Angela Ianniello
Angela Ianniello
Work relationships play a central role in organizational life, impacting everything from how work gets done to worker well-being. My research asks how people navigate work relationships across social differences, dynamics that are often marked by the potential for tension and misunderstanding. Specifically, I focus on relationships shaped by marginalization and power dynamics.
Two complementary streams anchor this agenda. The first examines agency: how people weigh identity-based risks in deciding whom to engage with and where to work. The second examines context: how the “situational opportunities and constraints” people face (Johns, 2006: 386) shape the risks that structure these relationships. Together, the two streams explain how people exercise agency in navigating relationships across social differences, and how context enables or constrains that agency.
I build theory in both areas using qualitative, inductive methods.
Generative resistance: The importance of enabling differences
Organization Theory
Jean Bartunek, Hans Hansen, Mara Cable, & Angela Ianniello
Within the organizational change literature, resistance is often treated in ways that tether it to change as its shadow side and, consequently, minimize its value. In contrast to prior approaches, we offer a generative approach to theorizing resistance to change—one that suggests important contributions it can make to change when considered in its own right. We discuss three such contributions: surfacing rather than covering deep-rooted societal conflicts, fostering the development of group and organizational identity, and sustaining important differences. We offer narrative vignettes that illustrate each of these: the differing responses of evangelical Christians and human rights groups to World Vision, a humanitarian aid organization, and its brief decision to allow the employment of individuals in same-sex marriages; United States Roman Catholic sisters’ response to a Vatican Apostolic Visitation; and the steps taken by attorneys in Texas to resist the death penalty in counter-intuitive, entirely legal, but rarely enacted ways. In doing so we demonstrate how resistance in and of itself can address both theoretical and practical tensions pertinent to change. Theoretically, it can add a “neither/nor” dimension to “both/and” approaches to paradox and dialectics. Practically, it suggests why many standard ways of dealing with major societal conflicts are unlikely to succeed and what can be done instead.
Published Articles
Out of sight, in the crossfire: Evolving challenges for managing stigmatized invisible identities in uncertain and polarized times
Research in Social Issues in Management
Judy Clair & Angela Ianniello
Twenty years after the publication of Out of Sight but Not Out of Mind: Managing Invisible Social Identities in the Workplace (Clair, Beatty, & MacLean, 2005), lead author Judy Clair, with new co-author Angela Ianniello, revisit the disclosure dilemmas faced by employees with stigmatized invisible identities. While the original paper highlights the tension people face between authenticity and the risk of discrimination, new complexities are introduced in today’s increasingly polarized climate. Namely, the authors highlight how employees must now navigate an environment marked by both heightened celebration and acceptance of their identities while also making sense of DEI backlash and the undoing of newly gained protections. This paper then calls on researchers to extend existing research on stigmatized invisible identities by 1) continuing to advance evidence-based research, 2) considering disclosure decisions in polarized environments, 3) exploring a more diverse range of perspectives, including those from dominant groups, and 4) staying alert to politically motivated efforts to discredit DEI research, while remaining receptive to constructive criticism.
Safe stages and risky rooms: How and why evaluator selection shapes creative careers
Preparing manuscript for submission to Organization Science
Angela Ianniello, Beth Schinoff, & Curtis Chan
Creative careers rely heavily on evaluation, yet research has largely treated evaluators as given and focused on how people respond to assigned evaluators. As careers become increasingly boundaryless, individuals are more likely to choose their evaluators, thus making the dynamics of evaluator selection theoretically important. Drawing on 59 interviews and 35 hours of observation with stand-up comics, we develop a grounded theory model of evaluator selection in creative careers. We find that comics move through a series of evaluator selection sequences as they interpret – and reinterpret – evaluators (i.e., audiences) as sources of career and identity risk. As comics move through these sequences, their interpretation of evaluator risk stabilizes into one of two evaluation orientations: generalists, who are willing to be evaluated by anyone, or specialists who are only willing to be evaluated by identity-safe audiences. Our findings contribute to research on creative careers by theorizing the dynamics of evaluator selection and how these dynamics influence creative careers. We also contribute to identity research by bringing identity to the fore of evaluator selection. We conclude with the practical implications of our theoretical model.
Selected Works in Progress
Surfacing safety: How job seekers assess workplace safety and inclusion during career transitions
Preparing manuscript for submission to Academy of Management Journal
Angela Ianniello, Bess Rouse, & Judy Clair
How does identity-based risk shape where people choose to work and build their careers? Drawing on interviews with 60 LGBTQ+ workers across industries and regions of the United States, we build theory about the calculations people make when determining where to work. These calculations incorporate past experiences with identity threat, expectations of future risks, and personal and situational factors, such as family status. These assessments inform the identity-safety trade-offs people are willing to make in pursuit of their career advancement. Together, these studies theorize identity safety as an ongoing relational assessment that shapes how people navigate relationships across social differences, influencing whom they engage with and where they build their careers.
The 5 Ws of relationship context
Preparing proposal for the Journal of Applied Psychology
Beth Schinoff, Elana Feldman, Angela Ianniello, Julianna Pillemer, & Emily Heaphy
How does context shape workplace relationships and interactions? We currently organize our review around the “5 Ws” of work relationships, aiming to develop a more cohesive and sweeping understanding of how contextual features, ranging from virtual work arrangements and platform work to broader social-structural conditions that seep into the workplace, shape who forms work relationships, what these relationships entail, when and where these relationships grow, why they form, and how they develop. Collectively, this research stream develops a more relational theory of context, demonstrating that context is not merely where work relationships occur but also an influential force shaping their nature and outcomes.
Rethinking working from home: Cross-domain work relationships in private settings (Dissertation)
Data Collection
Committee: Bess Rouse (Chair), Judy Clair, Jamie Ladge, & Jessica Methot
How do people navigate cross-domain work relationships when the organizational context that typically structures them is absent?
Research on cross-domain work relationships typically examines relationships that remain anchored in a shared organization, such as workplace friendships. My dissertation asks what happens when that organizational anchor is removed.
Through a qualitative study of the relationship between working parents and paid in-home caregivers, I examine a relationship in which one person’s home is another person’s workplace. This setting reveals how work relationships are defined and negotiated when organizational norms and scripts no longer structure interaction.
Emerging findings
Relational cues reshape the psychological contract.
Language and care tasks influence what becomes expected, permissible, or difficult to refuse, with implications for voice and exit.
Work relationships can become resources for identity work.
Cross-domain work relationships can function as relational resources for professional identity work.
Practical significance
75+ million domestic workers worldwide · 2+ million in the United States
Domestic workers enable others, particularly women, to participate in the workforce, while also navigating careers, identities, and work relationships of their own.
