Work and Organizations faculty win research awards

Four faculty members in the Carlson School of Management’s Work and Organizations department received best publication honors at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting this month.

The annual awards honor research with the greatest impact and contributions in their respective fields. Join us in celebrating the following achievements:

Elizabeth Campbell

Associate Professor Elizabeth M. Campbell received two awards for her research on how religious cultures may influence the gender wage gap.

In their paper “The Hidden Cost of Prayer: Religiosity and the Gender Wage Gap,” Campbell and her co-author, Professor Traci Sitzmann of the University of Colorado-Denver, gathered evidence from the 50 U.S. states and 140 countries, which revealed the more religious a community, the greater the wage gap between women and men. 

The paper won the Best Article in the Academy of Management Journal and the Saroj Parasuraman Outstanding Publication Award from the Academy of Management’s Gender and Diversity in Organizations (GDO) Division.

Pri Shah 

Professor Pri Shah received the Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior (OB) Award from the Academy of Management OB Division. 

The paper, “Things Are Not Always What They Seem: The Origins and Evolution of Intragroup Conflict,” analyzed conflict within teams to better understand where conflict originates, how it evolves over time, and ultimately, affects team performance. The researchers determined team conflict is not uniform, shared, or static—a significant departure from longtime assumptions. Instead, they found conflict involving a whole team is rare and more commonly starts at smaller levels within the team.

Shah shares the award with Randall Peterson of the London Business School, Stephen Jones of the University of Washington, and Amanda Ferguson of Northern Illinois University. Jones received his PhD at the Carlson School. 

Connie Wanberg

Professor and Industrial Relation Faculty Excellence Chair Connie Wanberg won the Personnel Psychology 2022 Best Paper Award. This annual award honors research published two years ago for its impact on the field. 

For the paper, “Can Job Seekers Achieve More Through Networking? The Role of Networking Intensity, Self-Efficacy, and Proximal Benefits,” Wanberg helped develop an online networking training tool for unemployed job seekers. The research team found the tool led to increased networking intensity–especially among introverted job seekers–and led to better employment rates.

She shares the award with her co-authors Edwin A. J. van Hooft of the University of Amsterdam, Songqi Liu of Georgia State University, and Borbala Csillag of Oregon State University, who received her PhD at the Carlson School.

Mary Zellmer-Bruhn

Work and Organizations Department Chair and Professor Mary Zellmer-Bruhn won the Journal of World Business Best 2021 Publication Award for her paper “The Impact of Language Barriers on Knowledge Processing in Multinational Teams.”

The study shows how “evident” language barriers, such as proficiency with vocabulary and grammar in the team’s working language, decrease communication in multinational teams. However, they also found “hidden” language barriers, which occur when team members transfer tone and speech conventions from their first language into the team’s working language, can impact sensemaking and higher levels of understanding. These findings showed how language barriers can be impactful from an information processing perspective and also on a more sophisticated cultural level.

Zellmer-Bruhn shares the award with co-authors Helene Tenzer of Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and Markus Pudelko of Tubingen University in Germany.