Sameer Srivastava

Graduate Student in Organizational Behavior / Sociology

Biographical Note

Sameer B. Srivastava is a PhD Candidate in Harvard's joint program in Organizational Behavior and Sociology. He holds an AB in Economics (magna cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa), an MBA, and an AM in Sociology from Harvard University. Sameer's current research projects include: (a) "Flexible Opportunism or Relational Commitment: Responses to Uncertainty during Organizational Restructuring"; and (b) a book chapter (with Peter V. Marsden) on the decomposition of age, period, and cohort effects in US socializing trends, based on the General Social Survey. When he served as a Section Leader for the introductory economics course at Harvard, Sameer earned a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. He is also scheduled to be a Teaching Fellow in the Spring of 2010 for Peter V. Marsden's graduate-level quantitative methods course. Prior to joining the doctoral program, Sameer was a partner at Monitor Group, a global management consulting firm. Over the course of fourteen years, he worked with clients across a range of industries to formulate and implement competitive and organizational strategies. He was also a co-founder of the firm's organizational strategy practice and served on its leadership team.

10/13/2009

Research Interests

Organizations, Occupations, and Work; Economic Sociology.

Previous Degrees

AB magna cum laude in Economics, Harvard College; MBA, Harvard Business School; AM, Sociology, Harvard University.

Qualifying Paper Title

Behind the Front: Collaborative Networks, Self Presentation, and Social Cognition

Committee

Peter V. Marsden (Chair) Mahzarin R. Banaji Filiz Garip Toby E. Stuart

Abstract

Collaboration among differentiated subunits has long been recognized as critical to organizational success. This study builds on prior sociological research on the antecedents to collaboration by highlighting the role of less conscious (or implicit) forms of cognition about the self. Based on a pilot laboratory study and field data from a biotechnology firm, and integrating the methods of network analysis and social cognition, the author finds that: (a) people consciously reported more positive views of themselves as collaborative actors than indicated through indirect measures of their implicit cognition; (b) the implicit collaborative self-concept was associated with outbound ties to organizationally distant colleagues, whereas conscious self reports were not; (c) colleagues were able to see behind a person’s collaborative front: inbound ties from colleagues were associated with the person’s implicit, but not explicitly reported, collaborative self-concept; and (d) the implicit collaborative self-concept was associated with both inbound and outbound ties that spanned hierarchical levels. The study contributes to research on collaborative networks by highlighting contexts in which cognitive limitations are likely to distort self reports, developing a technique to measure the implicit collaborative self-concept, and identifying mechanisms that link self-related cognition to organizational networks.

Presentations and Publications

Miscellaneous Additional Information

Research Assistantships

Peter V. Marsden - decomposition of age, period, and cohort effects in US socializing trends (based on General Social Survey)

Software Skills

STATA, R / Statnet, PNet, UCINet, MATLAB.

Conferences at Which I've Made Presentations

Work, Organizations, and Markets Seminar (Boston, MA - 2008) Academy of Management (Chicago, IL - 2009) Harvard-MIT Economic Sociology Seminar (Cambridge, MA - 2009)

Contact

617-895-8707 (Phone)
617-496-5794 (FAX)

Morgan Hall T-81 Harvard Business School Boston, MA 02163