COR facilitates research on new organizational forms and processes now taking shape in a variety of contexts. As the 21st century unfolds, we increasingly find organizing that diverges from traditional bureaucratic structures. Such possibilities can be found in global teams, web-based collaboration, network structures, collective threats to security and privacy, micro enterprises, international non-governmental organizations, and alliances across private, public, and non-profit fields. These developments raise opportunities for alternative modes of decision-making, just as they present challenges for accountability and efficacy. They also raise questions about how existing distributions of power both constrain and enable organizational experimentation. COR contributes to the development of organization theory by connecting scholars from many disciplines who bring their knowledge and methods to a common understanding of these issues.
Upcoming COR Seminar: Refusing to fail: Over-persistence, under-persistence, and the gender gap in science
Donald Bren COR Seminar
Dr. Andrew Penner
Assistant professor – Sociology
UC Irvine
Date: Friday, June 7, 2013
Talk: 3:00 PM – 4.00 PM
Location: 6011 Donald Bren Hall
Abstract: Research on gender differences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields typically focuses on the underrepresentation of women, attributing gender differences to factors like the chilly climate in these fields and women’s choices to avoid STEM. The present study extends this literature in two ways. First, we examine where women who leave STEM fields go, and whether their choices to opt out of STEM should be conceptualized as under-persistence. Second, we examine whether men persist excessively in the face of negative feedback in these same fields. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we find evidence that men tended to choose mathematics over verbal questions in a testing environment where the mathematics problems were extremely difficult and they were paid for performance. Corroborating evidence of this male “over-persistence effect” is also found in college STEM coursetaking behavior, where men are more likely to re-take STEM courses after failing them.
April and May 2013 Events
COR Faculty Workshop
Friday, April 12, 2013
Venue: 306 Social Ecology I
12.00 PM – 1.30 PM
Prof. Gerardo Okhyusen
Professor of Organization and Management
The Paul Merage School of Business
University of California, Irvine
Understanding Individuals’ Subjective Perceptions of Group Effectiveness: An Inductive Approach
Discussants: Dr. Jone Pearce (Paul Merage School of Business, UCI) and Dr. Dan Stokols (Social Ecology, UCI)
We use an inductive methodology to explore how individuals subjectively evaluate their experiences in successful and unsuccessful groups. We asked experienced managers in business and education to provide descriptions of groups they participated in at work. Using a concept mapping approach, we specifically elicited specific experiences in one successful and one unsuccessful groups. A subset of participants in each sample sorted and categorized statements from these descriptions for cluster analysis and assisted in the interpretation of the cluster solution. Using these solutions, we engaged in an inductive process and find that participants evaluate successful and unsuccessful groups using features that are not fully accounted for in our theories of groups, such as judgments of the motivation of others and emotional expression. Our findings also suggest that successful and unsuccessful group outcomes are evaluated using qualitatively different criteria and that participants evaluate success and failure in terms of processes as well as outcomes. Our research highlights the importance of understanding the structure of individuals’ subjective perceptions of group success and failure, particularly as these evaluations can help us understand individuals’ behavior in groups.
COR Faculty Workshop
Friday, May 17, 2013
Venue: 306 Social Ecology I
12.00 PM – 1.30 PM
Prof. Seth Pipkin
Assistant Professor of Planning, Policy and Design
School of Social Ecology
University of California, Irvine
How Culture Matters for Economic Development: Repertoires of
Contention on The US-Mexico Border.
Discussants: Scott Bollens (Social Ecology) and Charles Ragin (Social
Sciences)
This paper offers a new perspective on the causes of economic
development by applying tools of cultural sociology and social movement
analysis directly to the workings of the political economy. Based on a
controlled case comparison of cross-border US-Mexico city pairs, an a
priori unlikely economic divergence is accounted for by local repertoires
of political claim-making and problem-solving. Through these different
cultural repertoires, the cities garnered differential benefits from the
novel economic environment created by the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA.) Insofar as they pertain to patterns of communication
and trust, repertoires relate to the network literature; however, in the
cases observed here, the repertoires seem to predate the key networks of
interaction, suggesting that they are the underlying causal mechanism.
Based on their durable, community-level influence on the implementation of
policies, repertoires represent both an opportunity to rethink how culture
affects economic development, as well as for theorizing development
phenomena at a “middle range” in between individual mean effects of local
policy and the bounded rationality impacts of macro-institutional rules.
2012-2013 Calendar of Events
COR Beginning-of-the-Year Event
Academic Speed-Dating
Friday, November 2, 12:00-1:30pm
306 Social Ecology I
Donald Bren School – COR Seminar
Friday, February 15, 2013
Venue: Donald Bren Hall 6011
3.00 PM – 5.00 PM
Prof. JoAnne Yates
Distinguished Professor of Management & Professor of Managerial Communication
MIT Sloan School of Management.
COR Faculty Workshop
Friday, February 8, 2013
Venue: 306 Social Ecology I
12.00 PM – 1.30 PM
Prof. Geoffrey Bowker
Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
University of California, Irvine
Emerging Configurations of Knowledge Expression
Discussants: Dr. Tom Boellstorf (Anthropology, UCI) and Dr. Simon Cole (Criminology, Law & Society, UCI)
Struggling with the definition of the novel form, E.M. Forster came down reluctantly to the finding that ‘Yes– oh, dear, yes – the novel tells a story’. There’s really no way around that, even though folks like Joyce have done their darnedest. I feel the same nebulous dismay when I try to define what an academic product is. Here’s a form that articles take in the field of computer supported cooperative work: wide ranging introduction; literature review section which covers far more reading than you will use in the text; truncated methods section which doesn’t allow you to interrogate the text easily; objective findings, which generally seem otherwise and would often be known anyway by the average citizen without doing any research; discussion, which is too short and, implications for design. If I’m asked what it is that most academics write most of the time, I’d have to say: “Yes, oh dear yes, the canonical academic product is the well-formed paper”.
Donald Bren School – COR Seminar
Friday, March 1, 2013
Venue: Donald Bren Hall 6011
3.00 PM – 5.00 PM
Prof. Karim Lakhani
Associate Professor of Business Administration, Technology and Operations Management Harvard Business School
COR Co-Sponsored Conference
Anthropology of Markets and Consumption
March 7-9, 2013
Hyatt Regency Irvine
Donald Bren School – COR Seminar
Friday, March 8, 2013
Venue: Donald Bren Hall 6011
3.00 PM – 5.00 PM
Prof. Daniel Beunza
Lecturer in Management
London School of Economics
COR Faculty Workshop
Friday, April 12, 2013
Venue: 306 Social Ecology I
12.00 PM – 1.30 PM
Prof. Gerardo Okhyusen
Professor of Organization and Management
The Paul Merage School of Business
University of California, Irvine
Understanding Individuals’ Subjective Perceptions of Group Effectiveness: An Inductive Approach
Discussants: Dr. Jone Pearce (Paul Merage School of Business, UCI) and Dr. Dan Stokols (Social Ecology, UCI)
We use an inductive methodology to explore how individuals subjectively evaluate their experiences in successful and unsuccessful groups. We asked experienced managers in business and education to provide descriptions of groups they participated in at work. Using a concept mapping approach, we specifically elicited specific experiences in one successful and one unsuccessful groups. A subset of participants in each sample sorted and categorized statements from these descriptions for cluster analysis and assisted in the interpretation of the cluster solution. Using these solutions, we engaged in an inductive process and find that participants evaluate successful and unsuccessful groups using features that are not fully accounted for in our theories of groups, such as judgments of the motivation of others and emotional expression. Our findings also suggest that successful and unsuccessful group outcomes are evaluated using qualitatively different criteria and that participants evaluate success and failure in terms of processes as well as outcomes. Our research highlights the importance of understanding the structure of individuals’ subjective perceptions of group success and failure, particularly as these evaluations can help us understand individuals’ behavior in groups.
COR Faculty Workshop
Friday, May 17, 2013
Venue: 306 Social Ecology I
12.00 PM – 1.30 PM
Prof. Seth Pipkin
Assistant Professor of Planning, Policy and Design
School of Social Ecology
University of California, Irvine
How Culture Matters for Economic Development: Repertoires of
Contention on The US-Mexico Border.
Discussants: Scott Bollens (Social Ecology) and Charles Ragin (Social
Sciences)
This paper offers a new perspective on the causes of economic
development by applying tools of cultural sociology and social movement
analysis directly to the workings of the political economy. Based on a
controlled case comparison of cross-border US-Mexico city pairs, an a
priori unlikely economic divergence is accounted for by local repertoires
of political claim-making and problem-solving. Through these different
cultural repertoires, the cities garnered differential benefits from the
novel economic environment created by the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA.) Insofar as they pertain to patterns of communication
and trust, repertoires relate to the network literature; however, in the
cases observed here, the repertoires seem to predate the key networks of
interaction, suggesting that they are the underlying causal mechanism.
Based on their durable, community-level influence on the implementation of
policies, repertoires represent both an opportunity to rethink how culture
affects economic development, as well as for theorizing development
phenomena at a “middle range” in between individual mean effects of local
policy and the bounded rationality impacts of macro-institutional rules.
Donald Bren School – COR Seminar
Friday, June 7, 2013
Venue: Donald Bren Hall 6011
3.00 PM – 5.00 PM
Prof. Andrew Penner
Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine
COR End-of-Year Event
Friday, June 7, 2013
Venue: 306 Social Ecology I
12.00 PM – 1.30 PM