Management and Organizations

The Management & Organizations Area examines how organizations and the people who work within them behave. Doctoral students have the ability to study a wide array of topics, ranging from individual psychology and behavior (micro-OB) to team and group behavior (meso-OB) to how organizations operate on a larger scale (macro-OB). Some topics that our faculty members study include decision-making, interpersonal and group conflict, prejudice and discrimination, diversity, identity, persuasion, communication, performance, labor practices, labor economics, and labor history.

From the Management and Organizations Chair

"As the Management and Organizations area chair, I want to extend to you a warm welcome. You will find that our faculty members study the topics of management, organizations and organizational behavior from a wide array of perspectives and disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics and history. If a career conducting and publishing groundbreaking research at an elite institution drives you, I invite you to get in touch and apply."

Noah Goldstein Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Management and Organizations
Area Chair

Explore the Program

Milestone Publications

Employing Bureaucracy: The Transformation of Work in the Twentieth Century.
Distinguished Professor Sanford Jacoby

Howard Noble Distinguished Professor of Management and Organizations Sanford Jacoby wrote the seminal 1985/2004 book “Employing Bureaucracy: The Transformation of Work in the Twentieth Century.” The book won the George Terry Book Award from the Academy of Management. Combining social and business history with economic analysis, the book demonstrates a shift in the 20th century American workplace from a market-oriented system to a bureaucratic one.

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Diversity is What You Want it To Be: How Social Dominance Motives Affect Diversity Construals
Associate Professor Miguel Unzueta (with E.D. Knowles and G.C. Ho)
Psychological Science in 2012

Published in Psychological Science in 2012, the paper’s findings suggest that diversity may not have a fixed meaning and that, without a specific delineation of what the concept means in particular contexts, people may construe diversity in a manner consistent with their social motivations.

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Reciprocity by Proxy: A Novel Influence Strategy for Stimulating Cooperation.
Associate Professor and Area Chair Noah Goldstein
Administrative Science Quarterly

Administrative Science Quarterly published an innovative paper written by Associate Professor and Area Chair Noah Goldstein in 2011. Entitled “Reciprocity by Proxy: A Novel Influence Strategy for Stimulating Cooperation,” the paper (with V. Griskevicius and R.B. Cialdini) found that hotel guests were more likely to reuse their towels when the hotel’s environmental conservation program used a reciprocity-by-proxy strategy than when it used an incentive-by-proxy or standard environmental strategy. This confirmed its hypothesis for greater effectiveness over traditional reciprocity, in which benefactors provide direct benefits to target individuals to elicit reciprocity.

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Working to Reduce Stigma: Identity Management Strategies in Organizational Contexts
Professor Margaret Shih and Associate Professor Maia Young
American Psychologist

Professor Margaret Shih and Associate Professor Maia Young had the opportunity to jointly author a paper (with A. Bucher) that was quite recently published in American Psychologist. The 2013 article, “Working to Reduce Stigma: Identity Management Strategies in Organizational Contexts,” introduces two classes of identity management strategies individuals use to mitigate the negative consequences of discrimination: identity switching (i.e., deemphasizing target identities and recategorizing to a more positively valued identity) and identity redefinition (i.e., stereotype reassociation and regeneration). The paper also outlines steps organizations can take to reduce the need for identity management strategies and to facilitate identity management when necessary.

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Alumni Success

Thomas Altura (’15)

Assistant Professor of Management, San Jose State University

Dissertation: The Social Facticity of Partner-Status: The Case of Local Governments and Investment Banks

Thomas Altura’s research focuses on organizational and institutional change and has been published in the leading journal, Business & Society. He earned his MBA at UCLA Anderson before completing his Ph.D. in 2015, when he joined the faculty of San Jose State University.

Elissa Grossman (’05)

Associate Professor of Clinical Entrepreneurship, USC Marshall School of Business

Dissertation: New Venture Creation and Network Tie Formation: A Longitudinal Study of Nascent Entrepreneurs' Efforts in Business-Building

Elissa Grossman's research concerns social networks in new venturing, encompassing traditional network development for startup resource acquisition and crowdfunding. Her work has been published in journals including the Journal of Management and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.

Angélica S. Gutiérrez (’12)

Assistant Professor of Management, Loyola Marymount University

Dissertation: The Effect of Social Dominance Orientation on Reactions to University and Employment Recruitment and Selection Policies

Angélica Gutiérrez was named one of Poets and Quants' 2015 Best 40 Under 40 Professors. She has published in various journals, including the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy.

Nicholas Hays (’12)

Assistant Professor of Accounting, Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University

Dissertation: Social Climbing: A Contextual Approach to Understanding the Effects of Social Hierarchy on Individual Cognition and Behavior

Nicholas Hays' research interests include the effects of social hierarchy on individuals' decisions and behaviors. His work has been published in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Science, where he published "Status Conflict in Groups."

Neha Shah (’10)

Assistant Professor of Management & Global Business, Rutgers University

Dissertation: The Individual Effect of Multiplex Relationships in Workplace Social Networks

Counter to most research on social networks, Neha Shah examines how interactive problem-solving assistance with coworkers can make you a better employee. Her work focuses on the antecedents and consequences of workplace relationship networks, with a focus on the trade-offs associated with workplace relationships, such as job performance.

Daniel Walters (’17)

Assistant Professor of Marketing, INSEAD, The Business School of the World

Dissertation: Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Dan Walters' research focuses on consumer judgment and decision making, with a focus on understanding how people make inferences about missing information in the context of making product decisions, investment judgments, and intertemporal choices. He earned his MBA at UCLA Anderson in 2011, completed his Ph.D. in 2017, and joined the faculty of INSEAD in August of 2017. His work has been published in top academic journals such as Management Science and The Leadership Quarterly. He has presented his research at the Society for Consumer Psychology, the Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference, and the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.

Ph.D. Program