group member. I compared and contrasted each incident in my dataset to create a spectrum of outcomes from a ‘slip up’ to a ‘screw up,’ and use the literature on sensemaking to add to our understanding of how microaggressions intensify and escalate within an organization, and how this process can be ‘diffused’ successfully.

 

Act the part: race and class in the modern workplace

Third Dissertation Paper
Single-authored

In this article, I examine a case of race-based differences in job crafting and demonstrate how an intersectional approach to workplace inequality is necessary for understanding within-occupation differences in workplace mobility. Despite sharing a similar social class background (middle-class), I found variation in how “ShopCo” (a pseudonym) customer service agents were generating an ideal worker image and subsequently crafting their job to fit that ideal worker image. Black middle-class customer service agents generated a customer-oriented definition of the ideal worker and engaged in entrepreneurship within the role to meet that definition—such as visibility practices, empathy innovations, and doubling down during downtime. By contrast, White middle-class customer service agents generated a management-oriented definition of the ideal worker and engaged in entrepreneurship outside the role to meet that definition—such as side projects, business development, and asserting informal oversight over parallel job functions. While both orientations aligned with elements of ShopCo’s cultural values, only the management-oriented definition fit ShopCo’s revealed cultural preferences of a ‘tech-startup,’ resulting in higher promotion rates for the White customer service agents. My article contributes to the literature on workplace inequality by detailing how even college-educated racial minorities can become stigmatized and entrenched in the workplace and adds to the burgeoning literature on the precarious social class position of Black Americans by examining how social hierarchies of race and class can intersect to affect employee outcomes.