Bond Dissertation Wins National Award

Assistant Professor Brittany Bond, new to ILR’s Department of Organizational Behavior, was named the winner William H. Newman Award for Best Paper Based on a Dissertation. 

The Academy of Management's William H. Newman Award recognizes the best annual meeting paper based on a dissertation. The All-Academy award is presented to single-authored papers based on a doctoral dissertation completed within the past three years. Each of the Academy's Divisions and Interest Groups nominates one submission, and Bonds was nominated after winning the Louis Pondy Best Dissertation Paper Award by the Organization and Management Theory Division.

Bonds paper, "Pride without Prejudice: The Burden of Under-Recognition in Organizations," explores the role employer recognition plays in employee satisfaction. 

“I’m incredibly honored to receive both the Louis Pondy Award of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management as well as the William H. Newman All-Academy Best Paper Based on a Dissertation Award,” Bond said. “I so admire the scholarship represented by the past winners of both awards. I am privileged to see my dissertation work join their ranks.”

Bond’s research suggests there are important hidden costs to performance recognition, as organizations risk losing some of their top talent to competitors if that talent does not receive the symbolic recognition they believe they deserve. 

According to Bond, “employees are so motivated by receiving employer recognition, that when for arbitrary reasons they do not receive it, they are likely to quit their organization. In fact, employees may be so affected by under-recognition that they will leave a top organization to work for a lesser market competitor. This is so even when under-recognized employees receive bigger monetary bonuses to make up for not receiving the symbolic recognition, and when everyone knows that this form of under-recognition is inconsequential."