Academy of Management 2024: A breathtaking whirlwind in the windy city!

*GASP!* Learning we won the "Phillips & Nadkarni Best Paper on Diversity & Cognition" Award 🏆 today at the Academy of Management was truly breathtaking! (No, really--I nearly passed out! 😅)

People tend to prefer people who are like them (i.e., homophily), which can perpetuate inequalities in organizations. For example, in many contexts, leaders have historically been men; so, if they tend to interact and network more with other men, this locks men into (and women out of) critical professional networks. Instead of revealing more bias, we develop and test a new way to network: playfulness. 💡 Across 5 mixed methods studies comprising 4,461 data points from interviews, vignettes, archival data, and recalled scenarios, we found that men and women--as well as lower and higher status persons--are more likely to interact in more playful situations. So, the next time you're planning a networking event or just want people to mix at a mixer, make it more playful (i.e., spontaneous, pleasurable, and interactive) to facilitate interactions across differences as a step toward more social inclusion and professional equity in organizations. 🌟

Above, Dr. Huong Pham, Mihwa Seong, and I accepted/hold our plaques from these 2 terrific MOC leaders, BURAK OC and Beth A. Livingston, in Chicago. The award is named in honor of the late scholarly greats, Katherine W. Phillips (Columbia Business School) and Sucheta Nadkarni (Cambridge Judge Business School)--both of whom I briefly met at past AOM meetings--who have deeply shaped the field and inspired thousands with their research in #DEI and behavioral strategy.

We are absolutely honored and utterly thrilled; this work would not be possible without our amazing coauthors (Mihwa, Eugenia, and Huong below) and unpictured coauthors: Isabelle Engeler, and Raina Brands, and the generous funding from Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF. 🙏

Of course, we (re)connected will colleagues new and known, attended scholarly sessions and presented our own research, supported the DEI division where Mihwa and I are both members of the Executive Committee, and continued our education in professional development workshops, too. But, winning this award (and presenting this paper among an all-star session of network scholars) was truly a highlight!

Women in Leadership Micro-Conference in St.Gallen

Just before Easter, we welcomed an all-star group of keynotes and early-career scholars from the the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Switzerland—and beyond—in the beautiful Weiterbildungzentrum (WBZ) in sunny St.Gallen. These scholars and practitioners are working across psychology, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, and operations management on topics related to gender/diversity and leadership.

It’s already a few weeks later now, but I’m still feeling inspired by conversations with and presentations by Raina Brands (UCL), Aneeta Rattan (LBS), Corinne Post (Villanova), Alyson Meister (IMD), Amanda Shantz and Charlotta Siren (HSG), our incoming post-doc (Mihwa Seong, Ivey Business School), CCDI scholars and practitioners (Eugenia Bajet Mestre, Theresa Goop, Nicole Niedermann, and Giannina Faktor), the fantastic social innovation duo from practice (Cynthia Hansen and Liana Melchenko at Adecco), Lauren Howe (UZH), Regina Dutz (TUM), Caren Goldberg (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow), and Eva Lin (LBS)!

Thanks again to SNF for funding this event, to our amazing attendees who shared their research and stories behind it, and to Eugenia Bajet Mestre for her extraordinary effort facilitating hybrid participation and organization.

Non-traditional paths for non-traditional leaders

Check out the new teaser for our new project (below).

Non-traditional paths for non-traditional leaders?

I am absolutely honored and still in utter disbelief that the Swiss National Science Foundation has awarded me with a 1.2million PRIMA grant to form a small team to study extra-curricular and network-based paths to (more diverse) leadership. I’ll be working closely with the Centre for Diversity & Inclusion at the University of St. Gallen for 5 years, starting in Janury 2021.

More info coming soon-follow the project here for updates!

"Improving Lives" @AOM 2018 in Chicago

78th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management

The 5-day Academy of Management (AOM) Conference just concluded in Chicago, USA. With more than 11,000 experts from around the world, I joined 6 of my Munich team members and my UZH team member to actively engage in scholarly conversations about ways that leaders and organizations can improve employee well-being as well as our society as a whole.

Together with Claudia Peus (TUM), I organized a symposium on early career (female) leaders and fit, drawing from leading international scholars from China, Colombia, Germany, Ireland, Israel, and the USA. Together with Xinxin Li and Sandy Lim (NUS), I presented a new experimental study on gender, parenthood, and selective incivility at work. Finally, through the OB early career faculty workshop, the leadership research incubator and the GDO early career faculty paper workshop, I received invaluable advice on other papers, including my new humor project with Agnes Baeker (UZH).

It was fantastic to reconnect with colleagues and coauthors, make new connections over shared curiosities, start some new projects, and see a little bit of Chicago. However, 5 days of packed schedules with 11,000+ conference-goers and a 7-hour time change is enough to make even this extreme extrovert a bit tired...