Frances Milliken

Biography

I am a Professor of Management and hold the Arthur E. Imperatore Professorship in Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stern School of Business of New York University.

My primary research interest is in how the characteristics of organizational contexts shape how people think, feel, and behave in organizations. For example, I have a longstanding interest in understanding the effects of diversity and inequity in organizations. I have researched and written about the effects of diversity in teams (e.g., Forbes & Milliken, 1999; Milliken, 2019; Milliken & Martins, 1996), about work-life issues (e.g., Milliken & Dunn-Jensen, 2003) and most recently, about the causes of the glass ceiling for women (Milliken & Kneeland, 2019; Schipani, et al., 2018) and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender equity issues at work (Milliken, Kneeland, & Flynn, 2020).

I am also interested in understanding how employees make decisions about what to say (and what not to say) to their bosses about problems or issues they encounter at work and in the consequences of these decisions for organizations (Fang, et al., 2014; Milliken & Lam, 2009) and for the employees themselves (Morrison & Milliken, 2000; Milliken et al. 2003; Milliken et al., 2015). My colleagues and I have also explored how the possession of power influences how people interpret and speak about issues (e.g., Magee, Milliken & Lurie, 2010). While leaders are often taught to speak and behave with confidence, this type of speech can have some unintended consequences for employee behavior (Thomas, Milliken, Magee, & Thompson, 2020).

In addition to my current projects on employee voice and on gender inequality in organizations, I am a co-founder of the Future of Work and Organizations Initiative at Stern with my colleagues, Beth Bechky and Rob Seamans. This initiative seeks to bring faculty from different departments at NYU to discuss issues and research focused on the future of jobs, the changing nature of work, the impact of AI and other issues that are altering the employment landscape in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world.

In addition to my research work, I have held several administrative roles at Stern including Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the Undergraduate College, Director of the Doctoral Program in Management, University Senator, Co-Chair of the Dean's Women's Advisory Committee, Academic Director of the Langone Program for Working Professionals in Westchester County, and Chair of Stern’s Faculty Council.

I have also held several posts in the Academy of Management, the international professional association for professors of management. I served as a Founding Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Discoveries (2013-2017) and on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review (2002-2007) and the Academy of Management Journal (1996-2002). I also served on the Executive Committee of the Management and Organizational Cognition Division of the Academy of Management. I currently serve on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Discoveries (2017-present), Organization Science (2009-present) and the Journal of Management Studies (2002-present). I received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Academy of Management’s Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division in 2013 and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management in 2019.

I received my B.A. in Psychology from Barnard College and a M.B.A. and Ph.D. from the City University of New York. I have a son and a daughter and currently live in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Research Interests

• Employee Voice and Silence
• Organizational Learning
• The Effects of Power
• Managing Diversity
• Work and Society, Corporate Social Responsibility

Courses Taught

• Business and Its Publics
• Leadership in Organizations
• Managing People and Teams

Academic Background

Ph.D., Organizational Behavior
C.U.N.Y.

M.B.A.
C.U.N.Y.

B.A., Psychology
Barnard

Selected Publications

Schipani, C., Dworkin, T., Milliken, F. J., & Kneeland, M. K. (2018)
Assessing the Progress of Women in Corporate America: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
American Business Law Journal

Milliken, F. J. (2018)
Diversity and Corporate Social Responsibility: Exploring the Connections between Top Management Team/Board Diversity, CSR, and Workforce Diversity
in Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility: Psychological and Organizational Perspective

Schipani, C., Milliken, F. J., & Dworkin, T. (2017)
The Impact of Employment Law and Practices on Society: The Significance of Worker Voice
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law

Huff, A., Milliken, F. J. and Hodgkinson, G. (2016)
Uncertainty in Research on Managerial and Organizational Cognition
Chapter in K. Sund, R. Galavan, and A. Huff (Eds.), Uncertainty and Strategic Decision Making.

Milliken, F. J., Schipani, C., Bishara, N. and Prado, A. (2015)
Linking Workplace Practices to Community Engagement: The Case for Encouraging Employee Voice.
Academy of Management Perspectives, 29: 405-421

Fang, C., Kim, J., and Milliken, F.J. (2014)
When Bad News Is Sugar-coated: Information Distortion, Organizational Search and the Behavioral Theory of the Firm.
Strategic Management Journal, 8: 1186-1201