Chia-Jung Tsay, Bruce and Janice Ellig Professor in Management and an associate professor of management and human resources at the Wisconsin School of Business, is the recipient of the 2023 Best Paper Award from Diversity in Management and Organizations (DMO).
The paper, “Gendered Time Surveillance and Suspicions at Work and in Professional Roles,” was co-authored with Erin Reid of McMaster University. Tsay and Reid identified the construct of time surveillance—noting and making assumptions about what others are doing during the workday. They found that it is not uncommon in the workplace, and there may be differences in the surveillance and assessment of employees in the same environment, depending on their gender.
The study’s results suggested that “those who read about the female employee were much more likely to notice the absence from the office,” Tsay said during a panel event held last year hosted by Harvard Business Review. “Further, they were more likely to make the attribution that those absences were due to family or personal reasons and not for work activities. We also found that this type of noticing and assuming didn’t play out in the same way for the male employee.”
Tsay’s research focuses on the psychological processes that influence decision making about performance, as well as the role of perception, expertise, and nonconscious biases in professional selection and advancement. She joined WSB in 2021.
The DMO conference was founded by David Peter Daniels, Presidential Young Professor and an assistant professor of management and organization with National University of Singapore Business School. It was co-chaired by scholars from Columbia University, Stanford University, and the University of Virginia.