Culture and the New Workplace
In this panel discussion hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as part of its webinar series on culture, the participants—Roshni Raveendhran, Alison Taylor, Jay Van Bavel, Ben Waber, and John C. Williams—considered a range of questions about the evolution of the workplace and its influence on organizational culture. They explored whether new norms or identities have developed among the hybrid workforce; where our relationships with technology are headed and how this may impact behavior; how physical space influences behavior; how we respond to monitoring and surveillance; and how perceptions of peer preferences can influence behavior in the new workplace.
Roshni Raveendhran is an assistant professor of business administration in the Leadership and Organizational Behavior area at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Her research focuses on understanding the future of work. In particular, she examines how technological advancements influence organizational actors, workplace practices and the management of employees. In doing so, she develops insights about how organizations can effectively integrate novel technologies into the workplace to manage their employees and address the changing nature of work. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Computers in Human Behavior, and Behavioral Science and Policy and outlets such as the MIT Sloan Management Review. It has also been featured in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, CNN Business, Financial Times, Business Insider, Forbes India, WIRED UK, and Virginia Public Radio.
Alison Taylor is the Executive Director at Ethical Systems, a part of NYU Stern School of Business, and an Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern School of Business, where she teaches professional responsibility, sustainability, and leadership. Allison has advised hundreds of multinational companies on strategy, sustainability, cultural behavior, human rights, ethics and compliance, stakeholder engagement, ESG, and anti-corruption. She regularly speaks and writes on all aspects of business responsibility and ethics.
Jay Van Bavel is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, an affiliate at the Stern School of Business in Management and Organizations, Director of the Social Identity & Morality Lab, and co-author of The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony. He completed his BA at the University of Alberta, PhD at the University of Toronto and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Ohio State University. From neurons to social networks, his research examines how collective concerns—group identities, moral values, and political beliefs—shape the mind, brain, and behavior. His work addresses issues of group identity, social motivation, cooperation, implicit bias, moral judgment, decision-making, and social media. Van Bavel studies these issues using a combination of neuroimaging, lesion patients, social cognition, behavioral economics, global surveys, and computational social science.
Ben Waber is President and CEO of Humanyze, a behavioral analytics company based off of my research. He wrote the book on People Analytics. He is also a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab, where he received my PhD in the Human Dynamics Group. He was previously a Senior Researcher at Harvard Business School in the Organizational Behavior group. Waber’s work centers around using real time data flows to rethink management of people, physical architecture, corporate planning, and training, among other things.
John C. Williams is the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In that capacity, he serves as the vice chair and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee. From 2011 to mid-June 2018, Williams was the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Prior to that, he was the executive vice president and director of research at the San Francisco Fed, which he joined in 2002.
