Madeline King Kneeland
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I am an Assistant Professor of Strategy in the Management Division at Babson College. My research interests include: social networks, network dynamics, innovation, organizational theory, and strategic management.
I earned my Ph.D. in Management & Organizations from NYU's Stern School of Business in 2019. Prior to joining Babson, I was an Assistant Professor in Management & Organizations at Cornell University in the Johnson College of Business.
Before pursuing my Ph.D., I worked for Goodman Research Group (Cambridge, Massachusetts), where I conducted research on and evaluation of educational programs for clients, including LEGO, Discovery Channel, and NASA. I graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Psychology (with Honors) and Art History. I also played for the Williams Basketball team.
I am an Assistant Professor of Strategy in the Management Division at Babson College. My research interests include: social networks, network dynamics, innovation, organizational theory, and strategic management.
I earned my Ph.D. in Management & Organizations from NYU's Stern School of Business in 2019. Prior to joining Babson, I was an Assistant Professor in Management & Organizations at Cornell University in the Johnson College of Business.
Before pursuing my Ph.D., I worked for Goodman Research Group (Cambridge, Massachusetts), where I conducted research on and evaluation of educational programs for clients, including LEGO, Discovery Channel, and NASA. I graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Psychology (with Honors) and Art History. I also played for the Williams Basketball team.
Research
My dissertation examined how network churn, the dynamic process of adding and removing ties from one’s network, unfolds over time to affect individual performance. I study these dynamic processes in the context of a large U.S. based corporate law firm, with implications for other professional service firms and knowledge intensive industries.
Stemming from my dissertation work, I recently published a paper in Strategic Management Journal (co-authored with Adam M. Kleinbaum) that examines how corporate offsites facilitate new collaborative ties between individuals who had not previously worked together before. We find a surprising asymmetry in how offsites rewire intraorganizational networks: they compel everyone to initiate more collaboration ties, but only those who attend the offsite receive more ties.
- Paper Link: Rewiring the Organizational Network: Corporate Offsites and Network Tie Formation.
- Video Abstract Link.
- Article Link: Why Offsites Work — and How to Get the Most Out of Them
I am also interested in questions surrounding innovation, and particularly unusual technologies. My co-authors (Melissa Schilling and Barak Aharonson) and I studied the cognitive search processes individuals use to explore uncharted areas of the technological landscape (published in Organization Science, 2020) . We propose and find support for three processes: distant recombination, scientific reasoning, and long search paths that enable inventors to create outlier patents that are technologically distant from pre-existing patents.