Beth Bechky
Associate Professor of Management
Research Expertise: Organizational theory, sociology of work and occupations, technology and organizations
Beth’s research is at the intersection of organization theory and the sociology of work and occupations. She focuses on the interaction order of the workplace, and is particularly interested in science and technical organizations.
Her current ethnographic project is a study of a crime laboratory. She is exploring how forensic scientists’ work is embedded in two different social orders – science and law enforcement. The tension between them not only influences individuals’ laboratory and courtroom practices, but also generates interoccupational dynamics of change both within the lab and in the broader field of forensics.
Some of Beth’s other studies have examined how workers in manufacturing use engineering drawings and prototype machines to negotiate occupational jurisdiction, how members of temporary organizations (such as film crews and SWAT teams) coordinate their work and respond to unexpected events, and how boundary organizations enable collaborations in fields comprising organizations with various interests and forms.
Beth earned her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management at Stanford University. She also holds an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford and a B.S in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University.
Room 3302
SWAT Teams and Film Crews Models for Managing Crisis Episodes
Long before SWAT officers burst into a building to rescue hostages or arrest an armed suspect, the team has practiced similar types of assaults over and over to fine tune routines to handle such crises. Similarly, film crews must work through unexpected events to get the job of movie making done right.
Davis Conference on Qualitative Research 2013
Co-chaired by Professor Bechky and Professor Elsbach, this year’s conferences features guests from around the world to discuss key topics on qualitative research.
Beth Bechky Awards
Social and Organizational Innovation Converge
Faculty Host 12th Davis Conference on Qualitative Research
By Alex Russell
Top qualitative researchers from around the world converged at Gallagher Hall on March 24 for the 12th annual Davis Conference on Qualitative Research.
Organized by Professor Kimberley Elsbach and Associate Professor Beth Bechky, the innovative forum has improved qualitative research and its methodologies and built a community of pioneering researchers.
Davis Conference on Qualitative Research 2012
Co-chaired by Professor Bechky and Professor Elsbach, this year’s conferences features guests from around the world to discuss key topics on qualitative research.
Qualitative Organizational Research Volume 2: Best Papers from the Davis Conference on Qualitative Research
Information Age Publishing, 2009
Over the past ten years, the Davis Conference on Qualitative Research has become the world’s leading conference for qualitative researchers in organizational studies. The authors of the “Best Presentation Awards” at the Davis Conference from the past four years have contributed chapters to this volume.
Edited by Professor Kimberly D. Elsbach and Associate Professor Beth Bechky, these papers cover topics ranging from organizational name changes and organizational afterlife, to the use of written letters to build relationships and the use of a “creative foil” to improve one’s leadership image, yet all of these papers are similar in that they benefited from the community of over 100 scholars developed through the Davis Conference, and represent qualitative research at its very best.
Alumni Giving Boosts Faculty Research
by Adrienne Capps, Senior Director of Development
Alumna May Seeman ’89 established the Seeman Faculty Opportunity Fund in 2009 to support emerging faculty needs such as research, travel to conferences and presentations. The first beneficiary of Seeman’s gift, Associate Professor Beth Bechky, said the funding helped her significantly during the data analysis phase of her research project, “Science Under Scrutiny,” an ethnographic study of a crime laboratory.
Crying at Work, A Woman’s Burden
Employees who cry at work are routinely perceived as unprofessional and weak, and occasionally perceived as manipulative, according to research by Professor Kimberly Elsbach that is receiving significant national attention. Most recently, Forbes magazine featured her findings in its January 2011 article, “Crying at Work, A Woman’s Burden.” Elsbach explained that women are more likely to cry in the workplace than men: “Because women aren’t socialized like men they carry an extra burden of emotional labor.”
Making Organizational Theory Work: Institutions, Occupations, and Negotiated Orders
Organization Science, 2011
In this essay, Associate Professor Beth Bechky argues that organizational theorizing would benefit from incorporating a richer understanding of work and occupations. To demonstrate how, she turns to recent literature analyzing inhabited institutions, occupations as institutions, and occupations as negotiated orders. Bechky explores the theoretical and methodological implications of these approaches to show how they challenge some of our more abstract images of organizations.
267 Teams and Technology
This course teaches the theory and processes of group and team behavior so that you can successfully manage groups and work effectively in a variety of group settings. The first goal of the course is to provide conceptual guidelines for analyzing and diagnosing group dynamics and determining one’s strategic options as a manager. The second goal is to understand how technological change affects team processes in organizations. Finally, this course will impart practical interpersonal skills for implementing effective strategies for group situations.
Expecting the Unexpected? How Swat Officers and Film Crews Handle Surprises
The Academy of Management Journal, 2011
Organizations increasingly face surprises with regularity, yet little is known about how they develop the responses to unexpected events that enable their work to continue. In this paper, Associate Professor Beth Bechky and co-author Gerardo A. Okhuysen of the University of Utah compare ethnographic data from two types of organizations that regularly deal with surprises, a police SWAT team and film production crews.
Boundary Organizations: Enabling Collaboration among Unexpected Allies
Administrative Science Quarterly, 2008
This paper by Associate Professor Beth Bechky and Siobhán O’Mahony of Boston University examines how parties challenging established social systems collaborate with defenders of those systems to achieve mutual goals. With field interviews and observations from four community projects in the open-source movement, the authors examine how these projects collaborated with firms defending proprietary approaches to software development.
Elsbach Honored at UC Davis Author Event
Professor Kimberly Elsbach was among a select group of UC Davis faculty and lecturers honored at a campus authors event on April 29. Elsbach was invited to discuss her book Organizational Perception Management, which summarizes the research findings from a relatively new domain of the same name.
Clinton’s Tears Shed Light on Crying at Work
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton’s show of emotion before the New Hampshire presidential primary—when her eyes welled up and her voice quivered in response to a voter’s question about how she kept going on the campaign trail—is said to have helped her at the polls. It also shed light on the issue of crying on the job, which Professor Kimberly Elsbach has been studying.
Demand for Soft Skills to Grow
Recognized for her expertise in organizational behavior and research on identity and work, Associate Professor Beth Bechky helped organize a two-day forum on future jobs skills at the Keck Center in Washington D.C. from May 31 to June 1.
Say Goodbye to Cubicle Farms
California Management Review, 2007
Getting the most from employees might involve more than a motivational speech from management—think design.
In their recent article, “It’s More Than a Desk: Working Smarter Through Leveraged Office Design,” published in the winter issue of the California Management Review, Professor Kimberly Elsbach and Assistant Professor Beth Bechky lay out systematic ways managers can design office space to inspire group membership, improve collaboration and encourage group problem solving among their employees.
Associate Professor Beth Bechky Studies Role-based Coordination in Temporary Organizations
Organization Science, 2006
Organizations come in many forms, from more traditional, formal hierarchies such as corporations and government departments, to less hierarchical, project-based organizations such as theater, commercial construction sites and film production sets. The latter, referred to as “temporary organizations,” have proven more flexible and capable of accomplishing objectives efficiently and successfully under intense time constraints.
When Collections of Creatives Become Creative Collectives: A Field Study of Problem Solving at Work
Organization Science, 2006
This paper by Professor Andrew Hargadon and Associate Professor Beth Bechky introduces a model of collective creativity that explains how the locus of creative problem solving shifts, at times, from the individual to the interactions of a collective.
Stretchwork: Managing the Career Progression Paradox in External Labor Markets
The Academy of Management Journal, 2006
Changes in employment relationships have diminished the degree to which internal labor markets shape careers. Using comparative field studies, Associate Professor Beth Bechky and co-author Siobhan O’Mahony from Boston University examine how contract workers try to achieve career progression without the benefit of organizational guidance.