Curtis K. Chan

Boston College, Management and Organization, Faculty Member

Harvard University, Organizational Behavior, Graduate Student

Followers

Following

Co-authors

Public Views

Curtis K. Chan is an ethnographer and qualitative field researcher whose interests focus on how people experience and navigate the tensions of their occupations and professions, within the context of their workplace organizations. He has studied how these experiences shape workplace gender inequality, surveillance dynamics, organizational control, professional reform, and professional legitimacy. Specializing in utilizing in-depth, inductive field studies to theorize novel, hidden processes of worker interpretation and experience, he has conducted studies of airport screeners at the Transportation Security Administration, consultants at a strategy consultancy, university career advisers in business schools, teachers at a Finnish school, and graphic facilitators.

Professor Chan’s scholarly research is published, forthcoming, or conditionally accepted in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the Academy of Management Annals. He also has written pieces appearing in the Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, Work and Occupations, and the Industrial and Labor Relations Review. His research has received distinctions such as the 2014 Best Student Paper Award from the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management, the 2016 Saroj Parasuraman Award for Outstanding Publication on Gender and Diversity from the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division of the Academy of Management, the 2017 Best Article Award from the Academy of Management Annals, and the 2021 ONE-SIM Outreach Award from the Organizations and the Natural Environment and Social Issues in Management Divisions of the Academy of Management. His research has been mentioned in media outlets such as The Atlantic, Axios, and Scientific American, as well as in popular books like Bob Sutton’s The Asshole Survival Guide and podcasts like Adam Grant’s WorkLife.

He has received a “Teaching Star” distinction from the Dean and teaching committee at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management for outstanding teaching, based on having received most favorable evaluations from students, while also challenging them intellectually. He was named one of the Poets&Quants Top 50 Undergraduate Professors Of 2020.
Professor Chan serves on the Editorial Review Boards for Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review and Organization Science.

He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and master’s degree in Sociology from Harvard University. Before entering graduate school, Professor Chan worked in the management and strategy consulting industry at the firm Innosight. He earned his bachelor’s degree in social anthropology and a secondary field in psychology from Harvard College, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. During college, he conducted ethnographic research on the cultural values of street dancers in New England and Miami, and the undergraduate thesis he wrote on this topic was awarded a Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for outstanding thesis research.
Supervisors: Michel Anteby, Leslie Perlow, Christopher Winship, and Frank Dobbin

less

Noel B. Salazar

KU Leuven

Naim Kapucu

University of Central Florida

Bob Jessop

Lancaster University

David Seamon

Kansas State University

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Patrick Vonderau

Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

Geoffrey Kron

University of Victoria

Anna Katharina Mangold

Europa-Universität Flensburg

Mauro Grondona

University of Genova

Mateusz Stępień

Jagiellonian University

InterestsView All (13)

Uploads

Papers by Curtis K. Chan

Heroes from above but not (always) from within? Gig workers’ reactions to the sudden public moralization of their work

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

How do individuals react to the sudden public moralization of their work and with what consequenc... more How do individuals react to the sudden public moralization of their work and with what consequences? Extant research has documented how public narratives can gradually moralize societal perceptions of select occupations. Yet, the implications of how workers individually respond and form self-narratives in light of-or in spite of-a sudden moralizing event remain less understood. Such an understanding is even more critical when workers are weakly socialized by their organization, a situation increasingly common today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, radically shifting public narratives suddenly transformed grocery delivery work, previously uncelebrated, into highly moralized &quot;heroic&quot; pursuits. Drawing on interviews (n = 75), participant artifacts (n = 85), and archival data (e.g., newspaper articles), we find that these workers (here, shoppers on the platform organization Instacart), left mainly to themselves, exhibited varying responses to this moralizing and that their perceived relations to the organization, customers, and tasks shaped these responses. Surprisingly, those who facilely adopted the hero label felt morally credentialled, and they were thus likely to minimize their extra-role helping of customers and show low commitment to the organization; in contrast, those who wrestled with the hero narrative sought to earn those moral credentials, and they were more likely to embrace extra-role helping and remain committed to moralized aspects of the work. Our study contributes to literatures on the moralization of work and narratives by explaining why some workers accept a moralized narrative and others reject or wrestle with it, documenting consequences of workers&#39; reactions to such narratives, and suggesting how a moralized public narrative can backfire.

Organizational Culture Gone Awry: The Double-Edged Sword of Ambiguity

ion of Sanction Stories Abstraction was another important process where stories of sanctions move... more ion of Sanction Stories Abstraction was another important process where stories of sanctions moved from particularized to generalized. At ConsultingCo, members often abstracted sanction stories, stripping them of contextual information surrounding the sanction event. Even though the sanction events themselves usually involved a large deal of contextualization, in telling their stories, members often abstracted sanction stories from both interpersonal and circumstantialion was another important process where stories of sanctions moved from particularized to generalized. At ConsultingCo, members often abstracted sanction stories, stripping them of contextual information surrounding the sanction event. Even though the sanction events themselves usually involved a large deal of contextualization, in telling their stories, members often abstracted sanction stories from both interpersonal and circumstantial context. Members who conveyed sanction stories often anonymized the people involve...

Curtis K. Chan

Uploads

Papers by Curtis K. Chan

Log In