My research examines how employee autonomy relates to workplace inequality via the processes of everyday interaction embedded within broader interaction orders and networks of social relations. Practically, these tensions regarding autonomy and control often relate to when, where and how work is performed (e.g., flex work, remote work, gig work, AI-augmented work) in ways that generate and reflect inequalities in gender, class, and race. The core role of technologies (e.g., AI, platforms, remote work technologies) in mediating said interactions is also a focal point of my research.

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.” (Revise and Resubmit, Organization Science)
    Topic: How workers can develop psychological safety via technology-mediated interactions, in ways that shape worker autonomy.

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

  • Melin, Julia, Merluzzi, Jennifer & Vanessa Conzon. “Within-Gender Inequality in Labor Markets.” (Revise and Resubmit, Administrative Science Quarterly)
    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.

  • Conzon, Vanessa,* Yang, Duanyi,* Park, Dongwoo & Erin Kelly. “Flexible Work Policies and Career Penalties.” (* denotes equal authorship) (Revise and Resubmit, Organization Science)
    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.

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

  • Cameron, Lindsey, Conzon, Vanessa, & Laura Lam. “Inequality in Platforms.” (Revise and Resubmit, Research in Organizational Behavior)
    Topic: How platform work generates inequalities for workers (e.g., with regards to time) due to embedded controls.

  • Conzon, Vanessa & Poonam Zantye. “Control and Autonomy.” (In-press for the Handbook of Organizational Control)
    Topic: The definitions of control and autonomy, and how they compare and contrast.

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. “Temporal Autonomy and Spatial Autonomy.”
    Topic: Proposing concepts of temporal autonomy and spatial autonomy for broader scholarship.

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

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