Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Business Administration, Concentration in Management
Texas Tech University
2014

Masters of Business Administration (M.B.A.)

Business Administration, Management, Entrepreneurship Concentration
Texas Tech University
2008

Bachelor of Science

Human Development and Family Studies
Texas Tech University
2006

The Work-Life Interface

Leadership, Leader-Follower Interactions

Human Resources

Recruiting

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

MGT 301: Management & Organizational Behavior

MGT 302: Advanced Organizational Behavior

MGT 303: Human Resource Management

Faculty Research Award, Howard University School of Business, August 2022

Nominated for: Best paper in Organization Management Journal 2018, 2019

Nominated for: Rosabeth Moss Kanter award for Excellence in Work-Family Research, Workforce Roundtable of the Boston College Center for Work & Family, 2019

Dean's Research Award: Top Researcher in Department of Management, Howard University School of Business, 2018

Howard Research Week Award Winner: Junior faculty in Business category, 2018

Academy of Management Journal Best Article Award, 2016

Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for excellence in Work-Family Research-Finalist, 2016

The impact of AMO-enhancing high performance work system perceptions on employee turnover intentions

The impact of AMO-enhancing high performance work system perceptions on employee turnover intentions: A mediation by affective commitment

This study investigates how perceptions of ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) enhancing high-performance work systems (HPWS) affect turnover intentions among Fijian employees in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Applying the Challenge-Hindrance Stressor Framework to Doctoral Education

Applying the Challenge-Hindrance Stressor Framework to Doctoral Education

Doctoral education is inherently stressful for students. While the implications of stress on employees has been heavily investigated within the management literature, what we know about stress has not yet been applied to doctoral education. We take initial steps toward using the stress literature to examine stress in doctoral education by applying the challenge-hindrance stressor framework to the doctoral education context. We provide theory-driven recommendations for doctoral educators to capitalize on the positive effects of challenge stressors, and we discuss ways to establish a future research agenda to empirically test the challenge-hindrance framework in the doctoral education context.

Managing the harmful effects of unsupportive organizations during pregnancy

Managing the harmful effects of unsupportive organizations during pregnancy

Unfortunately, not all organizations are supportive of employees’ family lives. Family unsupportive workplaces can be stressful for all employees and particularly for pregnant women, who carry a physical reminder of their family life. In the present study, we draw on conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001) to investigate how women manage family unsupportive organizational perceptions during pregnancy via social identity-based impression management behaviors as well as how these strategies relate to changes in stress and changes in conflict between work and family.

A Dyadic Approach to Examining the Emotional Intelligence–Work Outcome Relationship

A Dyadic Approach to Examining the Emotional Intelligence–Work Outcome Relationship: The Mediating Role of LMX

Adopting a dyadic approach, we examine the processes through which leader–member exchange (LMX) mediates the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and work outcomes. Fitting the data from a survey of 204 unique pairs of leaders and followers to an actor–partner independence model (APIM), we found that follower EI positively affects LMX as perceived by both dyad members, whereas leader EI is positively related to only leader ratings of LMX. Using polynomial regression, we also found that EI similarity between the leader and follower has a positive relationship with both leader and follower ratings of LMX. Follower LMX partially mediates the relationship between follower EI and attitudinal outcomes (i.e., organizational commitment and job satisfaction) and organizational citizenship behavior. Leader LMX fully mediates the effect of both leader and follower EI on evaluations of job performance. Implications and limitations are discussed.

An Andragogical Approach to Teaching Leadership

An Andragogical Approach to Teaching Leadership

Students in today’s college classroom are diverse in age and work, leadership, and life experiences; hence, students transitioning into adulthood may understand and relate core leadership knowledge to their own experiences differently than mature adults. As such, we call upon andragogy, a theory of adult learning, to inform our approach to teaching leadership. We employ andragogy and its six assumptions (the learners’ self-concept, the role of experience, readiness to learn, orientation to learning, motivation, and the need to know) as a guiding framework for the selection and development of leadership instructional tools, thus creating an individualized learning experience for emerging and full-fledged adults that bridges the leadership theory and practice gap. We offer examples of leadership instructional tools that align with andragogical assumptions and provide suggestions for scaling these assignments and activities to address students’ learning needs at different stages of adulthood.

Make Them Feel

Make Them Feel: How the Disclosure of Pregnancy to a Supervisor Leads to Changes in Perceived Supervisor Support

Personal disclosure at work can help facilitate high-quality relationships; however, these results may depend on people’s reactions to them. We suggest that reactions to a disclosure—particularly supervisor reactions—can relate to abrupt and enduring changes in perceptions of relationship quality. Drawing on theory related to relationship-defining memories, informational justice, and emotions, we investigate the mechanisms through which supervisor reactions to pregnancy disclosure influence changes in employees’ perceived supervisor support (PSS).

Working while pregnant

Working while pregnant: how women cope with unsupportive organisations

Although pregnancy can be a wonderful and exciting time in women’s lives, existing research suggests that pregnancy is not always viewed positively in work settings. Unfortunately, supervisors, coworkers, and subordinates may hold stereotypes that negatively affect pregnant women at work. In two recent papers, we investigated how working women view their pregnancy in the workplace and manage potentially negative perceptions associated with it.

Recruitment

Recruitment: The role of Job Advertisements

Job advertisements are often used by job seekers during the early stages of recruitment to gather organizational and job information. Much scholarly work has been devoted to understanding how and why these recruitment materials affect job seekers. This chapter reviews the theoretical approaches commonly used to explain job advertisement effects, as well as empirical findings relating job advertisements to a variety of important recruitment outcomes. In addition, we offer suggestions for future research to provide a more complete picture of how recruiting organizations can use job advertisements to enhance recruitment success.

A strange situation indeed

A strange situation indeed: Fostering leader–follower attachment security during unprecedented crisis

We discuss how attachment theory can help leaders maintain security in their relationships with followers during crisis, using the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic as an example. We describe how the COVID-19 pandemic has undermined the typical ways leaders may have fostered secure relationships with their followers. Guided by Lewin's action research paradigm, we integrate research on attachment theory with recent research on the COVID-19 pandemic to present leader interventions to maintain attachment security in spite of the disruption caused by COVID-19. We then discuss how these propositions can guide leader interventions in other types of crisis.

Leader and follower attachment styles: Implications for authentic leader–follower relationships

Leader and follower attachment styles: Implications for authentic leader–follower relationships

Authentic leadership theory posits that the authenticity of leaders and followers is influenced by their personal histories. Attachment theory states that individuals have internal working models that are influenced by both early developmental experiences and relationships later in life. These models guide how people interact with close others and tend toward three styles of attachment: secure, insecure-ambivalent, and insecure-avoidant. We argue that securely attached persons are most likely to exhibit authentic leadership/followership. We review empirical work which suggests that secure attachment is positively related to each of the four components of authentic leadership/followership (self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalized moral perspective). We then develop an attachment-based typology for variations in authentic leader–follower relationships, with emphasis on relationships that include an insecurely attached party. Finally, we draw from the attachment and authentic leadership literatures to suggest interventions to foster the development of authentic leadership/followership, thereby enhancing authentic leader–follower relationships.

Emotional responses of leaders to passive versus active members

Emotional responses of leaders to passive versus active members

In our investigation of emotion management in organizations, we shift the focus from leadership to followership. To maintain their leadership identity in leader–member relationships, leaders have to elicit emotions that are contingent on the identity of the member. As such, members play a key role in defining leadership. We apply the symbolic interactionist approach of affect control theory and its operationalization in computer simulations to investigate the emotion management of leaders. To do so, we determine which emotions are most normative for leaders to show during their interactions with members that assume identities as passive followers versus active colleagues. The results reveal that the identity of a passive follower elicits emotions that are relatively negative (e.g. defiant, mad, shocked, alarmed, anxious) from leaders, whereas the active colleague identity generates comparatively positive emotions (e.g. pleased, delighted, glad, amused, thankful, relaxed, serene).

Professional Image Maintenance

Professional Image Maintenance: How Women Navigate Pregnancy in the Workplace

In this paper, we present three studies that develop and test a model of social identity-based impression management (SIM) techniques used by pregnant workers. In Study 1 (n = 35), we utilized qualitative methods to identify the motives and strategies used by pregnant women to manage their professional images. In the second study, we collected two samples (n = 199 and n = 133) to develop and validate two scales based on the motives and strategies identified in Study 1. In Study 3 (n = 200), we employed a time-lagged design to examine how SIM motives and strategies affect important workplace outcomes: perceived discrimination, burnout, and returning to one's job after maternity leave. Our findings demonstrate both positive and negative outcomes of the motives and strategies women use to manage their images at work when pregnant.

Prerecruitment organizational perceptions and recruitment website information processing

Prerecruitment organizational perceptions and recruitment website information processing

Despite the prevalent use of the Internet for recruitment purposes, little is known about how job seekers process presented information, particularly before organizations have actively recruited these job seekers. In this study, we examine the effects of prerecruitment perceptions of familiar organizations before exposure to information on organizational recruitment websites using a combination of undergraduate students and employees of a large university located in the southwestern USA (N = 75).

A Review of Cognitive Dissonance Theory in Management Research

A Review of Cognitive Dissonance Theory in Management Research: Opportunities for Further Development

Since its introduction to the social psychology literature 60 years ago, Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory (CDT) has been frequently applied to the management literature to explain and predict the motivational nature of dissonance in producing attitude and behavior change in managerial decision making and the broader organizational context. Yet many of the popular constructs that stem from CDT have since lost touch with more recent developments in the field of origin. In this paper, we provide a review of the key constructs and predictions associated with CDT from Festinger’s early work to the latest developments. We then review key management research that has incorporated CDT. Drawing from the latest refinements to CDT, we describe how future management studies could benefit by integrating these refinements into their theoretical frameworks, rather than simply relying on Festinger’s seminal work on the 60th anniversary of its publication (1957).