My research examines how employee autonomy relates to inequality. Practically, this often relates to how employee autonomy along lines of time and space is experienced in the context of technologies (e.g., information communication technologies, platform work, AI) reshaping interaction orders and networks of social relations. The outcomes I study focus on worker wellbeing, and how it is often experienced unequally along lines of gender and social class.

I primarily employ ethnographic methods, and I have studied workers in a variety of professions and industries: consultants, managers, IT workers, scientists, professors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, gig workers.

My research has received awards, including the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award and the Work Family Researchers Network’s Kathleen Christensen Dissertation Award. My dissertation was also a finalist for the Industry Studies Association Dissertation Award and the runner-up for the Louis Pondy Best Dissertation Paper Award.

Publications


Pieces Under Review

  • Conzon, Vanessa. “Remote Work and Psychological Safety.” (Conditional accept, Organization Science)
    Topic: How workers can develop psychological safety via technology-mediated interactions, in ways that shape worker autonomy.

  • Conzon, Vanessa. “Temporal Autonomy and Spatial Autonomy.” (Review proposal accepted and invitation to submit full paper, Human Relations)
    Topic: Proposing concepts of temporal autonomy and spatial autonomy for broader scholarship.

  • Melin, Julia, Merluzzi, Jennifer* & Vanessa Conzon.* “Within-Gender Inequality in Labor Markets.” (Revise and resubmit, Administrative Science Quarterly)  (* denotes equal authorship.)
    Topic: How women are penalized in pay decisions based on the gendering of their former industry; the reasoning for this depends on the hiring managers’ interactional experiences.

  • Lee-Yoon, Alice, He, Joyce & Vanessa Conzon. “Social Class Origins as a Dimension of Diversity.” (Revise and resubmit, Journal of Applied Psychology)
    Topic: Why is social class of origin often not considered part of DEI efforts.

  • Ghaedipour, Farnaz & Vanessa Conzon. “Socio-Visbility Bind: How Idealized Images of Work (Re)produce Inequality in the Creator Economy.” (Conditional accept, Journal of Management Inquiry)
    Topic: How platform workers come to be enraptured by the platform via identity-based controls.

Select Working Papers

  • Conzon, Vanessa. “Leniency, Organizational Failure, and Hegemonic Masculinity.”
    Topic: How status hierarchies come to value white men via processes of everyday interaction.

  • Conzon, Vanessa. “Technology and Connection.”
    Topic: How do modern information communications technologies mediate interactions, and in turn, affect people’s attachment to particular locales.

  • Conzon, Vanessa* & Alexandra Feldberg*. “AI and Gender Inequality for Managers.” (* denotes equal authorship.)
    Topic: How the gender of AI agents that people interact with can shape their beliefs about gender as well as gender hierachies amongst humans.

  • Conzon, Vanessa & Arvind Karunakaran. “Occupational Invocation: Managing Experts Through Occupational Norms.”
    Topic: How managers control workers’ tasks across discplinary boundaries via everyday interactions.

  • Conzon, Vanessa,* Yang, Duanyi,* Park, Dongwoo & Erin Kelly. “Flexible Work Policies and Career Penalties.” (* denotes equal authorship)
    Topic: How policies that provide autonomy in the time and place of work may result in negative career penalties for junior women, who need to engage in particular forms of in-person interaction to be perceived as promotion-worthy.