About

Julia DiBenigno is a professor of Organizational Behavior at Yale School of Management. She is an organizational ethnographer and field researcher whose scholarship seeks to advance understanding of topics related to the sociology of work and occupations, collaboration between professional groups, upward influence and voice, and change in organizations. Her research has been published in prominent journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Organizational Science, and the Academy of Management Annals, and has received multiple best paper and best dissertation awards. Professor DiBenigno specializes in qualitative, ethnographic methodologies, including observation and interviewing, which she uses to immerse herself in the social worlds of those she studies. Her work aims to develop novel organizational theories and address pressing problems such as improving soldier mental healthcare delivery and supporting frontline caregivers combating COVID-19. She earned her PhD and MS in Work and Organization Studies from the MIT Sloan School of Management and holds a BA in psychology from Columbia University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Public relations
• Computer Science
• Nursing
• Law
• Medicine
• Psychiatry
• Clinical psychology
• Linguistics
• Internal medicine

Selected publications

• Women Lifting Up Women: The Transformative Potential of Parallel-Peer Connections

  Administrative Science Quarterly · 2026-05-13

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Women in masculine-typed roles often experience their gender identity as a barrier to proving themselves by the ideal-worker norms of their male-dominated occupations. Yet, these women often internalize these experiences, blaming themselves for their struggles. They rarely identify as members of a disadvantaged identity group and often distance themselves from other women at work. How and when might such women externalize their struggles as gendered and collective? Drawing on data from a qualitative field study of staff working in many masculine-typed roles across various male-dominated occupations at a U.S. public-lands management organization, I develop grounded theory suggesting when and how some women might come to reappraise some of their struggles as rooted in the gendered cultures of their occupations rather than in their own deficiencies or idiosyncratic circumstances. I find that “parallel-peer connections” between similarly situated women outside their local tokenized work groups can spark transformative mindset shifts when these encounters occur under the right conditions: during a window of sensemaking about a career impasse and in a less competitive context that is conducive to sharing confidences. Some women credited these shifts with prompting them to shed years of self-doubt and to promote gender equality at work. This study contributes to our understanding of supportive workplace relations among tokenized women and mindset shifts at work.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning from the Field: Psychological Safety in Frontline Occupations in High-Reliability Contexts

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article

  The purpose of this symposium, comprised of four ethnographic studies, is to examine how frontline occupations engage in practices to manage both their own psychological safety and that of others in the workplace. The symposium will examine how frontline occupations navigate hierarchical team dynamics and interactions with higher-status clients, particularly in contexts where psychological safety is easily compromised or diminished, yet essential for achieving critical outcomes at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Specifically, we explore how healthcare professionals, live event production teams, and pharmaceutical representatives navigate the challenges of psychological safety in order to: speak up about early warning signs of danger and improvement ideas; effectively meet a client’s creative vision; and maintain client relations and interactions while managing the risk of being perceived as illegal or illegitimate. Drawing on new field and ethnographic research conducted across diverse organizational and occupational contexts, this symposium will: 1) identify and elaborate on a set of practices that illustrate how frontline occupations and professions navigate and address challenges related to psychological safety in their work and interactions, and 2) demonstrate how these practices shape critical outcomes at individual, occupational, and organizational levels. In sum, this symposium aims to advance our theoretical and practical understanding of how frontline occupations actively cope with diminished and fragile psychological safety, both within and across organizational boundaries. Team De-risking to Foster Psychological Safety Author: Patricia Satterstrom; New York University Author: Michaela Kerrissey; From Dreams to Machines: Forging Creative Outcomes in the Concern Touring and Live Event Production Author: Derrick P. Bransby; Harvard Business School The Crime of Selling Drugs: Reclaiming Legal Jurisdiction Perpetuates Occupational Shame Author: Siyin Chen; Author: Qiusi Yan; The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology A Structural Solution for Fostering Psychological Safety to Raise Hunches Amid False Alarms Author: Elisabeth Yang; Yale University Author: Julia DiBenigno;

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• Opportunistic Change During a Punctuation: How and When the Front Lines Can Drive Bursts of Incremental Change

  Organization Science · 2024-08-05 · 9 citations

  articleSenior author

  Environmental jolts can trigger more conducive conditions for driving change in organizations. However, punctuated equilibrium theories of organizational change concentrate on top managers’ implementation of de novo radical changes after jolts. Existing research has not examined frontline-driven, incremental change efforts during these periods of disrupted stasis, despite the value of frontline change ideas. We develop a process model to explain how and when those on an organization’s front lines can leverage a jolt to opportunistically implement long-desired change ideas in ways that promote their retention. We conducted a two-year qualitative field study at a hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic, examining the trajectories of 33 premeditated change ideas raised by frontline staff. By comparing ideas that persisted to become part of normal operations with those that failed to be selected or retained, we identified practices and conditions that promoted the selection and retention of frontline change ideas. Our study suggests that frontline change advocates can seed the long-term retention of “shovel-ready” ideas—as opposed to de novo ideas—after a jolt by rapidly and opportunistically deploying a novel set of practices before the brief window of opportunity created by lessened constraints and increased managerial receptivity closes. Prior theories of change largely assume frontline-driven change to be slow and continuous, proceeding in a one-off fashion; we explain how and when frontline change can instead occur in rapid, opportunistic bursts. This study advances theories of punctuated equilibrium and bottom-up change in organizations by unearthing an alternative way that change can be intentionally accomplished in organizations. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15120 .

  PublisherDOI

• Opportunistic Change During a Punctuation: How the Frontlines can Drive Bursts of Incremental Change (WITHDRAWN)

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  articleSenior author

  Despite the value of incremental frontline change ideas for organizational performance, punctuated equilibrium theories of organizational change tend to concentrate on top managers’ origination and implementation of de-novo radical changes during punctuations. Little theoretical or empirical work has examined frontline-driven, incremental change efforts during these periods of disrupted stasis. We develop a process model to explain how and when those on an organization’s frontlines can leverage a punctuation to opportunistically implement long-desired change ideas in ways that promote their retention. We conducted a two-year qualitative field study examining the trajectories of 33 change ideas generated by frontline staff at a hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic. By comparing ideas that persisted to become part of normal operations to those that failed to be selected or retained, we identified practices and conditions that promoted the selection and retention of frontline change ideas. Our study suggests that frontline change advocates can seed the long-term retention of sufficiently “shovel-ready” change ideas—as opposed to de-novo ideas—by rapidly and opportunistically deploying a novel set of practices before closure of the brief window of opportunity created by lessened constraints and increased managerial receptivity. Prior theories of change largely assume frontline-driven change to be slow and continuous, proceeding in a one-off fashion over years; we explain how and when frontline change can instead occur in rapid, opportunistic bursts during punctuations. We make multiple contributions to theories of punctuated equilibrium and bottom-up change in organizations by unearthing an alternative way change can be intentionally accomplished in organizations.

  PublisherDOI

• The Worker Perspective on AI Across Occupational, Organizational, and Geographic Boundaries

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  article

  This symposium aims to explore how advanced technologies using artificial intelligence (AI) are experienced and utilized by frontline workers across a range of organizational contexts, occupational groups, and geographical locations. Specifically, we examine how gig workers, blue collar workers, and professional workers in the U.S., Europe, and the Global South respond to and shape the deployment of AI technologies impacting their daily work experience in the fields of ride-hailing, factory work, nursing, and medicine, respectively. With our combined focus on understanding the workers’ experience of AI technologies, we shed light on the practices in which these workers engage and the tensions they face, and examine the downstream effect of AI use on their agency, skills, knowledge, and other important individual and organizational outcomes. Using new field and ethnographic research conducted in a range of different organizational, occupational, and geographic contexts, this symposium will: 1) elaborate a set of practices which explicate how workers from across organizational contexts, occupations, and geographies utilize AI technologies in their work, and 2) demonstrate how these practices shape important outcomes for organizations and individuals. Together, the introductory remarks to the symposium, the empirical papers, the discussion of these papers, and the question and answer session are designed to develop new theoretical insights by elaborating the commonalities and differences in how AI usage at work unfolds across occupations and contexts. Granting Algorithmic Grace: How Professionals Persist in AI Use Despite Its Frequent Mistakes Author: Elisabeth Yang; Yale School of Management Author: Julia DiBenigno; Yale School of Management Author: Batia Mishan Wiesenfeld; New York U. The Platform is Not Neutral: A Multi-National Comparative Ethnography Author: Lindsey Cameron; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Author: Nicholas Occhiuto; EMLYON Business School Author: Bobbi Thomason; Pepperdine Graziadio Business School Developing or Undermining Expertise in the Shadow of AI? Author: Marjolaine Monique Rostain; Warwick Business School Author: Hila Lifshitz-Assaf; Warwick Business School Inclusive Automation Development: Enriching Entry-Level Jobs while Building Automation through a Clo Author: Matt Beane; U. of California, Santa Barbara Author: Erik Brynjolfsson; Stanford U. Author: Dan Sholler; U. of California, Santa Barbara

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding the Qualitative Content of Relational Strategies

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  articleSenior author

  Scholarship in strategic management, organization theory, and social issues in management has aimed to understand the ways in which relationships affect and are affected by organizational performance. Research on relational strategies has taken multiple perspectives. These include examining how organizations and their stakeholders engage with one another and how prior histories with exchange partners impact the outcomes of transactions. A critical part of investigating relational strategies is understanding the qualitative substance of relationships which have commonly been evaluated through quantitative indicators such as tie strength, interaction frequency, or hierarchical differences. In this Symposium, we propose the presentation of four scholarly papers, each of which examines the qualitative content of modes of relating among organizational and market actors. We envision that this dialogue will advance scholarship about how relational strategies and relationships are assessed in the organizational literature. Reframing Difficult Experiences: How Individuals Cope With Emotional Distress Author: Madeleine Stefanie Rauch; Stanford U. Author: Shahzad Ansari; U. of Cambridge Healing Deep Wounds: A Case Study of Reconciliation Between the Police and the Community in Morelia Author: Rodrigo Canales; Boston U. Shaking off the Shackles: How Colonial Institutions Impact Relational Capabilities in the Market Author: Amrita Saha; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management The Power of Words: Word Responses in Multimarket Competition Author: He Gao; Michigan State U. Author: Tieying Yu; Boston College Author: Hyun-Soo Woo; U. of Mississippi Author: Albert Cannella; Texas A&M U., College Station

  PublisherDOI

• Moving Fast, Going Big, and Playing for Keeps: The Rapid Institutionalization of Bottom-up Change

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  articleSenior author

  Prior research suggests that frontline change ideas are especially valuable for improving organizational functioning. Yet bottom-up change processes are generally characterized as failure-prone, slow, and incremental, or as requiring heroic and politically fraught collective mobilization efforts. This paper offers a novel theoretical model that specifies how frontline change ideas can be implemented quickly, simultaneously, without protracted political battles, and in ways that seed their long-term institutionalization. We analyze data from a two-year qualitative field study of the trajectory of 33 change ideas introduced by frontline staff—bedside nurses, physicians, frontline managers, and others—to address longstanding issues at a U.S. hospital responding to the exogenous shock of the Covid-19 pandemic. By comparing ideas that had become integrated into normal operations nearly two years later to those that failed to be implemented or to persist, we induce a set of practices associated with the rapid institutionalization of bottom-up change ideas. Our study suggests that traditional bottom-up change processes designed to surmount steep barriers to change at the top and bottom of an organization, such as using a slow, experimental, “small-wins” approach or a political coalition-building approach to bottom-up change, may be less appropriate in the direct aftermath of a shock when normal barriers to change may be suddenly lowered. Shocks can temporarily shift both field-level and organizational-level opportunity structures in ways that create a favorable but unpredictably brief window of opportunity for implementing change amid these lowered barriers. We find that to seize such a moment may require an alternative set of change tactics that emphasize speed, going big, and avoiding characterizing a change as temporary or experimental.

  PublisherDOI

• A “Relating” Lens on Occupations and Professions: Collaboration, Coproduction, and Brokerage

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022-07-06

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This symposium showcases research that adopts a “relating” lens (Anteby, Chan & DiBenigno, 2016) to the study of occupations and professions in organizations—focusing on how actors interact and engage in practices of occupational collaboration, coproduction, and brokerage to achieve collective outcomes. Such relational practices are of increasing interest to scholars because important organizational processes such as the coordination of complex work (DiBenigno & Kellogg, 2014; Karunakaran, 2021) and the implementation of reform (Kellogg, 2014; Huising, 2015) rely on occupational groups working together with other stakeholders in their ecosystems. Given this recognition, scholars have called for empirical work that advances our understanding of how occupations collaborate, coproduce and broker with other groups in order to achieve shared or complementary goals (Anteby, Chan & DiBenigno, 2016). Consequently, empirical research using this approach has begun to grow, but there has been little integration across studies to offer a broader understanding. This symposium aims to bring together new insights emerging from work that adopts a relational lens to diverse work settings—emergency response, anesthesiology, mergers and acquisitions, and scientific laboratory work. By integrating this set of studies, we hope to broaden our theoretical understanding of how occupational groups productively engage with other members of their ecosystems, and to identify areas of interest for further study by scholars of work and occupations. Truce Structures: Mechanisms for Addressing Protracted Jurisdictional Conflicts Between Professions Presenter: Arvind Karunakaran; Stanford U. Toppling One’s Professional Expertise from Within: The Use of Hypnosis by French Anesthesiologists Presenter: Nishani Bourmault; NEOMA Business School Tool-Oriented Occupations as Brokers for Application-Oriented Occupations Presenter: Danielle Elaine Bovenberg; UC Santa Barbara Brokerage Professions and Insight Into Concealed Knowledge Presenter: Rohin Borpujari; London Business School

  PublisherDOI

• How Idealized Professional Identities Can Persist through Client Interactions

  Administrative Science Quarterly · 2022 · 53 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Public relations

  How can a professional identity persist when it is mismatched with the reality of work demands in one’s first job? Existing theory suggests that new members of a profession should adapt their identities to align with their profession’s and organization’s goals. Using data from an ethnographic study of first-time hospital nurses, I develop the concept of idealized professional identities—identities rooted in the image and history of an occupation rather than in reality—and depict how these identities can persist through client interactions despite negative consequences. When left unchecked under the increasingly common conditions of weak on-the-job socialization, nurses in my study with idealized identities infantilized patients and purposefully avoided patients who denied their idealized identities even though these practices ran counter to the patient satisfaction and empowerment goals of the organization and nursing profession. The opportunity to enact cherished idealized identities with the few clients who granted them may have perpetuated these dynamics by supporting the retention of professionals who otherwise may have exited. This study suggests that socialization into a professional role may come not only from interactions with professional gatekeepers, peers, or organizational management but also from the internalization of idealized professional identities that may be kept alive through interactions with and about one’s clients.

  PublisherDOI

• Unpacking How Employees Navigate Unfulfilled, Unreasonable, and Unexpected Occupational Ideals

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2021-07-26

  article

  Occupations have become stabilizing fixtures of modern-day employment, providing employees with a set of established cultural tools, norms, values, and beliefs that offer meaning to employees and guide their workplace interpretations and action. Yet, as employees perform their occupations “on the ground”, they frequently encounter situations that challenge these occupational meaning systems. This symposium showcases four papers that develop novel theory about how individuals respond to incongruities between situational demands, environmental constraints, and audiences’ expectations, on the one hand, and occupational norms, values, and beliefs, on the other hand. More specifically, we examine (1) how workers counter harmful occupational cultures, (2) how women in male-dominated occupations transcend their status as female “tokens”; (3) how employees respond to labels (e.g., “hero”) cast upon their occupation by external audiences; and (4) how employees manage frequent exposure to tasks that conflict with their occupational ideologies extolling the nature and necessity of the work. Taken together, our papers and discussion endeavor to contribute to and generate future research on contemporary occupational dynamics, as well as deliver actionable insights for managers. Meaning Detachment and Deviation from Invincibility Cultural Scripts among Stunt Performers Presenter: Winnie Jiang; INSEAD Presenter: Karim Ginena; U. of Virginia Darden School of Business Transcending Tokenism: How Women in Male-Dominated Occupations Can Challenge Gendered Work Norms Presenter: Julia DiBenigno; Yale School of Management Heroes from Above and from Below: Workers’ Reactions to the Moralizing of their Work Presenter: Lindsey Cameron; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Michel Anteby; Boston U. Questrom School of Business The Music Between the Notes: How Employees Manage Unforeseen Work Realities Presenter: Pascale Fricke; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Natalya Alonso; Haskayne School of Business, U. of Calgary Presenter: Patrick Reilly; U. of British Columbia

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Frequent coauthors

• Michel Anteby

  Boston University

  10 shared

• Curtis K. Chan

  Boston College

  10 shared

• Jayakanth Srinivasan

  Mitre (United States)

  6 shared

• Elisabeth Yang

  Yale University

  5 shared

• Jillian Chown

  Kellogg's (Canada)

  4 shared

• Katherine C. Kellogg

  Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology

  4 shared

• Nicholas Occhiuto

  École de management de Lyon

  3 shared

• Mary Tripsas

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  2 shared

Education

• PhD in Work and Organization Studies, Sloan School of Management

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2016

Awards & honors

• Elected to the Macro-Organizational Behavior Society (MOBS),…
• Outstanding Reviewer Award, Organization Science, 2024
• Ned Smith Rising Star Award, Organization & Management Theor…
• Outstanding Published Article Award Honorable Mention, POS C…
• ASQ Dissertation Award, Runner-up, 2021