Dissertation: Speaking Up on Boards
Description
My research involves the observation of 14 board meetings of seven medium-sized public companies and interviews with the 54 directors that comprise these boards. A hypothesis I am exploring is that despite the seeming absence of hierarchy in the boardroom setting of equals, there are implicit, informal expectations that can be extremely powerful in undermining speaking up behavior, both by inhibiting directors and by preventing them from getting heard when they do speak up. My study contributes to several bodies of literature: corporate governance, organizational silence, and small group interaction and minority influence.
Other research interests that will be explored in the dissertation and in research beyond the dissertation include negotiation of identity from the perspective of role theory and social identity theory, institutional theory, organizational deviance, and the diffusion of and sensemaking around deviant behavior.