About Me

Currently, I am an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan (UMSI) where I am a part of the Social Media Research Lab (SMRL) and Digitization of Work Lab. I earned my Ph.D. from the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern University, School of Communication. I also received my B.A. and M.A. from the University of Southern California.

Broadly, my work focuses on the changing nature of work as it relates to technology, policy and knowledge sharing in organizations. As an organizational communication scholar, I am also interested in understanding the communicative practices that shape technology use, as well as the role technology plays in those communication processes. In my research, I employ both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

My active research projects include:

Technology & policy implementation in organizations
Many new policy changes often entail implementing new technologies in order to manage compliance. In this line of research, I examine how employees enact policy changes through technology and the organizational implications in delegating policy compliance to digital tools.

Impact of telehealth/telemedicine on clinical work practices

In this research, I am interested in how telehealth/telemedicine platforms and policies impact clinicians’ work practices and professional identities. This research addresses implications concerning how digital platforms shape new models of patient care and the rise of contingent work arrangements in the healthcare industry.

Work in the platform economy

With the growing number of gig workers across diverse industries, I am particularly interested examining how the platform economy influences work arrangements and the interactions between workers, consumers and the platform organizations. I am particularly interested in questions concerning how organizations employ algorithms to manage workers on these platforms and how workers define their professions in the context of the platform economy.

Research

Publications

Huber, L., Pierce, C.S., Lindtner, L. (Forthcoming 2022). An Approximation of Freedom: On-demand Therapy and the Feminization of Labor. Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

Woo, D., Pierce, C.S., Treem, J. (2021). Specialists over Generalists?: Examining discursive closures and discursive openings in expert collaborations. Communication Monographs.

Barbour, J. B., Pierce, C. S., Rolison, S. L. (2021). Health professions/occupations. In E. Ho, C. Bylund, & J.van Weert (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Health Communication. Wiley Blackwell.

Brewer, R., Pierce, C.S., Upadhyay, P., Park, L. (2021). An Empirical Study of Older Adult's Voice Assistant Use for Health Information Seeking. ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems. Special Issue.

Robert, L. P., Pierce, C., Marquis, E., Kim, S., Alahmad, R. (2020). Designing Fair AI for Managing Employees in Organizations: A Review, Critique, and Design Agenda. Human-Computer Interaction.

Leung, W., Zhang, Z., Jibuti, D., Zhao, J., Klein, M., Pierce, C., Robert, L.P., Zhu, H. (2020). Race, Gender and Beauty: The Effect of Information Provision Affects Online Hiring Biases. Proceedings of the 38rd ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).

Veinot, T. & Pierce, C.S. (2019) Materiality in Information Environments: Objects, Spaces and Bodies in Three Outpatient Hemodialysis Facilities. Journal of Association for Information Science and Technology.

Leonardi, P.M., Bailey, D., Pierce, C.S. (2019). The Co-Evolution of Objects and Boundaries Over Time: Materiality, Affordances, and Boundary Salience. Information Systems Research.

Marquis, L.B., Kim, S., Alahmad, R., Pierce, C.S., Robert, L. (2018). Impacts of Perceived Behavior Control and Emotional Labor on Gig Workers. Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW).

Kim, S., Marquis, L.B., Alahmad, R., Pierce, C.S., Robert, L. (2018). The Impacts of Platform Quality on Gig Workers’ Autonomy and Job Satisfaction. Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW).

Alahmad, R., Pierce, C.S., Carter, M. and Robert, L. P. (2018). The Impact of Enterprise Social Media Identity on Job Performance and Job Satisfaction, Proceedings of the 24th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS).

Brewer, R., Pierce, C.S., Marquis (Morris), E., and Essiet, M. (2018). Computer-Supported Health and Well-Being Services: A Systems Approach to Telehealth Coaching. Proceedings of the 12th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare.

Ye T., Pierce, C., Alahmad, R. and Robert, L. P. (2017). Race and Rating on Sharing Economy Platforms: The Effect of Race Similarity and Reputation on Trust and Booking Intention in Airbnb. Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS).

Pierce, C.S. (2016). Conceptualizing Organizational Policy in Principle and Practice. Proceedings of the Seventy-sixth Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. Best Paper Award.

Treem, J. W., Dailey, S. L., Pierce, C. S., & Biffl, D. (2016). What We Are Talking About When We Talk About Social Media: A Framework for Study. Sociology Compass. Top 20 most downloaded recent paper for Sociology Compass.

Treem, J., Dailey, S., Pierce, C.S., Leonardi, P.M. (2015). Bringing Technological Frames to Work: How Previous Experience with Social Media Shapes the Technology's Meaning in an Organization. Journal of Communication.

Meyer, S., Pierce, C.S., Kou, Y., Leonardi, P.M., Nardi, B., Bailey, D. (2014). Offshoring Digital Work, But Not Physical Output: Differential Access to Task Objects and Coordination in Globally Distributed Automotive Engineering and Graphic Design Work. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).

Awards & Honors

Harrington Faculty Fellow, 2019-2020

University of Texas at Austin, School of Information

Academy of Management (Organizational Communication & Information Systems Division)

DeSanctis Award, 2016

William H. Newman Dissertation Award (nominee), 2016

Best Student Paper Award, 2016

International Communication Association (Organizational Communication Division)

Charles Redding Dissertation Award, 2016

Best of the B.E.S.T Presentation Award, 2014

Top Interactive Paper Award, 2013

International Communication Association (Communication & Technology Division)

Herbert S. Dordick Dissertation Award (runner-up), 2016

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (Digital & Social Media)

Best Paper Award (nominee), 2016

Grants

Ginsberg Community Engagement Faculty Grant

Addressing Health Technology Education Disparities for Older Adults
Co-PI: Robin Brewer

National Science Foundation Workshop

Auditing Algorithms: Adding Accountability to Automated Authority

PI: Christian Sandvig

Updates

Awarded Harrington Faculty Fellowship

2019-2020

I am honored to visit the UT Austin iSchool as a Harrington Faculty Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year.

During the fellowship, I look forward continuing my current research projects examining the impact of platform and gig work on clinical work practices. As part of the fellowship, I am also pleased to host a research symposium in March 2020.