Research
Now, more than ever before, there is a heightened awareness about the importance of "speaking up" in organizations.
Organizations can correct their mistakes, improve their products, and stay true to their moral compass when employees
step up as proactive citizens, strive to constructively change the status quo, and speak up. Yet, repeated evidence shows that
employees are still too silent, or too unappreciated and disregarded for speaking up at work.
This unfortunate reality raises three critical questions that have fueled my research program:
01
Why don't organizations reward employees for speaking up?
02
What prevents employees from speaking up?
03
How can employees stay proactive at work?
I bring in novel theoretical lenses to bear answers to these questions. ​I have examined through the prisms of social class and attribution theory when and why employees’ voice and proactivity are not rewarded. I have highlighted how employees’ trust in their leaders prevents them from speaking up, especially in the face of organizational threats of ambiguous nature. I have also shown how managers’ efforts to encourage voice can go awry due to an egocentric empathy gap. I also have additional projects that have been inspired by my primary research program, delving into topics such as bias, social class, and status dynamics.
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My research appears in outlets such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Harvard Business Review, and has won the SIOP S. Rains Wallace Dissertation Award and Academy of Management Best Empirical or Theoretical Paper Award. I utilize field surveys, experiments, qualitative interviews, and archival data in my research.
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For updates and full details of my research, please feel free to check out my CV.