Faculty Directory
Curtis Chan
Assistant Professor
Curtis Chan
Contact
Fulton 438
Telephone: 617-552-2891
Email: curtis.chan@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0002-8344-834X
Education
- B.A., Harvard University
- M.A., Harvard University
- Ph.D., Harvard University
Research Interests
field research; organization and management theory;diversity and inequality; and worker experience.
Expertise
- Institutions and culture
- Organizational behavior and theory
- Qualitative methods
- Work, occupations, and family
Department
Profile
Curtis K. Chan is an ethnographer and field researcher whose interests focus on how people experience, interpret, and enact their occupations and professions within their workplace organizations. He has studied how these experiences shape workplace gender inequality, surveillance dynamics, organizational control, professional reform, and professional legitimacy. Specializing in utilizing in-depth, inductive field studies to theorize novel, hidden processes of worker interpretation and experience, he has conducted studies of airport screeners at the Transportation Security Administration, consultants at a strategy consultancy, university career advisers in business schools, teachers at a Finnish school, and graphic facilitators.
Professor Chan’s scholarly research is published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and the Academy of Management Annals, with written pieces also appearing in the Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, Work and Occupations, and the Industrial and Labor Relations Review. This research has received distinctions such as the 2014 Best Student Paper Award from the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of the Academy of Management, the 2016 Saroj Parasuraman Award for Outstanding Publication on Gender and Diversity from the Gender and Diversity in Organizations (GDO) Division of the Academy of Management, and the 2017 Best Article Award from the Academy of Management Annals.
He has received a “Teaching Star” distinction from the Dean and teaching committee at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management for outstanding teaching, based on having received most favorable evaluations from students, while also challenging them intellectually. He was named one of the Poets&Quants Top 50 Undergraduate Professors Of 2020.
Professor Chan serves on the Editorial Review Boards for Academy of Management Review and Organization Science. He also serves as an ad hoc reviewer for journals including Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and American Sociological Review.
He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, master's degree in Sociology, and bachelor's degree in anthropology from Harvard University.
Selected Appointments & Awards
- Poets & Quants Top 50 Best Undergraduate Business School Professors, 2020. Recognized and profiled for excellence in teaching (e.g., nominations, teaching awards) and research (e.g., Google Scholar citations, media attention, research awards), as one of the list of 50 top undergraduate business professors of 2020, out of nearly 900 nominations.
- Teaching Star, 2020. Recognized by Dean Boynton and the school’s teaching committee for outstanding teaching, based on having received most favorable evaluations from students, while also challenging them intellectually in the prior semester.
- Academy of Management Review Outstanding Reviewer Recognition Award, 2019. Special recognition from the journal editors for excellent review quality.
- Academy of Management Annals Volume 10 Best Paper Award, 2017. Awarded by Academy of Management Annals for the paper entitled, “Three Lenses on Professions and Occupations in Organizations: Becoming, Doing, and Relating.”
- Wyss Award, 2016. Awarded by Harvard Business School for excellence in research while enrolled in the doctoral program.
- Saroj Parasuraman Award for Outstanding Publication on Gender and Diversity, 2016. Awarded by the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division of the Academy of Management for the paper entitled, “Task Segregation as a Mechanism for Within-job Inequality: Women and Men of the Transportation Security Administration.”
- Best Student Paper Award, 2014. Awarded by the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management for the paper entitled, “Task Segregation: A Mechanism for Work Inequality.”
Selected Publications
- Anteby, M. and C. K. Chan. 2018. “Why Monitoring Your Employees’ Behavior Can Backfire.” Harvard Business Review.
- Anteby, M. and C. K. Chan. 2018. “A Self-Fulfilling Cycle of Coercive Surveillance: Workers’ Invisibility Practices and Managerial Justification.” Organization Science, 29(2): 247-263.
- Chan, C.K. and M. Anteby. 2016. “Task Segregation as a Mechanism for Within-job Inequality: Women and Men of the Transportation Security Administration.” Administrative Science Quarterly. 61(2): 184-216.
- Anteby, M., C.K. Chan*, and J. DiBenigno. 2016. “Three Lenses on Professions and Occupations in Organizations: Becoming, Doing, and Relating.” Academy of Management Annals, 10(1): 183-244. (*All authors have equal co-authorship.)