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A Deep-seated Interest
Rothbard grew up in Cheltenham, a Philadelphia suburb.
While her father and uncle ran the Philadelphia office supply
and furniture company her grandparents had founded in 1948,
her mother, Aileen Rothbard, went back to school to pursue
her PhD at Johns Hopkins when Rothbard was 13. Aileen
rented an apartment in Baltimore where she lived a few days a
week for two years, returning to Philadelphia for long weekends
managing the household and caring for Nancy and her
younger brother.
"Having gotten a PhD, I'm not sure how she did it," says
Rothbard. "She did everything for us. She ran the household.
And getting her PhD was an incredibly enriching experience
for her. She was happy and that happiness definitely spilled
back into our family life." Today, Aileen Rothbard is a research
professor at Penn's medical school. Her daughter admits that
her deep-seated interest in work engagement and the way
family can influence employee productivity was piqued by
watching her parents in their respective roles.
After graduating from Michigan with her PhD in
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
in December 1998, Rothbard took a post-doctoral fellow
position at Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of
Management. She joined Wharton as an assistant professor in
September of 2000. Recently married to Wharton accounting
professor Brian Bushee, Rothbard lives in Center City,
Philadelphia, and, apart from her work, enjoys reading fiction
and traveling.
Her other research builds on her interest in organizational
behavior. A 1998 paper, "Out on a Limb: The Role of Context
and Impression Management in Selling Gender Equity Issues,"
examines how and why people become involved in their organizations
through something she calls "issue selling," or call-ing
the organization's attention to key issues, events, or trends.
"Essentially, we ask what motivates people to engage in discretionary
and potentially risky activities on behalf of their
own group within the organization," she explains. The study
of 1,019 MBA alumnae found that a woman's likelihood of
promoting a potentially controversial issue on the job has more
to do with a favorable context, not individual characteristics.
"Women who believe their organizations will be supportive and
who have a close relationship with key decision makers perceive
less risk to their image and are more likely to believe they can
sell an issue," she says.
Another recent project examining employee responses and
reactions to corporate work-family policies such as on-site day-care
and flextime had some surprising results, dispelling
assumptions that on-site childcare is always an attractive perk.
"Essentially I find that for people who prefer to keep the work
and family spheres separate, greater access to onsite childcare
decreases their satisfaction and commitment to the organization,"
Rothbard says. "But for these same people, greater access
to a policy like flextime, which allows people to keep work and
family separate, increases their commitment. So employees'
responses to work-family policies may depend on the way they
manage the work-family boundary; and if organizations offer
policies such as onsite childcare, they should also offer policies
such as flextime for people who are more comfortable with
keeping work and family separate."
Rothbard's work, she admits, is full of surprises. "These are
complex times for employees and employers. It's important to
understand what's working and what's not working, and why,
and not make assumptions based on hunches or stereotypes,"
she says. "These research topics are exciting to me because they
matter both in work organizations and in people's lives."
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