Curtis Chan

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Harvard University
M.A., Harvard University
B.A., Harvard University, summa cum laude

EXPERTISE/RESEARCH INTERESTS

As an ethnographer and field researcher, Professor Chan’s interests focus on how people experience and interpret their work in different organizational, occupational, and cultural contexts. The experience of work, he has found, is critically important because it can shape people’s job quality and commitment, as well as managerial efforts and inequality at the organizational level. He specializes in utilizing in-depth, inductive field studies to theorize novel, hidden processes of worker interpretation and experience—including studies of security screeners at the Transportation Security Administration and consultants at a strategy consultancy.

His scholarly research is published in Administrative Science Quarterly _and the _Academy of Management Annals. His work has received awards such as the 2014 Best Student Paper Award from the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of the Academy of Management, 2016 Saroj Parasuraman Award for Outstanding Publication on Gender and Diversity from Gender and Diversity in Organizations (GDO) Division of the Academy of Management, and the 2017 Academy of Management Annals Volume 10 Best Paper Award.

SELECTED APPOINTMENTS AND AWARDS

• Academy of Management Annals Volume 10 Best Paper Award, 2017. Awarded by Academy of Management Annals for the paper entitled, “Three Lenses on Professions and Occupations in Organizations: Becoming, Doing, and Relating.”
• Wyss Award, 2016. Awarded by Harvard Business School for excellence in research while enrolled in the doctoral program.
• Saroj Parasuraman Award for Outstanding Publication on Gender and Diversity, 2016. Awarded by the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division of the Academy of Management for the paper entitled, “Task Segregation as a Mechanism for Within-job Inequality: Women and Men of the Transportation Security Administration.”
• Best Student Paper Award, 2014. Awarded by the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management for the paper entitled, “Task Segregation: A Mechanism for Work Inequality.”

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

“Task Segregation as a Mechanism for Within-job Inequality: Women and Men of the Transportation Security Administration.” (With M. Anteby.) Administrative Science Quarterly. (2016). 61(2): 184-216.

“Three Lenses on Professions and Occupations in Organizations: Becoming, Doing, and Relating.” (With Anteby, M. and J. DiBenigno.) Academy of Management Annals. (2016). 10(1): 183-244.

“The Self-Fulfilling Cycle of Coercive Surveillance.” (With Anteby, M.). (Provisionally accepted at Organization Science.)

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Professor Chan is a member of the Academy of Management, the American Sociological Association, and the Boston Field Research Community. He is an ad hoc reviewer for Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Organization Science, and Sociological Methods and Research.