2019 Scholarship Recipients

AC4 is so excited to announce the 2019 IACM Fellows cohort who will present their research in Dublin, Ireland at the IACM conference this July. This cohort of 8 graduate students from universities around the world has a wide range of interests in evaluation research, organizational inclusion, language use and power, the role of nepotism in organizational contexts, and more. Learn about this outstanding group of Fellows here:

Sooyun Baik
London Business School, Organisational Behavior

Sooyun Baik is a PhD candidate in Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. Her research investigates the unintended consequences of organizational communications. At IACM 2019, she will present her work on how organizational communications that emphasize the value of hard work attract people with an orientation to give to their organizations than to take from them. Moreover, the emphasis on hard work appeals to women more than to men. She recently has extended her work by showing how organizations that stress talent may inadvertently attract more narcissistic individuals.

Andrea Freund
Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Andrea Freund is pursuing her PhD in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. In her research, Andrea studies how popular lay beliefs about the nature of work and employment influence perceptions and interpersonal dynamics in organizations. At 2019 IACM, she will be presenting experimental research testing if job candidates who characterize themselves as passionate about work have a strategic advantage over job candidates who use other impression management tactics—and if that characterization causes evaluators to exploit them during the salary negotiation process.

Elisabeth Mah

Teachers College, Columbia University, Social Organizational Psychology

Elisabeth Mah is a PhD student in the Social-Organizational Psychology program in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include the influence of culture in communication, feedback, and strategy in conflict resolution as well as the role of coaching intervention in leadership and team development within legacy organizations. She currently pursues research with Dr. Peter T. Coleman at the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution on cross-cultural adaptivity strategy among international conflict resolution specialists in peacebuilding operations. She is also involved in coaching action plan effectiveness research with Dr. Yaron Prywes to better understand ways to harness tools towards long-term behavior change. Elisabeth also serves as the Eisenhower Leadership Development Program doctoral coordinator in support of the joint partnership between Columbia University and the United States Military Academy to further the education of US Army officers in leadership competencies during their 1-year accelerated Masters degree program.

Jieun Pai
UCLA Anderson School of Management, Management & Organizations

Jieun Pai is a PhD candidate in Management and Organizations at UCLA Anderson School of Management. Her research explores how the fundamental human desire for status is manifested over time across different contexts. In line with this research stream, at the 2019 IACM conference, she will be presenting one possible barrier faced by lower ranked members in enacting their desire to move up the hierarchy. Because power exists within social relationships, she examines the relational underpinning of the link between powerlessness and inaction through the framework of attachment theory.

Juan Diego Ramos-Ochoa
Teachers College, Columbia University

Diego is a student in the Social-Organizational Psychology PhD program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Diego’s main research interests revolve around the study of diversity and multicultural conflict in organizations, intractable conflict, and cooperation and collaboration in organizations. At this year’s IACM Conference, he and his teammates will present on their research exploring how people passionate about advancing diversity and inclusion in their workplaces leverage tension in the pursuit of more equitable and just organizations.

Teodora Tomova Shakur
New York University Stern School of Business

Teodora Tomova Shakur is a PhD candidate in Management at New York University. In her research, she attempts to decompose what nepotism constitutes and to assess its effects on important organizational outcomes. More specifically, she studies how and why nepotism occurs, its connection to competence and its consequences for the self and others. At IACM 2019, Teodora will introduce the idea that nepotism is a broader phenomenon than simply demonstrating preference for family members. She will argue that nepotism is frequently applied toward a variety of relational ties such as friends, friends of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. In her presentation, she will note key antecedents of nepotistic types of ties and touch on lay perceptions of the ethicality of using each nepotistic tie in organizational decision making.

Esther Uduehi
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Esther Uduehi is a PhD Candidate in Marketing (Consumer Behavior) at the Wharton School. Her research interests include identity, diversity, and stigmatization. At the 2019 IACM conference, Esther’s presentation deals with how language choices impact the humanization of stigmatized groups. She finds that phrases placing the person first may increase humanization, but it depends on how people perceive someone to be personally responsible for their condition or the severity of the condition. She hopes to make recommendations to non-profit organizations, firms, as well as lawmakers about how to use language choices to increase positive perceptions of stigmatized groups.

Lea Lynn Yen
Teachers College, Columbia University

Lea Lynn Yen is a PhD student at Teachers College, Columbia University in Social-Organizational Psychology. Her research interests include cross-cultural issues as well as more general Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion issues. At IACM, along with a colleague, Lea Lynn will be presenting research conducted in the area of cross-cultural conflict resolution trainings, exploring the most basic conditions that are more and less conducive to using more elective or prescriptive approaches during the training process.