College of Business<\/a> at the äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ since 2004. \u201cI thought this is a great topic to study because it brings an issue of import into the management literature. It\u2019s not an issue that would get a lot of attention because a lot of people wouldn\u2019t touch it with a 10-foot pole. But it really raised an important theoretical question.\u201d<\/p>\nIn the years since, Creed has built a reputation for focusing on issues that affect marginalized people, researching workplace diversity, institutional change processes, social identity, and inclusion and equity. He\u2019s also explored efforts to enact changes, such as those for LGBTQ workers to end discriminatory practices in the workplace.<\/p>\n
In August, Creed and three researchers who together and separately have advanced scholarly research on LGBTQ issues were awarded the prestigious Joanne Martin Trailblazer Award from the Academy of Management, an international professional organization of scholars and management associations.<\/p>\n
The award is presented biannually to scholars who open new lines of thinking or inquiry in organization and management theory (OMT). \u201cA Trailblazer is a boundary-spanner and conversation starter, someone who extends and builds the OMT community by shepherding in new ideas and new scholarship, often in unconventional ways,\u201d according to the award webpage.<\/p>\n
Creed was honored along with colleagues Bryant Hudson, a professor of management at I\u00c9SEG School of Management, Paris, France; Gerardo Okhuysen, a professor of management at the University of California, Irvine; and Maureen Scully, a professor of management at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for \u201ctheir scholarly efforts in starting and shaping our conversation about LGBT issues, stigma, shame, taboo, and power in organizational settings.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually had never heard of the award until I received it,\u201d says Creed, of Boston, a past chair of the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division of the Academy of Management. \u201cIt was funny because none of us had and it had been around for perhaps 10 years. So, we Googled it and our first reaction was, \u2018Wow, look at who\u2019s won this award.\u2019 It was a parade of luminaries. We were like, \u2018How did we get this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The award came with a degree of vindication. Three of the four recipients weren\u2019t offered tenure in their early jobs in higher education, and Creed says he thinks their focus on gay and lesbian issues was a factor in some cases.<\/p>\n
Creed has coauthored research papers with each of his fellow recipients, including teaming with Scully on the research into domestic partner benefits. \u201cGerardo, Bryant and I were among the first out members of the Academy of Management, and we created opportunities for LGBTQ scholars,\u201d he says. \u201cWe also created a network within the academy back in the \u201890s. Bryant and Gerardo started their own research, and in the \u2018teens we started writing together. So, it\u2019s been a case where we were breaking ground simultaneously and then we intersected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organization and management theory, Creed says, is a combination of sociology, psychology and political science. There\u2019s a belief within OMT that examining extreme cases can be more revelatory of the underlying dynamics involved. \u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that I\u2019ve done that,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve taken extreme cases of marginalization and inequity and looked at the micropolitics of organizational change.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Creed started college back in the mid 1970s, he never anticipated a career in business. In 1979, he received a bachelor\u2019s degree in English, Magna Cum Laude, from Yale College and went on to earn a master\u2019s degree in religion at Yale Divinity School. He went into banking in the mid-1980s before earning an MBA and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy early interests are reflected in my research,\u201d he says. \u201cI use language and texts, and I interview people and then look carefully at what they said. For me, divinity school was a mix of concern for social justice issues and a life of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among his research projects that have received the most attention over the years has been a 2010 paper, \u201cBeing the Change,\u201d that explores LGBTQ people pursuing ordination in Protestant denominations. He interviewed some who were openly gay and others who weren\u2019t. \u201cI was looking at them as organizational and institutional change agents working under particularly hostile conditions in some cases,\u201d he says. \u201cIt allowed me to think about how identity figures in change processes and what kind of identity work a change agent has to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a social justice issue in my mind,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s based on interview data and the people I interviewed were just such amazing people. I get goosebumps when I read it again and read their words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Creed is exploring city resilience strategies and how inequality and systemic racism factor into those strategies. He stared the research in 2016 while serving as a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Vienna University of Economics and Business, in Austria.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really quite timely now,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking at American cities\u2019 resilience strategies, and there\u2019s probably no American city that doesn\u2019t have the enduring effects of redlining affecting the well-being of citizens in the city. And that undermines resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 21, 2020 \u2013 In the early 1990s, Apple Computer extended domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples, locking the tech company in a fight with a Texas county that threatened to withdraw a tax break for a proposed Apple facility. It was national news, highlighting a clear inequity. A doctoral student in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75768,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-75767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-business"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}