Research

My research examines how people work together in organizations, with a focus on teams, leadership, and hierarchy. 

I study how team members manage conflict and collaboration, how people build relationships across formal and informal boundaries, and how power, status, and leader–follower dynamics shape workplace interactions.

“When Discretionary Boundary Spanning Relationships Cease Becoming Discretionary"

Core question: When do relationships across team boundaries help people emerge as informal leaders, and when do they become constraining?

Main idea: In this research, we examine different types of team boundary-spanning relationships, including task-oriented relationships and friendship-based relationships. We find that having a small number of closed, triadic boundary-spanning relationships—often referred to in academia as “Simmelian ties”—can help individuals be seen as informal leaders. However, having too many of these tightly connected relationships can become constraining and ultimately reduce informal leadership influence. This “dark side” of over-embeddedness appears sooner for friendship-based boundary-spanning relationships because these ties are more costly to maintain.

Why it matters: Boundary-spanning relationships can help individuals gain influence, but too many tightly connected relationships across team boundaries—especially those based on friendship—can become difficult to manage and may eventually undermine informal leadership influence.

[Toward a Three-Dimensional Framework of TBM] 

Core question: How can we better understand the many different ways teams manage their boundaries with people, resources, and ideas outside the team?

Main Idea: In this project, we develop a three-dimensional framework of team boundary management. Rather than treating boundary management as a long list of separate, discrete behaviors, we organize these behaviors around three core dimensions: whether the team’s actions are directed inward or outward and how permeable the team becomes to outside people, resources, and ideas.

Why it matters: This framework helps researchers and practitioners better understand how teams connect with their broader organizational environment while still maintaining focus, coordination, and identity.

“Justice Variability Negates the Benefits of Justice ”  

Core question: Does fair treatment from a supervisor still benefit employees when that fairness is inconsistent from day to day?

Main idea: In this research, we examine how variability in supervisory justice affects employees’ cooperation. Across two week-long experience-sampling studies, we found that fair treatment is most beneficial when it is relatively stable over time. When supervisors’ fairness varied significantly from day to day, the positive effects of justice on employees’ pride in the group and discretionary cooperative behavior were weakened.

Why it matters: Employees do not only pay attention to whether they are treated fairly; they also pay attention to whether fair treatment is predictable and consistent.

[Rank, Power, Status] 

Core question: When and why do high-ranking individuals think and behave in self-oriented versus other-oriented ways?

Main idea: In this work, we examine the psychology and behavior of high-ranking individuals. We argue that the key mechanism is the cognitive salience of power versus status. In competitive environments, high-ranking individuals are more likely to think in terms of power-related concepts, such as authority, control, and influence, which can lead to more self-oriented and antisocial behavior. In cooperative environments, high-ranking individuals are more likely to think in terms of status-related concepts, such as respect, admiration, and social value, which can lead to more other-oriented and generous behavior.

Across multiple experimental and field studies, we developed and validated an implicit measure of power salience and status salience, and found support for these patterns. A symposium I co-chaired on this topic received the Best Symposium Award from the Organizational Behavior Division at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in 2017.

Why it matters: High rank does not always lead to the same behavior. Whether high-ranking individuals act selfishly or generously may depend on whether the environment highlights power or status.

For a full list of publications, conference presentations, and works in progress, please see my CV.