Department of Sociology Presents:

“Meritocracy and the Employment of Foreign Nationals” with Professor
Emilio Castilla of Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Friday, February 21. 2014
12:00-1:30 p.m.
Social Science Plaza B, Room 4206

University of California, Irvine
Institute for Software Research
http://isr.uci.edu

http://isr.uci.edu/content/isr-distinguished-speaker-series-2013-2014

Jonathan Grudin
Principal Researcher, Natural Interaction Group, Microsoft Research
Affiliate Professor, Information School, University of Washington

“Managing Boundaries: Social Media Use by Enterprise Employees”

http://isr.uci.edu/content/jonathan-grudin

Friday January 17, 2014
3:00 – 4:00 pm

Location: Donald Bren Hall, room 6011 (building #314)

Email RSVP is required.
To:isr@uci.edu
By: Wednesday January 15

Abstract: Over the past decade I have conducted studies of messaging, weblog, wiki, and social networking site use by enterprise employees. Some studies focused on Microsoft employees, some included other companies small and large. In this talk I will focus on a multi-site study of wiki use inside firewalls and a 6-year cross-sectional trend study of the use of social networking sites for personal and work purposes by Microsoft employees. Both involved extensive surveying and interviewing. Although the vast majority of enterprise wikis died quickly, we identified conditions shared by major successes as well as factors that appeared to contribute to failures. The trend study spanned the unprecedented rapid uptake and evolution in social networking site use; although benefits have clearly outweighed concerns for most of our population, we found a coherent shift over time in concerns, features, and practices.

About the Speaker: Jonathan Grudin is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft and an Affiliate Professor in the University of Washington Information School. He was previously a professor of ICS at the University of California, Irvine. He is an ACM Fellow, member of the ACM SIGCHI CHI Academy, past editor of ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction and current associate editor of ACM Computing Surveys. His first paper on enterprise adoption of technology, published in 1988, was just declared the inaugural CSCW Lasting Impact Award winner, to be presented at CSCW 2014 in February.

An Organization and Management faculty recruitment colloquium is scheduled on Friday, January 17, 2014. Candace Jones of Boston College will be the candidate/speaker.

Her presentation “Let’s Get concrete!: Institutional logics, aesthetic responses and the introduction of a new material” will be held from 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm in SB 112.

Below is an abstract of her colloquium.

A new material creates uncertainty about its use and appropriateness. This study focuses on a new building material—concrete—which architects began to use during the turn of the 1900s. Using data from professional architectural journals in France and the United States during 1890 to 1939, we reveal that institutional professional logics moderated the adoption of concrete, varying between France and the United States, rather than being driven by dynamics of substitution for traditional building materials that dominate strategy and technology studies. We find that in France, the professional logic was married with a State logic that regulated the production and use of concrete in buildings after a concrete building collapsed. In contrast, the professional logic was married with a market logic, where manufacturers cooperated to create product standards and who appealed to architects as consumers. In contrast, to dominate institutional theories which highlight imitation of established practices and exemplars as the basis for legitimacy, our study shows that imitation of the established and dominant material stone delegitimated concrete as a building material. Instead the process of legitimation required theorizing concrete as unique, possessing its own aesthetic and appropriate to new kinds of buildings.

If you would like lunch at Professor Candace Jones’ colloquia, or would like to get on her schedule please contact Vanessa Ly at vanessml@exchange.uci.edu.

Don Moore
Associate Professor
Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow
UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business

Monday, December 9, 2013
11:00-12:30 SB 112

Optimistic About Optimism: The Belief That Optimism Improves Performance

A series of experiments investigated why people believe it is a good idea to be optimistic and whether they are right to do so. Specifically, we tested whether people believe that optimism improves performance. Participants prescribed optimism for someone implementing decisions but not for someone deliberating, indicating that people prescribe optimism selectively, when it can affect performance. Furthermore, participants believed optimism improved outcomes when a person’s actions had considerable, rather than little, influence over the outcome. A series of experiments tested the accuracy of this belief. We find that optimism did not improve performance as much as participants expected. In sum, people prescribe optimism when they believe it has the opportunity to improve the chance of success—unfortunately, people may be overly optimistic about how much optimism can do.