Lisa Cohen

Prior to joining Desautels, Lisa Cohen has been a faculty member at London Business School, the Yale School of Management and the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine, where she taught in the areas of strategic human resources, organizational behavior and communications.

Following postgraduate studies at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, and the Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Lisa Cohen enjoyed a successful consultancy career. She worked as Principal Consultant at Terranova Consulting Group/Right Management Consultants, a human resource and management consulting firm working to improve organizations’ potential through their people.

Specialization:

• Sociology of work
• Jobs and job design
• Top management in entrepreneurial organizations
• Hiring
• Stratification

Research areas:

• Human Resource Management
• Labour Issues
• Labour Market
• Managerial Careers
• Organization/Job Structure
• Organizational Theory
• Recruitment

Taught previously at:

• London Business School
• Yale School of Management
• Merage School of Business, University of California-Irvine

Selected publications:

Papers in Peer-Reviewed Journals

• Cohen, Lisa E. and Sara Mahabadi. Forthcoming. "In the midst of hiring: Pathways of Anticipated and Accidental Job Evolution During Hiring." Organization Science.

• Spataro, Sandra and Lisa E. Cohen. 2020. “Glossing over: How magazine fact checkers use conditional self-presentation to straddle glamour and dreariness in their work.” Journal of Organizational Psychology.

• Ferguson, Amanda J., Lisa E. Cohen, M. Diane Burton, and Christine M. Beckman. 2016. “Misfit and milestones: Structural elaboration and capability reinforcement in the evolution of entrepreneurial top management teams.” Academy of Management Journal, 59: 1430-1450.

• Cohen, Lisa E. 2016. “Jobs as Gordian Knots: A New Perspective Linking Individuals, Tasks, Organizations and Institutions.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 47: 25-59.

• Cohen, Lisa E.,and Joseph P. Broschak. 2013. “Whose jobs are these? The impact of the proportion of female managers on the number of new management jobs filled by women versus men.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 58: 509-542 .

• Cohen, Lisa E. 2013. “Assembling jobs: A model of how tasks are bundled into and across jobs.” Organization Science, 24: 432-454.

• Haveman, Heather A., Joseph P. Broschak, and Lisa E. Cohen. 2009. “Good times, bad times: The impact of organizational dynamics on the careers of male and female managers.” Research in the Sociology of Work, 18: 119-148.

• Zatzick, Christopher, Marta M. Elvira, and Lisa E. Cohen. 2003. “When is more better? The effects of racial composition on turnover.” Organization Science, 14:483-496.

• Elvira, Marta M. and Lisa E. Cohen. 2001. “Location matters: A cross-level analysis of the effects of organizational sex composition on turnover.” Academy of Management Journal, 44: 591-605.

• Cohen, Lisa E., Joseph P. Broschak, and Heather A. Haveman. 1998. “And then there were more? The effect of organizational sex composition on hiring and promotion.” American Sociological Review, 63: 711-727. Reprinted in Wood, John C. (ed.) 2011. Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Taylor & Francis: Abingdon.

• Haveman, Heather A., and Lisa E. Cohen. 1994. “The ecological dynamics of careers: The impact of organizational founding, dissolution, and merger on job mobility.” American Journal of Sociology, 100: 104-152.

Chapters in Books

• Cohen, Lisa E. 2020. “Bringing Moonlighting in to the Study of Workers, Jobs, and Careers.” Advances in Strategic Management, 41.

• Cohen, Lisa E. 2020. “The Dis-similar Effects of Similarity.” Advances in Strategic Management, 41.

• Burton, M. Diane, Lisa E. Cohen and Michael Lounsbury. 2016. “Bringing Jobs Back In: Towards a New Multi-level Approach to the Study of Work and Organizations.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 47: 1-22.

• Lacey, Rodney, and Lisa E. Cohen. 2016. “Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as descriptive numerical Method in support of Narrative Methods.” In Kimberly D. Elsbach and Roderick M. Kramer (Eds.) Handbook of Innovative Qualitative Research Methods: Pathways to Cool Ideas and Interesting Papers.

• Banks, Cristina G. and Cohen, Lisa. 2004. “Wage and hour litigation: I-O psychology’s new frontier.” In F.J. Landy (Ed), Employment Discrimination Litigation. Jossey- Bass/Pfeiffer.

• Cohen, Lisa E., and Barry M. Staw. 1998. “‘Fun’s over. Fact checkers are here’: A Case study of institutionalized dissent in the magazine publishing industry.” Advances in Qualitative Organizational Research, 1: 100-135.

Awards

• 2016-2021: Desautels Faculty Fellow
• 2013: Best paper award from the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada OT division (with Heather Haveman)
• 2012: Nominee for Dexter Award for best international paper submitted to AOM OMT division
• 2011: Honorable Mention from ASAC OT division for best paper (with Heather Haveman)
• 1997: Max Weber Award of the OOW Section of the American Sociological Association for best paper (with Heather Haveman)
• 1995: Finalist for INFORMS/Organization Science best dissertation award

Current research:

Professor Cohen's current research focuses on questions about how tasks are bundled into jobs and jobs bundled into organizations: how and why jobs and organizations look the way they do, how they change, and how they influence organizational success? Most recently she has examined these issues in startups. She has ongoing projects examining hiring and unusualness in top management structure of startups. She has published in Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and Organization Science.