I am an Assistant Professor of Management at Babson College. I received my PhD in Human Resource Management from Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, and I was an Assistant Professor of Human Resource Management at California State University, Long Beach before joining the Babson faculty in Fall 2022. My research is broadly in the areas of organizational behavior and human resource management, with an emphasis on mental illness, interpersonal connections at work, and diversity.
Mental Illness and Mental Health at Work
Most of my current projects examine mental health and mental illness in the workplace. I am especially interested in the ways that people with mental illness navigate their employment and the ways their colleagues, managers, and organizations might remove barriers for these employees. My colleagues and I have recently published a review paper entitled, Mental Health and Mental Illness in Organizations: A Review, Comparison, and Extension in the Academy of Management Annals. In our review of over 550 studies, we uncovered two major trends. First, there is substantial evidence that systematic features of work - particularly job design and organizational culture - are associated with diminished levels of employees’ mental health. Yet instead of addressing these systematic issues proactively, research on mental health interventions takes a disproportionately reactive and individual perspective. Second, we found that (poor) mental health and mental illness are often conflated both theoretically and empirically. This is problematic because it obscures the opportunity to study how employees with chronic mental illness can thrive. Indeed, our review underscores that people with chronic mental illness can excel in work as well as (or sometimes even more than) their peers without mental illness, but the conditions that lead to such thriving cannot be uncovered if they are chronically oversimplified as being unwell. For non-academics interested in learning more about our findings, please see the Media tab for a selection of articles and podcasts based on this work. In particular, my colleagues Jaclyn Koopmann, Matthew Cronin, and I wrote a piece entitled Adjusting jobs to protect workers’ mental health is both easier and harder than you might think in The Conversation, which summarizes the main takeaways of our research for practitioners and organizations.
Building on my recent review, my current research-in-progress examines issues such as coping in mental illness, increasing employees’ mental health literacy as at work, and the dynamics of social support in the experience of mental illness. I am especially interested in how organizations might support employees whose mental illness has unpredictable fluctuations (e.g., bouts of unexpected depression or anxiety), and I have a book chapter on that subject in the De Gruyter Handbook of Disability and Management (De Gruyter Publishing).
Interpersonal Connections at Work
My research is characterized by a broader interest in informal connections that employees have at work, which overlaps with my research on mental illness and is also the focus of separate research articles. In an article titled, The Network Architecture of Human Capital: A Relational Identity Perspective, published in the Academy of Management Review, my colleagues and I present a theoretical model that spotlights the interplay between human resource practices and informal relationships. We also propose that the effects of informal relationships go beyond the provision of resources and creation of social capital in organizations; they also influence how individuals view and define themselves in the context of their dyadic and collective relationships.
A significant portion of my work on interpersonal connections focuses specifically on workplace small talk, which refers to superficial, non-task related communication. Small talk is ubiquitous at work, yet it is severely underrepresented in existing management research. My research finds that these seemingly insignificant interactions (for instance, chatting about the weather or sports) have both positive and negative outcomes, and I investigate the mechanisms that drive these effects in a variety of settings. In a coauthored article titled, Office Chit-Chat as a Social Ritual: The Uplifting Yet Distracting Effects of Daily Small Talk at Work, published in the Academy of Management Journal, my colleagues and I explore the daily effects of small talk. There is a nice summary of our findings written by Academy of Management Insights that can be accessed here. My dissertation research builds on this published work by identifying distinct types of small talk and investigating how these different types of small talk differentially impact employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Additionally, my colleagues and I discuss virtual small talk in an article published in Harvard Business Review entitled, “Remote Workers need Small Talk, Too” (published online in March 2021).
Workplace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Beyond those with mental illness, which I consider a form of diversity, I conduct research on other types of traditionally stigmatized employees. My working projects in this space include demographics such as race, ethnicity, and gender. I am interested in both the impact of diversity and demographic characteristics on employees’ experiences at work, as well as the nature of stereotypes that perpetuate dysfunctional intergroup relations. My recent book chapter, Who Is There When Everything Changes?: The Anchoring Effect of Online Maternal Support Groups During Periods of Liminal Professional Identity (Palgrave), exemplifies my interest in gendered, interpersonal workplace issues. In this chapter, we investigate how support outside the workplace in the form of online support groups can help women navigate difficult workplace transitions, and how these extra-organizational groups can serve as an identity anchor during periods of change.
Additional Details
I use a variety of data and analytical techniques to conduct my research, including grounded theory, social network analysis, structural equation modeling, and experience sampling methodology. I have presented my work at national and international conferences, and I have served as an ad hoc reviewer for Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Human Relations, Journal of Strategy and Management, and various professional conferences.