SHRLR Speaker Series
2021-2022 Schedule
Most seminars will be available in a hybrid format. Where noted, the in-person portion of the seminars will be held in room S133 South Kedzie Hall. All seminars will also be available via Zoom.
Please contact Carla Lima Aranzaes at limaaran@msu.edu for Zoom meeting information.
Friday, January 21, 2022 - POSTPONED
12:00pm - 1:20pm | in-person and via Zoom
Anya Samek
Associate Professor of Economics and Strategy
Rady School of Management
University of California, San Diego
Anya Samek is an Associate Professor of Economics and Strategy at the Rady School of Management at University of California, San Diego. Samek is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and an affiliate of the FAIR Centre at the Norwegian School of Economics. She completed her Ph.D. in Economics at Purdue University and her postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago. In 2020, she was the recipient of the Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize.
Samek uses experiments to address questions about how economic theory can predict behavior in the areas of education, philanthropy, and health. She was a co-founder of the Science of Philanthropy Initiative - a $5m project that brings together academics and charities to conduct experiments that change our understanding of how we do philanthropy. Over the past 10 years, Samek has managed CHECC, a large-scale education study that follows 2,000 families who were randomly assigned to receive various early childhood programs. She has published over 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and they have been featured in popular media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, FiveThirtyEight, Today.com, NPR and the Freakonomics podcast.
Friday, January 28, 2022
12:00pm - 1:20pm | via Zoom
Lynn A. McFarland
Assistant Professor of Management
Darla Moore School of Business
University of South Carolina
Lynn A. McFarland is an Assistant Professor of Management and Dean’s Fellow in the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. She received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. McFarland’s research focuses primarily on staffing, workplace diversity, and contextual influences on organizational behavior. She has published in leading management journals including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and Personnel Psychology, and has presented over 60 papers at national conferences. She has also consulted and conducted research with a variety of public and private organizations.
Friday, February 11, 2022
12:00pm - 1:20pm | via Zoom
Daniel Cornfield
Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and American Studies
Vanderbilt University
Dan Cornfield is Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and American Studies at Vanderbilt University, Editor-in-Chief of Work and Occupations, and a Fellow of the Labor and Employment Relations Association. His work on artist careers, labor, civil rights, and immigration addresses the formation of inclusive and expressive occupational communities and their impact on cultural pluralism. Dan’s work has been widely published in social science journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and the ILR Review. Among his books are Beyond the Beat (Princeton University Press), Becoming a Mighty Voice (Russell Sage Foundation), and Worlds of Work (Springer), co-edited with Randy Hodson. Cornfield earned his BA (1974), MA (1977), and PhD (1980) all in sociology from the University of Chicago.
Friday, March 4, 2022
12:00pm - 1:20pm | S133 South Kedzie Hall and via Zoom
Amanda Chuan
Assistant Professor
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State University
Amanda Chuan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University. She received her PhD from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. Her research focuses on labor and behavioral economics. Within labor economics, she studies human capital investment decisions and how they contribute to gender and socioeconomic inequality within labor markets. Within behavioral economics, she uses a variety of experimental methods to explore pro-social behavior and team dynamics between individuals. Her work has been published in the Journal of Public Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. It has appeared in popular media outlets such as the New York Times and Scientific American.
Friday, March 18, 2022
12:00pm - 1:20pm | S133 South Kedzie Hall and via Zoom
John Kammeyer-Mueller
Professor, Curtis L. Carlson Professor of Industrial Relations
Director, Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies
Department of Work and Organizations
University of Minnesota
John Kammeyer-Mueller is the Curtis L. Carlson Professor in the Department of Work and Organizations, and Director at the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at University of Minnesota. Kammeyer-Mueller's research examines how employees adjust to new jobs, the process of career development, and how attitudes and emotions shape behavior in organizations. He is particularly interested in learning how interpersonal relationships with co-workers and supervisors can affect how new hires see their work environments over time. Ongoing projects also look at topics such as stress and coping, workforce diversity, and applied research methods. His work has appeared in publications such as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, and Organizational Research Methods, among others.
Friday, April 8, 2022
12:00pm - 1:20pm | S133 South Kedzie Hall and via Zoom
Alan Benson
Associate Professor
Department of Work and Organizations
University of Minnesota
Alan Benson is an Associate Professor in the Work and Organizations Group at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, the graduate faculty of the University of Minnesota's Department of Applied Economics and Minnesota Population Center, and is an Associate Editor (AE) in the Organizations department of Management Science.
His research is in personnel economics: the economic analysis of human resources. His studies primarily involve working with companies to analyze their hiring, promotions, and incentives using interviews, applied theory, and econometric methods. He received his Bachelor's degree from Cornell's ILR School and PhD from the Institute for Work and Employment Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Previous Series Presentations
Friday, September 17, 2021
12:00pm - 1:20pm ET | S133 South Kedzie Hall and via Zoom
Briar Kukla and Aylasia Steen
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State University
HCS Student Researcher Presentations
- History of Labor Education, Labor Outreach, and Joint Labor-Management Programming - Briar Kukla
In this research project, I collected qualitative data to comprehensively document and summarize the history and role of the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations (SHRLR) in engaging in local and national labor outreach and extension services, labor education, and joint-labor management. I collected qualitative data using three sources: interviews with current and past Labor Outreach faculty and staff; publicly available press articles and information on websites, and MSU library resources (e.g., Vincent Voice Library recordings). My interviews included questions on the schools' most notable accomplishments in labor education, joint-labor management initiatives, and extension services, on local or national labor organizations/unions that our school has partnered with or provided services to, on what was accomplished with these partnerships/clients, and on the types of projects SHRLR Labor Outreach faculty are currently leading. I conducted five interviews (for a total duration of five hours of interview data) with current/past faculty/staff members and received written responses to interview questions from one past faculty member. Several themes emerged from these data, including the finding that Labor Outreach faculty members have a common goal to promote decent work for all, and are dedicated and motivated to make the workplace better. My findings also suggest that the Labor Outreach faculty/staff have built-long lasting relationships with many of the labor organizations that the SHRLR provides services to at present, resulting in spinoff programming or referrals with new clients. I also found evidence of constraints and challenges as well as opportunities to grow labor outreach programming to face the demands of the future.
- Restorative Justice: Healing Circles Giving Voice to Employees - Aylasia Steen
Conflict gives the impression of being unavoidable and in some cases it is. However, in the workplace conflict could be averted if people understood the severity of their actions and biases against their colleagues and overall, the work environment. As society continues to diversify it is important that everyone in the workplace can coincide in order for effectiveness and productivity. Diversity is a crucial part of the workplace as diversity brings forth different beliefs, values and backgrounds which attracts unique talent and innovation. Unfortunately, there are those who are ingrained with bigotry and/or are racially insensitive. These individuals often refuse to acknowledge how their behaviors have caused discomfort for not only the workplace but their minority colleagues. Frequently organizations inadequately hold the offenders accountable and dismiss the feelings of those victimized. We tend to see when someone has transgressed against another person they are given a slap on the wrist for their behavior, but this response may be ineffective in promoting a diverse work environment, especially for someone who is a repeated offender of the same transgression. In particular, conflicts that involve racism/discrimination are not as simple to overlook or at least shouldn’t be. Organizations need to take restorative justice practices into consideration for positive reinforcement. Restorative justice is when someone addresses the harm they have caused with criminal behavior to repair the relationship with their victim. This research explores the potential benefits of turning to restorative justice to address and repair damaged colleague relationships associated with race.
Friday, September 24, 2021
11:00am - 12:20pm ET | S133 South Kedzie Hall and via Zoom
Matt Hinkel
PhD Candidate
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State University
Matt Hinkel is a PhD Candidate in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University. His research focuses on (1) labor market dynamics and regulations, particularly within the U.S. construction industry; (2) employment relations issues in sports, with a focus on biases faced by union activists who represent sports teams and what factors affect union voting behavior in certification elections; and (3) compensation and benefits, with a focus on how different forms of compensation (e.g., stock options, cash-based pay, and severance agreements) impact behavior of female CEOs and senior leaders in the face of bias. He has been published in the Labor Studies Journal and currently has a paper under second review at the British Journal of Industrial Relations. In addition, he has co-authored a book chapter published by MIT Press on how to improve job quality in the U.S. residential construction industry. Matt is also a research scholar at the Institute for Construction Economic Research (ICERES) and has served as a research fellow at the National Alliance for Fair Contracting (NAFC).
Presentation
The Effect of Prevailing Wage Laws on Informal Construction
Informal employment, defined as the illegal misclassification of employees as independent contractors or employment of workers using cash-only payments, has long been rampant in the American construction industry. These actions rob workers of legally earned benefits, defund social programs, and undermine the competitiveness of law-abiding contractors. While enforcing labor laws has proved difficult, one way a state may be able to strengthen enforcement—and limit informality—is a prevailing wage law. These regulations require certified payrolls to be submitted on public works projects. This study uses state-level data from 2010-2019 to examine the impact of prevailing wage laws on informal construction employment. State prevailing wage laws, even those of weak strength, are associated with significant reductions in informality.
Friday, October 15, 2021
12:00pm - 1:20pm ET | S133 South Kedzie Hall and via Zoom
Jacob McCartney
PhD Candidate
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State University
Jacob McCartney is a PhD candidate in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University. He has research interests in accountability and diversity, equity, and inclusion. His dissertation looks at accountability in labor platforms (e.g., Uber, MTurk). While traditional workers are held accountable by bosses and coworkers, platform workers are held accountable by customers and algorithmic management. These differences in accountability systems may ultimately impact a worker's felt accountability, with implications for worker well-being and productivity.
Presentation
Accountability in Labor Platforms
Accountability is a requisite for social order; without it chaos would ensue. In organizations accountability keeps employees on the straight and narrow ensuring that they follow orders and that their actions are part of the collective. In organizations accountability has traditionally been administered by bosses and coworkers, however, a new form of work has a radically different structure. Workers on labor platforms (e.g., Uber, MTurk) have no bosses and no coworkers to keep them accountable. Instead, workers on labor platforms work individually, and are held accountable by requests from customers. Differences in accountability systems between traditional organizations and labor platforms have been detailed by extant research, but what has been left unexamined are differences in workers’ felt accountability that result from these different accountability systems. This distinction is important, in that it is ultimately a worker’s felt accountability which guides their actions. Thus, examining felt accountability will help shed light on the relative strengths of traditional organizations and labor platforms by illuminating how workers behave in the various organizations.
Friday, October 22, 2021
12:00pm - 1:20pm ET | S133 South Kedzie Hall and via Zoom
Salil Sapre
PhD Candidate
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State University
Salil R. Sapre is a PhD Candidate in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University. His research is anchored in three primary themes: (i) international political economy of global supply chains; (ii) intersectionality in the context of work and employment; and (iii) trade union strategies for organizing new members and mobilizing existing ones. He employs qualitative 'immersive' approaches to data collection and analysis.
Presentation
Going Global but Staying Local: The Mechanics of a Local Labor Control Regime in Export-Oriented Garment Manufacturing in India
Internal (within-country) migrant women constitute an increasingly significant proportion of workers employed in global supply chain (GSC) settings. Yet, migrant women’s intersectional subjectivities and agency remain largely underexplored in GSC scholarship. In this fine-grained qualitative study, I take a worker-centered approach to analyze migrant women’s intersectional experiences and the influence of their agency on local employment relationships in a South Indian garment industrial cluster. I interrogate how employer practices are tailored towards extracting surplus value from migrant women in ways that reinforce workers’ intersecting vulnerabilities anchored in gender and migration status. Expressions of worker agency, in turn, impact local worker-management dynamics in unique ways, including those that are self-exploitative for workers themselves. The paper thus encourages a push within GSC scholarship towards consideration of diverse worker groups and their intersecting subjectivities, their agency, and its unique impact on local employer practices. These dynamics have important theoretical implications for better explaining regional competitive advantage as well as practical ramifications for supporting worker rights in GSCs.
Friday, October 29, 2021
12:00pm - 1:20pm ET | via Zoom
Paul Osterman
Nanyang Technological University Professor
Professor of Human Resources and Management
MIT Sloan School of Management
Paul Osterman is the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Professor of Human Resources and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management as well as a member of the Department of Urban Planning at MIT. From July 2003 to June 2007 he also served as Deputy Dean at the MIT Sloan School. His research concerns changes in work organization within companies, career patterns and processes within firms, economic development, urban poverty, and public policy surrounding skills training and employment programs.
His most recent book is Who Will Care For Us: Long Term Care and the Long Term Workforce (Russell Sage,2017). Other recent books include Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone (Russell Sage, 2011); The Truth About Middle Managers: Who They Are, How They Work, How They Matter (Harvard Business School Press, 2009); Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America (Beacon Press, 2003),; Securing Prosperity: The American Labor Market: How It Has Changed and What to Do About It (Princeton University Press, 1999), and Working In America: A Blueprint for the New Labor Market (MIT Press, 2001).
Presentation
Contract Employment: Measurement and Implications For Employer-Employee Relationships
This paper utilizes a new nationally representative survey, executed in January, 2020, that measures non-standard work. We focus on contract company employees. At 10.8 percent of the workforce these are the largest group of non-standard workers. We describe this workforce and estimate selection models. We then study earnings and access to employer provided training. The latter outcome is important because training impacts wage growth and career trajectories and also captures the evolving character of employment relationships.
We find that contractors face an earnings penalty but that there is considerable heterogeneity within the category and the penalty disappears after controls for skill level of the job. The analysis of multiple forms of formal training finds that contractors receive less than standard employee even after rich controls. Informal training is more textured due to the nature of social interactions inherent in its availability. Throughout the analysis racial and ethnic disparities are apparent.
Friday, November 5, 2021
12:00pm - 1:20pm | via Zoom
JR Keller
Assistant Professor of Human Resource Studies
ILR School
Cornell University
JR Keller is an Assistant Professor of Human Resource Studies in the ILR School at Cornell University. His research focuses on how firms combine internal and external hiring to meet their human capital needs as well the various ways in individuals build careers within and across organizations. He has explored the factors which lead firms to hire externally versus promote from within, supply chain approaches to talent management, the use of nonstandard work arrangements and talent management more generally. His work has appeared in the Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology, and Organizational Behavior, as well as a recent book on strategic talent management.
Presentation
Advance 'em to attract 'em: An argument against internal talent hoarding
Allowing workers to move to new jobs within the firm that better match their interests and abilities benefits firms and workers alike. Recent work suggests that such moves are more likely to occur when firms embrace free-flowing internal talent markets in which employees are encouraged to actively pursue new internal opportunities. Yet individual managers, fearful of not being able to adequately replace subordinates who might be willing and ready to move on to a new internal opportunity, often introduce friction into internal talent markets by dissuading or otherwise preventing their subordinates from pursuing other jobs within the firm, a practice known as talent hoarding. Indeed, recent data suggest that as many as half of managers engage in talent hoarding, and firms increasingly recognize talent hoarding behaviors as problematic. We argue and show–through an analysis of 96,712 internal applications submitted to 9,896 open jobs over a five-year period within a single large employer–that managers who facilitate internal mobility by securing promotions for their subordinates actually attract more, better, and more functionally diverse internal candidates for their open jobs. In doing so, we provide a powerful counterargument to one of the primary rationales underlying talent hoarding.
Archive
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2020-2021 Speaker Series
Friday, October 4, 2020
12:00pm - 1:00pm | via Zoom
Aaron Sojourner
Associate Professor
Carlson School of Management
Department of Work & Organization
University of MinnesotaSojourner is a labor economist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. His research focuses on (1) effects of labor-market institutions, (2) policies to promote efficient and equitable development of human capital with a focus on early childhood and K-12 education systems, and (3) behavioral economic approaches to consumer financial decisions. The Economic Journal, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Public Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review (ILRR), Industrial Relations and other journals have published his work and he serves on the ILRR international editorial board. In 2016, he received the John T. Dunlop Scholar Award from the U.S. Labor and Employment Relations Association, which recognizes emerging scholars for outstanding research contributions to issues of national significance.
Presentation
What's the Inside Scoop? Challenges in the Supply and Demand for Information about Job Attributes
Workers struggle to understand prospective jobs and employers. Glassdoor is an online platform that offers jobseekers information about prospective employers from other workers’ volunteered reviews. Analyzing Glassdoor data reveals how jobseekers share and use this information. Jobseekers rate reviews of employers more helpful if they contain more-negative information, but such information is relatively scarce. Volunteers supplying negative information are more likely to conceal aspects of their identity, degrading the supplied information’s value. Concealment is more likely in reviews for smaller firms and from current employees, where retaliation risk is higher. While workers demand information about some workplace attributes more than others, supply and demand for such information is imbalanced. Across firms, not all hard-to-observe yet desirable attributes improve with easier-to-observe pay, providing rationale for why jobseekers value firm-specific information. Reputation institutions provide valuable but partial solutions to workers’ information problems.
Friday, October 23, 2020
12:00pm - 1:00pm | via Zoom
Jason Huang
Associate Professor
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State UniversityProfessor Huang's research examines individuals' adaptation to their work experience, with specific focus areas in (a) personality's influence on adaptive performance at work; (b) transfer of trained knowledge and skills to the workplace; and (c) cultural influence on individual adaptation at work. He also conducts methodological research on response effort and insufficient effort responding.
Presentation
Family Demands Diversity and Team Effort: A Moderated Mediation Model
Most research on family demands has been conducted at the individual level, showing that they can negatively influence employees’ ability to manage the work-family interface. In the present study, we challenge the assumption that family demands are uniformly problematic by arguing that family demands diversity within a team can promote team resource exchange and enable the team as a whole to better manage the work-family interface. Drawing on resource exchange as our theoretical framework, we argue that family demands diversity is indirectly and positively related to team effort through team backup behavior and team work-to-family conflict, and these effects are stronger when team family identity is lower and perceived supervisor family support is higher. Using a sample of 108 work teams and their team leaders, we found support for our model. Implications of our findings for diversity, work-family, and backup behavior research and practice are discussed.
Friday, November 20, 2020
12:00pm-1:00pm | via Zoom
Hye Jin Rho
Assistant Professor
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State UniversityProfessor Rho researches on labor and employment relations. Her primary focus areas are changing nature of work and organization, alternative work arrangements, and employment processes and outcomes of future of work. She employs both quantitative and qualitative research methods at the intersection of labor relations, sociology, and applied labor economics.
Presentation
The Effects of Meso- and Macro-level Employment Characteristics on COVID-19 Risk Perceptions: A Cross-National Survey Comparison of Danish and American Workers
This paper uses original survey data collected in Denmark and across two U.S. states (Illinois and Michigan) to examine the effects of variations in workforce characteristics on COVID-19 risk perceptions. We focus on contextual differences such as, industry (i.e., face-to-face, essential low and high-wage, and nonessential), employment status, union involvement, and political environment and estimate their relationship to COVID-19 risk perceptions (i.e., health risk and economic insecurity) at the individual-level. A cross- state and national comparison allows us to understand the effects of the individual’s workplace characteristics as well as the political economy as significant contributors to people's risk perceptions and working lives during COVID-19. Our research contributes to the scholarship on generalized psychological predictors of risk perceptions during points of crisis. And importantly, the extent to which variations in meso- and macro-level factors also contribute to individual-level risk perceptions (and, by extension, expected public behaviors).
Friday, February 26, 2021
12:00pm-1:00pm | via Zoom
Stacy Hickox
Associate Professor
School of Human Resources and Labor Relations
Michigan State UniversityStacy practiced law in the area of disability law at Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service prior to coming to SHRLR. Ms. Hickox also taught for several years at MSU's law school, including courses in employment law, civil rights, and disability law. Stacy has written a book on the Americans with Disabilities Act and several law review articles on various aspects of employment law. Her current research focuses on the employment of ex-offenders, including potential claims for adverse impact and negligent hiring liability.
Chenwei Liao
Associate Professor
School of Human Resources and Labor Relations
Michigan State UniversityChenwei's research is focused on the phenomena happening in the context of leaders and followers within organizations (e.g., servant leadership, leader-member exchange, idiosyncratic deals). Supported by awards from National Science Foundation, SHRM Foundation (Society for Human Resources Management), International Association of Chinese Management Research, and the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, Chenwei’s research has appeared in high-quality journals, such as Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, The Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management Review. He is currently on the Editorial Review Board of Journal of Management. At Michigan State, Chenwei teaches leadership at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He serves on SHRLR’s Doctoral Program Committee and Undergraduate Curriculum Committee as well as the College Curriculum Committee.
Presentation
Remote Work as an Accommodation for Employees with Disabilities
Remote work allows employees to work despite geographic and family limitations, and has proved essential during the COVID-19 pandemic. For employees with disabilities, remote work can mean the difference between working and being unemployed, since they may need to work from home because of their limitations. A review of 125 court claims seeking remote work as an accommodation shows that employers have resisted providing remote work arrange arrangements to employees with disabilities for four main reasons, often preventing remote work even where physical presence is not essential for performance of the job duties. This paper proposes a new approach to remote work as an accommodation based on Stone & Colella’s model, while explicating four factors that may influence its success, including the attributes of employees with disabilities, co-workers and supervisors, as well as organizational characteristics. If the feasibility of remote work as an accommodation were analyzed in light of these four factors, utilizing the wealth of research on what makes remote work successful, employees with disabilities would have more equitable access to work that can be performed at home.
Friday, March 26, 2021
12:00pm-1:00pm | via Zoom
Eva Ranehill
Assistant Professor
Department of Economics
University of GothenburgEva Ranehill is a behavioral economist whose research employs laboratory and field experiments and empirical studies with archival register data. A large part of her research has focused on behavioral gender gaps—specifically on the robustness of behavioral differences between men and women, what causes such differences, and their economic implications. Her current research focuses more on the drivers of gender gaps in the labor market. In this work she studies, for example, gender discrimination in the academic hiring process, whether, and if so how, male majority environments discourage female entry and female leadership, and whether women may be less effective leaders because they receive less support from followers. She also works on topics in health and environmental economics.
Presentation
Are Women Less Effective Leaders Than Men? Evidence from Experiments Using Coordination Games
We study whether one reason behind female underrepresentation in leadership is that female leaders are less effective at coordinating action by followers. Two experiments using coordination games investigate whether female leaders are less successful than males in persuading followers to coordinate on efficient equilibria. Group performance hinges on higher order beliefs about the leader’s capacity to convince followers to pursue desired actions, making beliefs that women are less effective leaders potentially self-confirming. We find no evidence that such bias impacts actual leadership performance, identifying a precisely-estimated null effect. We show that this absence of an effect is surprising given experts’ priors.
Friday, April 16, 2021
12:00pm-1:00pm | via Zoom
https://msu.zoom.us/j/98493426981
Meeting ID: 984 9342 6981
Passcode: 302789
Samantha C. Paustian-Underdahl
Assistant Professor
College of Business
Florida State UniversityDr. Samantha Paustian-Underdahl is a professor, researcher, and consultant whose work is dedicated to enhancing employee and organizational well-being and effectiveness. Her research focuses on gender and diversity in organizations, the work-family interface, and leadership, in the context of work and organizations.
Her research is published in premier academic journals including the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP), the Journal of Management (JOM), the Journal of Organizational Behavior (JOB), and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP), among others, and has been presented at international and national conferences. Additionally, Dr. Paustian-Underdahl served as the assistant editor for the Journal of Business and Psychology (JBP) in 2011, and currently serves on the editorial board for JOM, JBP, and JOB, and is an ad-hoc reviewer for JAP, JOOP, Academy of Management Journal, and Human Resources Management.
She holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia, as well as an M.A. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and a PhD in Organizational Science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She joined Florida State University as an Assistant Professor of Management in 2018. In 2020, she was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Scholar’s award to conduct research in Dublin, Ireland, and she won the FSU College of Business’s Outstanding Junior Faculty Research Award which has one recipient per year across six departments in the college. Previously, she was employed at Florida International University (FIU) as an Assistant Professor of Management, where she was named a Top Scholar in 2015 and was awarded Best Professor and Best Course teaching awards by FIU MBA students in 2017 and 2018.
Presentation
When and Why does a new Telecommuting Policy Affect Employee Attitudes? Perceived Value is Key
The most well-known form of flexible work, which is called telecommuting or working remotely, has become widespread practice. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of workers in the United States who spent at least 50% of their work either at home or some location other than their office grew by 115% (FlexJobs, 2017). Given the increased prevalence of telecommuting, organizations must believe that they are helpful for improving employee attitudes and experiences. Yet, previous studies have found mixed effects of FWA policy availability and policy usage on employee attitudes. Additionally, these studies do not examine the factors that may explain why employees may or may not use a FWA policy when it is available. The current study uses data collected before and after a new telecommuting policy became available to employees, enabling us to better understand the factors driving telecommuting usage and changes in employee attitudes as a result of the policy. We integrate Conservation of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001) with the human resource practices literature to propose that there are two paths for how the availability of a new telecommuting policy may improve employee attitudes of job satisfaction and turnover intentions: 1) a symbolic path by which the perceived value of a telecommuting policy—regardless of the usage of telecommuting—improves job attitudes for employees via increased engagement, and 2) an instrumental path by which usage of telecommuting improves job attitudes through improvements in exhaustion. We use latent change scores and path analysis to examine our model.
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2019-2020 Speaker Series
Friday, October 4, 2019
12:00pm - 1:30pm | 133 South Kedzie Hall
B. Parker Ellen
Assistant Professor
D'Amore-McKim School of Business
Northeastern UniversityProfessor Ellen researches organizational behavior topics related to social influence in organizations. His primary focus areas are leadership and organizational politics, with related interests in accountability and teams. He has taught courses on both organizational behavior and leadership in organizations.
Presentation
Employee see, employee do: Understanding the contagious nature of political behavior
Despite decades of research on organizational politics, theoretical and empirical explanations for the contagious nature of political behavior and the dynamic within-person processes that trigger such political behavior are lacking. Although workplace politics are a ubiquitous aspect of work life, there is little clarity around why and how politics spread from employee to employee in organizations. Drawing from regulatory focus theory and research, we develop and test a theoretical framework that explains how employees’ observation of political behavior motivates their subsequent enactment of political behavior through dual mediational paths of individual identity and anxiety. We tested our hypotheses with a sample of seventy-three employees who provided daily data over a two-week period (N = 405). Results supported both hypothesized mediated paths. Further, consistent with our theory, we found that (a) promotion focus strengthened the gains-oriented relationship between individual identity and enacted political behavior, and (b) prevention focus strengthened the loss- oriented relationship between anxiety and enacted political behavior. Overall, our results provide several key theoretical and practical implications for the organizational politics and behavior literatures.
Friday, November 1, 2019
12:00pm - 1:30pm | 133 South Kedzie Hall
James H. Dulebohn
Professor
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State UniversityAreas of expertise: decision-making, organizational justice, organizational neuroscience, leadership, e-HR, compensation and benefits, and social influence in organizations
Presentation
Neuroscience Insights into Fairness Evaluations and Bias in Decision-Making
Functional neuroscience methods can provide insight into localizing psychological functions to brain regions and in identifying brain-behavior correlations. The use of neuroscience methods such as fMRI enables the examination of overlapping and non-overlapping patterns of brain activation that are valuable in building up a view of shared and distinct processes among psychological tasks. Further, fMRI provides a distinct advantage over other research methods by measuring evaluative responses instantaneously rather than retrospectively, as is the case in much of the clinical and applied psychology research. A key objective in the use of fMRI to inform organizational behavior and applied psychology is to establish a link between neural activation and behavioral responses.
This presentation will describe three fMRI studies and their results as examples of the insight neuroscience can provide. The first study examined the distinct neural processes involved in evaluating fairness. The second, examined gender differences in fairness evaluations. The third examined the neural correlates and processes involved when individuals engage in discrimination or bias toward obese persons. The presentation will discuss practical implications of the findings, along with limitations. Following this presentation, participants should be able to describe how fMRI assesses brain activity, the process involved in developing paradigms to study particular phenomena, and limitations in the use of fMRI.
Friday, December 6, 2019
1:30pm - 3:00pm | 133 South Kedzie Hall
Corinne Low
Assistant Professor
The Wharton School
The University of Pennsylvania(Joint with MSU Dept. of Economics)
Corinne Low is an Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Wharton School, specializing in family economics and economic development. Her research brings together applied microeconomic theory with lab and field experiments to understand the determinants of who gets how much across gender and age lines. Current ongoing projects focus on the tradeoff women make between career and family in the US, the impact of teaching girls negotiation skills in Zambia, and how expanded access to in vitro fertilization affects women in Israel.
Presentation
Incentivized Resume Rating: Eliciting Employer Preferences without Deception | Download Publication (699KB, PDF)
We introduce a new experimental paradigm to evaluate employer preferences, called incentivized resume rating (IRR). Employers evaluate resumes they know to be hypothetical in order to be matched with real job seekers, preserving incentives while avoiding the deception necessary in audit studies. We deploy IRR with employers recruiting college seniors from a prestigious school, randomizing human capital characteristics and demographics of hypothetical candidates. We measure both employer preferences for candidates and employer beliefs about the likelihood that candidates will accept job offers, avoiding a typical confound in audit studies. We discuss the costs, benefits, and future applications of this new methodology.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
2:30pm - 4:00pm | 434 South Kedzie Hall
Mevan Jayasinghe
Associate Professor
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State UniversityProfessor Jayasinghe's research focuses on socially-responsible human resource strategies and systems, and the associated consequences for employers (e.g. operational and financial performance) and employees (e.g. job quality, employment discrimination) across countries.
Presentation
Voluntary Labor Codes and Job Quality in Global Supply Chains
Although codes of conduct have widespread use as a private regulatory mechanism to enforce labor standards in global supply chains, prior research suggests that these codes have limited effectiveness. We differentiate between the traditional retailer-enforced codes of conduct on labor standards and ‘voluntary labor codes’ adopted by suppliers as a discretionary commitment to improving job quality. Using fieldwork and longitudinal data on Sri Lankan apparel suppliers, we find that suppliers’ discretionary adoption of a voluntary labor code is associated with better job quality, including higher wages and less work-related accidents/injuries. We also find that the effectiveness of suppliers' voluntary labor code adoption is constrained when these suppliers are simultaneously subject to compliance with traditional retailer-enforced codes of conduct. This research offers important theoretical and practical insights on expanding and improving private regulatory initiatives for labor standards compliance in global supply chains by carefully considering suppliers’ voluntary commitments to provide better working conditions.
Friday, March 20, 2020
12:00pm - 1:30pm | 133 South Kedzie Hall
Sean Rogers
Associate Professor, Spachman Professor of Human Resources & Labor Relations
College of Business
University of Rhode IslandSean Rogers has research interests in (1) employment discrimination and workplace diversity and inclusion, (2) labor unions and collective bargaining, especially in the airline industry and among graduate student employees, and (3) volunteer management and HRM in nonprofit organizations.
Canceled due to COVID-19
Friday, April 3, 2020
12:00pm - 1:30pm | 133 South Kedzie Hall
Kathleen Thelen
Ford Professor of Political Science
MIT Political Science
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDr. Thelen studies the origins, development, and effects of institutional arrangements that define distinctive "varieties of capitalism" across the rich democracies. Her work uses cross-national comparison and over-time analysis to identify the political-coalitional foundations on which different models of capitalism are founded, and to explain divergent trajectories of institutional development. She is also a prominent contributor to the literature on institutions and institutional change.
Canceled due to COVID-19
Friday, April 17, 2020
12:00pm - 1:30pm | 133 South Kedzie Hall
Jason Huang
Associate Professor
School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
Michigan State UniversityProfessor Huang's research examines individuals' adaptation to their work experience, with specific focus areas in (a) personality's influence on adaptive performance at work; (b) transfer of trained knowledge and skills to the workplace; and (c) cultural influence on individual adaptation at work. He also conducts methodological research on response effort and insufficient effort responding.
Postponed due to COVID-19