Aimee Hamilton
Each week, Daniels is featuring a researcher who conducts meaningful research that impacts their field and the wider community. Learn more about their work in Q&As with the Daniels Research team and email them to nominate yourself or a colleague for a future Q&A.
Aimee Hamilton is an associate professor and Greisemer Faculty Fellow in the Department of Management at the Daniels College of Business. Her research interests include identity, image and reputation, as well as knowledge workers and innovation in organizations. Four current projects include: (1) how managing identity tensions and knowledge flows facilitates breakthrough innovation, (2) the consequences of psychological contract breaches for professional workers, (3) fostering sustainability and resilience in organizations, and (4) advancing qualitative methodologies for rigorous management research.
What do you study and why?
I’m interested in how individuals shape their organizations and vice versa—and what the consequences are for this mutual influence. This is a fundamental aspect of modern life and there is still so much to know. A concept that I’m especially interested in is identity, our sense of self-definition, which is something that we as individuals have, but so do groups and organizations and even collectives of organizations, such as industries. All of those different entities have the same identity challenge: balancing the tension between a sense of belonging and a sense of distinctiveness. We all strive for optimal distinctiveness—being neither too similar to, nor too different from, our peers. Identity has consequences because we strive to act in character with our self-definition.
What kinds of questions are you examining right now?
I’ll share a couple of them with you here. First is how do organizations transform an individual with the potential to be an innovator into an innovator contributor? I have a paper under review right now that applies an identity lens to this question. We found that a big part of this is how the organization brings a person’s individual identity into alignment with the organization’s identity. One of the takeaway messages we are finding is that identity development and innovative project development go hand in hand and shape one another. Another important message is that the organization needs to create congruence, but not perfect alignment, between the individual’s and the organization’s identity. There has to be some congruence so that the innovator works on projects that are within the organization’s mission, but not so much that creativity is stifled by conformity.
The second one I’d like to share involves working with three amazing Daniels Executive PhD students: Jenn Carignan, Helen Gibson and Eric Hartman. I’m really excited about it. We are examining women’s leader identity development. You’re probably familiar with the statistics that show a ridiculously low number of women in C-suite positions, and the fact that that number is actually getting lower. It’s always puzzled me because the number of women in the middle manager ranks is more like 50-50. It’s a great example of a so-called wicked problem, because there are a lot of complex reasons for it. One thing I wanted to study is whether stereotype threat is involved; that’s the fear that you are going to be treated differently, or that you are being treated differently, because of some minority status, such as gender or race.
Most of the work on stereoptype threat has been in laboratory experiments. That’s really valuable, but we can add to it by contributing field studies of what’s happening in actual organizations. We are doing that kind of qualitative research now.
How do you integrate your research into the classroom?
The project with the Executive PhD students is being undertaken as part of a class, and we’re hoping to eventually have a publishable scholarly paper, so they’re actively doing real-world research and developing their skills as scholars while learning in the classroom. With my other graduate and undergraduate students, my work comes up in classroom discussions about leadership, what motivates leaders and how leaders end up motivating their followers.
How do you hope your research will impact the business community or society at large?
I like to say to my students that Management 1.0 was about making human beings fit for organizations and that Management 2.0 is about making organizations fit for human beings. So that is my overarching purpose. I truly believe that you have to create a context where individuals feel they can bring their whole selves to work and be authentic in order for them to be able to do their best work. I also believe that our best work is done when we are able to effectively collaborate and enjoy synergy. Very few people are successful as individual contributors. A lot of the really good, hard, complicated issues get resolved through team collaboration.