Congratulations to Lawrence Fellowship Recipients Beth Campbell and Betty Zhou

Two faculty members from the Department of Work and Organizations (WOrg) have been selected to receive the 2018 Mary and Jim Lawrence Fellowship. The fellowship was established last year by a generous gift from the Lawrences to recognize the contribution of junior and recently promoted faculty in enhancing the intellectual environment at the Carlson School. Jim Lawrence, the chairman of Great North Star, is the vice-chair of the Carlson School Board of Overseers. Four other Carlson School faculty members also received this fellowship.

Beth Campbell

Beth Campbell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Work and Organizations. She joined the Carlson School in 2014. Prior to academia, she worked as a human capital consultant for Deloitte. Her research examines team development and interpersonal interactions within teams. Her main projects focus on high performers—more specifically, the consequences they create for themselves and how they affect their peers and teams. She earned her PhD in management from the University of Maryland and her BA in psychology from the University of Michigan.

 

Betty Zhou

Betty Zhou is an assistant professor in the Department of Work and Organizations. She joined the Carlson School in 2014 after receiving her PhD from the Management University of Florida. She has been developing a research program focusing on three areas: leadership, work groups and teams, and self-regulation processes. Her studies focus on how individuals and higher-level organizational units influence each other as well as how behaviors change over time within the individual.

 

Calling New CHRLS Alumni Board Members!

Are you a graduate of the MA-IR or MA-HRIR program at the University of Minnesota?

Would you like to get more involved with your alma mater and expand your professional network?

Then consider joining the Alumni Association Board of Directors!

Alumni Association Board members are asked to:

• Commit to a three-year term
• Attend one annual strategic planning meeting in the fall
• Attend regular meetings during the academic year
• Serve on one sub-committee each year

If interested, please fill out this application before May 1.

Questions? Contact chrls@umn.edu.

Thank you to our Sponsors!

The HR Tomorrow Conference would not be possible without the generosity of our sponsors. This year, we have a number of returning sponsors, as well as some new organizations!

Our breakfast sponsor is returning supporter Land O’ Lakes. On why they continue to sponsor HR Tomorrow, Kim Wirka, ’98, HR director, says, “Land O’Lakes enjoys and benefits from our partnership with the Carlson School.  Sponsoring the HR Tomorrow Breakfast is a great way to gain exposure to talented HR students, and it’s a great way for our HR team to network with other professionals and gain insights into the latest trends and leading HR practices.”

Our luncheon sponsor is Polaris. Joe Wollan, talent acquisition manager, says, “Polaris is proud to be a sponsor of this year’s HR Tomorrow Luncheon. The Carlson School of Management is a tremendous host for the talented HR professionals in attendance and we’re confident everyone will leave with lessons to bring back and apply in their jobs each day.”

Our reception sponsor this year is Ecolab, no stranger to sponsoring HR Tomorrow. Jason Grosz, ’06, VP of HR, says, “We feel great about supporting the HR Tomorrow Reception and the Carlson School of Management HRIR program. It’s one important way we can help develop strong HR talent for the future, and contribute to the long-term sustainability of the business.”

We’re beyond grateful as well for our conference sponsors, which include Best Buy, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cardiovascular Systems Inc., Chevron, General Mills, UnitedHealth Group, and Wells Fargo.

Networking in Unexpected Places

Kara Sime

As an alum or even a current student, you never know where your advice might influence a prospective student. You might run into someone at the grocery store, perhaps the doctor’s office, or maybe even at the Apple Store! That’s what happened with Kara Sime, ’96 MA-IR, and current first-year MA-HRIR student Levi Sheppard.

Levi was finishing his undergrad as a psychology major at the University of Minnesota, and was working at the Apple Store on the side. Kara came in one day because her phone had crashed and she was worried about losing everything. Levi was assigned to help Kara, and while he was fixing her phone, they got to talking.

“I found out Levi was very interested in a career in human resources and I started talking to him about the MA-HRIR program at the Carlson School,” Kara says. “I highly recommended the program and told him how it has helped me to launch my HR career.”

Levi Sheppard

Levi had heard of the MA-HRIR program, but it was the conversation with Kara that really helped spark his interest. The two connected on LinkedIn, but lost touch otherwise.

Fast forward just a couple of years to this past fall, and Kara was part of a panel at the Carlson School for first-year students. She was happy to see Levi in the mix of students. When asked about Kara’s influence on his decision to be in the program, Levi says, “Given what she described, and my interest in HR, she was a contributor to why I chose to apply to the MA-HRIR program.”

Kara adds, “It was wonderful to know that someone with as high-quality customer service skills as he has will be joining the ranks of the HRIR alumni and HR work world soon.”

Levi and Kara’s story goes to show the power of networking, and you never know the influence you might have on someone!

Discovery at Carlson

Discover samples of the latest research from our MA-HRIR faculty, highlighted in the Discovery at Carlson series.

“What can Major League Baseball teach the business world about dispute resolution? According to Professor John Budd, quite a bit more than you might think. And as he has discovered, those lessons can defy the conventional logic that surrounds conflict.” Read the full story here.

“Small differences in competitive situations can make a big difference. That was the conclusion of Professor Avner Ben-Ner and his coauthors, Drs. John-Gabriel Licht and Jin Park, after analyzing diversity’s impact on every play and every player in 10 years of matches in the Bundesliga, Germany’s top soccer league.” Read the full story here.

“Drawing upon an extensive field study of Taiwanese salons followed by a controlled experiment, Assistant Professor Elizabeth Campbell discovered an odd paradox might explain what many high performers were experiencing, particularly in workplaces that emphasized teamwork.” Read the full story here.

“(Associate Professor Aaron) Sojourner focused on a single industry, nursing homes, and made a very narrow, well-chosen comparison. He focused only on nursing homes where workers voted in a union election and the vote was close. To approximate a true experiment, he compared outcomes in nursing homes where the union just won an election to outcomes where unions just lost an election. Unionization activity in the industry has been on the rise in recent decades, so there were many hundreds of homes with close elections to examine. And the U.S. government’s close monitoring of the industry provided a rich trove of data to examine.” Read the full story here.

“Workers who juggle the conflicting demands of work and family tend to have lower work satisfaction, stunted physical and psychological well-being, and smaller salaries. New research by Professor Theresa Glomb and Associate Professor Colleen Manchester unveils one culprit of these ill effects: people who feel their work is interfering with their family duties struggle to expend energy on complex tasks that fulfill long-term business goals, and bolster their careers.” Read the full story here.

“Researchers have long believed that dual-career couples are more likely to relocate in favor of the husband’s career, which stifles the wife’s earning power, and widens the disparity between men and women’s pay. But a new study by Assistant Professor Alan Benson suggests that all factors being equal, families are no less likely to relocate for the wife than they are for the husband’s career. ” Read the full story here.

“‘There is very robust evidence that as an individual moves beyond age 50, they experience a large penalty toward how quickly they will find a job,’ says Professor Connie Wanberg who examined the U.S. government’s Displaced Worker Survey and conducted a meta-analysis of the previous research on the topic. She found a person 50 years and older is likely to be unemployed 5.8 weeks longer than someone between the ages of 30-49, and 10.6 weeks longer than individuals ages 20-29.” Read full story here.

“It’s a common adage that first impressions matter, particularly when starting a new job. Your statements and behaviors in the first few months all determine how you’ll fit in and the level of success you’ll find. What’s not as commonly acknowledged, however, is the effect coworkers and supervisors have on a fresh hire. Professor John Kammeyer-Mueller and Professor Connie Wanberg explored that often-overlooked topic in a recent paper that detailed the experiences of 264 organizational newcomers.” Read the full story here.

Work and Organizations Associate Professor Mary Zellmer-Bruhn won a best paper award at a recent Academy of Management (AOM) annual meeting. Her paper, “Evident and Hidden Language Barriers to Knowledge Processing in Multilingual Teams,” won the International Management (IM) Division Best Paper in OB/HRM/OT Award.

CHRLS Welcomes New Staff Members

The Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies recently welcomed two new staff members:

Mindy Bahr, at left, joins the Center as Executive Office and Administrative Specialist, and comes to the CHRLS with more than eight years of experience through her work at Enterprise and Audi.

Beth Bayley joins the Center as Administrative Associate and comes with more than four years of experience as Office Manager in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota.

Welcome, Mindy and Beth!

LES Welcomes New Staff Members

The Labor Education Service welcomed two new staff members recently:

Meron Negussie, at right, joins LES as Program Specialist, following two years in the University of Minnesota’s department of Biomedical Engineering, where she worked as a Purchasing Coordinator.

Filiberto Nolasco Gomez joins LES as the new Editor of Workday Minnesota, after extensive work with UNITE Here Local 11, UAW 2865 and SEIU 284, and starting his own media company.

Welcome, Meron and Filiberto!