Biography

Tina Opie is a Doctoral Candidate in the Management and Organizations Department at New York University’s Stern School of Business.  Tina’s research focuses on how organizations can create workplaces that successfully leverage individual difference and convey respect for individual contributions.  Her dissertation looks at some of the different ways in which peripheral members of workgroups (i.e. individuals who perceive that their input on how to do the group’s task is devalued by teammates) respond to their marginal group status.  Specifically, through a combination of laboratory and survey studies, she examines how perceptions regarding the deservingness and permanence of peripherality affect helping behavior and information-sharing in work groups.  The central argument is that peripheral group members are more likely to contribute in positive ways to their workgroup when they perceive that their peripheral position is deserved, and that this effect is stronger when there is the possibility of attaining a more central position within the group in the future.  Moreover, the dissertation investigates how various status characteristics (i.e., ethnicity and gender) help to shape perceptions of the deservingness of peripherality.  In developing and testing these arguments, the goal is to contribute to the group diversity literature, by examining how perceptions about the nature of one’s peripheral status affect behavioral engagement in groups. 

Tina is also conducting research on “diversity rhetorics.”  This work is based on the premise that the term “diversity” has been “managerialized” in the scholarly management literature.  That is, the construct of diversity has become infused with managerial values, such that diversity is valued when it is a catalyst for achieving important organizational outcomes, not because it meets important legal, social, and/or moral ends.  The goal of this line of research is to challenges diversity scholars to keep social justice at the forefront of their research. 

A third stream of research is on obesity within organizations.  The objective is to contribute to the literature on diversity and workplace discrimination by exploring whether discrimination against overweight people can be reduced by abandoning a focus on appearance and adopting a focus on health.  The hope is that this work will help to make a valid case for attempts to reduce obesity discrimination.
 
In the fall of 2007, Tina taught the core management course in the undergraduate program at Stern (“Management and Organizational Analysis”).  Her average instructor rating in that course was 6.1 on a 7 point scale, for which she received a formal commendation.  She is interested in teaching management and organizational behavior, as well as courses that focus on the individual and organizational issues that arise in an increasingly diverse workplace. 

Prior to starting the PhD program at Stern, Tina was a consultant at A.T. Kearney for four years.