Work Relevant to Positive Organizational Scholarship

My research stream examines how individuals proactively create conditions for excellence in their work lives through positive relationships and meaning-making, particularly when they work in transient and dynamic settings.

My research stream can be categorized into the following themes:

Helping Behavior and Community Building among Temporary Employees

In this research stream I explore how in the absence of membership, a past, or a future in the organization, temporary employees come to experience a sense of community with others at work, help others at work, and share their knowledge. Specifically, I explore the role of positive relationships with coworkers as substitutes for a strong attachment to the organization as mechanisms for facilitating these positive outcomes.

Voice and Reliability in Dynamic Organizational Settings

In a project with Kathleen Sutcliffe and Marlys Christianson, we explore the conditions that enable voice and explore its role in reducing medical error in an organizational context characterized by high dynamism, instability, and changing team composition.

Sustaining Effective Action in Independent Work

Sue Ashford and I conducted a qualitative study of independent workers, exploring the question: How do independent workers sustain effective action in the absence of all that organizations provide? In one paper we explore how they proactively make meaning about their work and how the meaning-making process enables them to be effective in the highly ambiguous and uncertain setting of working on their own. In another paper we explore how they proactively structure their time, space, and other resources in ways that enable them to tailor their work life to their own style and needs.

Coordination in Nascent Organizing

My dissertation explores the role of positive relationships in nascent organizing, namely temporary teams and startups. In both of these settings, people must quickly organize and coordinate under uncertainty and in the relative absence of an existing normative structure. I examine the impact of how people think about their relationships (their relational orientation) and the practices they adopt within the relationships (their relational practices) on their ability to create shared meaning and processes that facilitate coordination. I explore the notion that relational practices – which build high-quality connections – can serve as substitutes for structure in nascent organizing.