Forrest Briscoe

Associate Professor of Management
Department: Management and Organization
Office: 450 Business Building
Phone: 814-865-0746
Fax: 814-863-7261
E-mail: fsb10@psu.edu

Introduction

Professor Forrest Briscoe received his PhD in Management from The MIT Sloan School of Management and his BA from Harvard University.  He currently serves on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Journal and reviews regularly for leading management and sociology journals.  Briscoe has published his research in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Organization Science, and other journals and edited volumes.  He has received several awards for his research, including the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Industry Studies Fellowship (2010-2012).  Prior to academia, Professor Briscoe worked as a consultant for John Snow Inc. in Boston.

Current Research

Professor Briscoe conducts research in the area of Organization Theory. His work is concerned with how organizations change and new organizational practices spread across organizatioal fields. In one major project, Briscoe examined the surprisingly rapid adoption of domestic partner health care benefits across large US corporations. Other projects aim to understand the spread of new approaches to work-family benefits and retiree health benefits. Throughout this research, Briscoe is interested in the social and political mechanisms through which organizations are persuaded to break from the old status quo and participate in change.

A related stream of Briscoe’s research considers the consequences of new organizational practices for professional workers, including consequences for their careers, incomes, mobility, collaboration practices, and personal flexibility. Briscoe has studied a range of new organizational employment and work practices, including the increasing use of independent contractors rather than regular employees, and the availablility of flexible-work programs for employees.

Briscoe has extensively studied professional organizations, including corporate law firms, medical organizations, and engineering/IT firms. His most recent paper, with coauthor Wenpin Tsai, considers the recent explosion of mergers and acquisitions among law firms. Using detailed quantitative data, they show which lawyers are more likley to contribute to the integration of the newly joined firms through client referrals, as well as the intended and unintended consequences for the merged firm's revenues and human capital development.

Expertise

Institutional change
Professional organizations and careers
Organizational employment practices

Publication List

F. Briscoe and W. Tsai, "Overcoming Relational Inertia: How Organizational Members Respond to Acquisition Events", Administrative Science Quarterly, Winter 2011, 56, 408-440.

F. Briscoe and K. Kellogg, "The Initial Assignment Effect: Local Employer Practices and Positive Career Outcomes for Work-Family Program Usere", American Sociological Review, Spring 2011, 76, 291-319.

F. Briscoe, S. Sawyer and M. Wardell, "Membership and its Privileges? Independent Contracting and Workers' Flexibility to Set Work Hours and Work from Home", Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Summer 2011, 64, 258-282.

M. Bidwell and F. Briscoe, "The Dynamics of Inter-organizational Careers", Organization Science, May 2010, 21, 1034-1053.

M. Bidwell and F. Briscoe, "Who Contracts? Determinants of the Decision to Work as an Independent Contractor among IT Workers", Academy of Management Journal, June 2009, 52, 1147-1168.

F. Briscoe and S. Safford, "The Nixon in China Effect: Activism, Imitation, and the Institutionalization of Contentious Practices", Administrative Science Quarterly, Fall 2008, 53, 460-491.

F. Briscoe, "From Iron Cage to Iron Shield? How Bureaucracy Enables Temporal Flexibility for Professionals", Organization Science, June 2007, 18, 297-314.

F. Briscoe, "Temporal Flexibility and Careers: The Role of Large-Scale Organizations", Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Spring 2006, 60, 67-83.

F. Briscoe, J. Maxwell and P. Temin, "H.R. Versus Finance: Who Controls Corporate Health Care and Does it Matter?", Advances in Industrial & Labor Relations, 2005, 14, 1-32.

Education

Ph.D., Management, MIT Sloan,  2003 
BA, Environmental Sciences, Harvard,  1995 

Courses

MGMT 326, Organizational Behavior and Design
MGMT 538, Doctoral Seminar in Organizational Theory
ENTR 597A, Creating Value Through Social Entrepreneurship