research interests
inequality; employment discrimination; geography & labor outcomes; diversity in and around organizations
research overview
My research focuses on the sources and consequences of inequality in organizations at both a micro and a macro level. A main stream of my research examines how organizational environments, and specifically the characteristics of the communities where organizations are located, shape inequality within firms. I study how geographic communities act as potential incubators—legally, normatively, and politically—of discrimination and inequality at work. Essentially, I explore how high the “glass ceiling” is for minorities and women, as well as their distribution across occupations, in Minneapolis versus Atlanta, for instance. In a different project, I investigate the interplay between individual characteristics and organizational contexts in influencing reactions to diversity, garnering evidence of both implicit and explicit associations between perceptions of exclusion resulting from organizational approaches to diversity. In both cases, I provide a more nuanced view of how inequality is created and reproduced. An overarching theme underlying my research—whether or not it explores inequality—is the incorporation of different levels of analysis in an effort to gain a more complex and comprehensive understanding of organizational behavior.
