Tiantian Yang

• Tiantian Yang, Ming D. Leung, Jiayi Bao (2024), Approaching or Avoiding: Gender Asymmetry in Reactions to Prior Job Search Experience, Social Forces, (forthcoming). Abstract

  This paper presents a novel investigation into how supply-side job seeking interacts with demand-side hiring decisions to reproduce occupational gender segregation. The authors theorize that because female job seekers are less confident of their ability in male-typed jobs than their male counterparts, they will be more responsive to cues from employers. Specifically, job application success will encourage female job seekers to approach similar work in the future; employers’ rejections, on the other hand, will be particularly discouraging, leading women to avoid similar work in the future. Analyses of a longitudinal dataset of three million applications for IT and programming jobs from an online freelancing platform support the theory. Past job-seeking experience, either positive or negative, exerted a stronger effect on how women, compared to men, approached or avoided applying to IT and programming. Because failure is the more prevalent outcome, female freelancers stop applying to male-typed jobs quicker than males. In contrast, analyses in the female-typed writing and translation field did not reveal similar gender patterns. Gender asymmetries in response to employers’ hiring decisions reproduce occupational gender segregation by reducing women’s representation in male-typed but not female-typed fields. Implications for research on gender segregation, careers and hiring are discussed.

• Prasanna Tambe and Tiantian Yang (2024), The Hidden Cost of IT Innovation: Access to Emerging Technologies and the Gender Wage Gap, MIS Quarterly, (forthcoming).
• Tiantian Yang and Aleksandra Kacperczyk (2024), Minority Entrepreneurship and Alternative Opportunities Inside Established Organizations, Strategic Management Journal, 45 (1), pp. 745-774.
• Tiantian Yang, Aleksandra Kacperczyk, Lucia Naldi (2024), The Motherhood Wage Penalty and Female Entrepreneurship, Organization Science, 35 (1), pp. 27-51. Abstract

  The need to resolve work–family conflict has long been considered a central motive for women’s pursuit of entrepreneurship. In this paper, we propose and empirically uncover a novel mechanism driving female entrepreneurship: reduced earnings opportunities in wage employment due to motherhood status. Combining insights from career mobility research and the motherhood penalty literature, we propose that women who become mothers will disproportionately launch a new business to reduce the motherhood penalty they would otherwise incur in wage work due to employer discrimination. We further predict that this tendency to launch a new venture will be more pronounced for women who occupy high-paying or managerial positions, given the higher opportunity cost of staying in wage work and the higher potential payoffs from entrepreneurship that accrue mothers occupying such positions. Using matched employer–employee data from Sweden that distinguish new-venture founding from self-employment, we find support for our arguments. Overall, this study sheds light on the two antecedents of female entrepreneurship and contributes to a more thorough understanding of what motivates women to pursue irregular and atypical careers, such as entrepreneurship.

• Tiantian Yang and Hyoyoung Lee (Under Review), Why I Searched Alone: Understanding Mothers’ Hesitation to Seek Network Assistance during Workforce Reentry. Description
  Minor Revision at Organization Science
• Tiantian Yang, Aleksandra Kacperczyk, Lucia Naldi (Under Review), Gender Premium in Entrepreneurship: Evidence for the Gender Difference in Returns to Entrepreneurship. Description
  Under review at Strategic Management Journal
• Tiantian Yang, Jiayi Bao, Tianna Barnes, Ming Leung (Under Review), Looking the part? Professionalism and the Hiring of Black Job Applicants. Description
  Under review at Organization Science
• Tiantian Yang, Jiayi Bao, Howard E. Aldrich (2020), The Paradox of Resource Provision in Entrepreneurial Teams: Between Self-interest and the Collective Enterprise, Organization Science, 31 (6), pp. 1336-1358. Abstract

  Viewing entrepreneurship as a form of collective action, this paper investigates the tension between an entrepreneurial team’s reliance on collective efforts for achieving success and individual members’ tendencies to withhold their personal resources. We argue that the precarious nature of the early founding stage and the difficulty of redeploying some resources for other uses amplify the risk of early-stage resource contributions and may lead to team members withholding resources or even free riding. Two conditions may help overcome such collective action problems: adopting a formal contract to specify rewards and sanctions and encouraging reciprocal exchange among team members through the lead entrepreneur’s voluntary contributions. Analyzing a nationally representative multiwave panel study of entrepreneurial teams in the United States, we show that early-stage team members are reluctant to provide resources tailored to the business, even though such resources are critical to venture survival. We find that presigned formal contracts and founding entrepreneurs’ initial contributions make members’ contributions of such resources much more likely. Lead entrepreneurs’ voluntary contributions to their businesses, signified by their provision of resources that impose high risks on themselves but increase the viability of the business, help mitigate collective action problems within entrepreneurial teams.

• Tiantian Yang (Under Revision), When Do Women Seek Reemployment? Motherhood Challenges and Constrained Preference. Description
  Revise and Resubmit at Management Science
• Prasanna Tambe and Tiantian Yang (Under Review), Gender, Tech Bubbles, and the IT Earnings Gap. Description
  Under Review at MIS Quarterly
• All Research from Tiantian Yang »

Past Courses

• MGMT2930 - People Analytics

  This course examines the use of data to understand and improve how people are managed in organizations. People really are organizations' most important asset, providing the critical link in converting strategy and capital into value. Yet throughout most of our history, most organizations have relied on long-standing traditions, hear-say, political expedience, prejudice and gut instinct to make decisions about how those people should be managed. Recent years have seen a growing movement to bring more science to how we manage people. In some cases, that means ensuring that whatever practices and approaches we adopt are backed up by solid evidence as to their effectiveness. Often, organizations will seek to go further, analyzing their own data to identify problems and learn what is working and what is not in their own context. This course applies the insights of the people analytics movement to help students become better managers and more critical analysts within their organizations. The course aims to develop students in three specific ways. First, it will provide students with an up-to-the-minute grounding in current evidence about managing people, providing a knowledge base that can ensure that their future management is guided by best practices. Second, we will develop the skills and understanding necessary to be thoughtful, critical consumers of evidence on people management, allowing them to make the most of the analysis available to them as they make people decisions. Third, we will provide guidance and practice in conducting people analytics, preparing students to gather data of their own, and making them more skilled analysts. We will pursue these goals through a mixture of lecture, case discussion, and hands on exploration of a variety of data sets.

• MGMT2940 - Understanding Careers

  The class will examine a variety of aspects of careers. The first few sessions explore the basic building blocks of the career, outlining our knowledge on the different orientations that individuals take to their careers, how approaches to the career change as people get older, and how different kinds of job moves within and across firms advance careers. We will complement academic research by also hearing from an experienced executive who can talk about the issues that she dealt with as her career unfolded, and how she approached major decisions. The second part of the course explores in more detail the social resources that affect careers. Much research has examined how the structure of social networks affect success in the workplace and access to job. We will review this evidence with an eye to understanding how effective relationships can be developed. We will also examine some of the most critical relationships for shaping careers - those involving mentors and sponsors. The third section of the course then examines a number of the most important and difficult issues affecting modern careers. We explore one of the most difficult transitions that forms part of many careers, moving into management from an individual contributor role. We will also explore important social psychological conditions and strategies that allow individuals to persist and succeed in their career pursuit, especially in the face of obstacles, such as career setbacks and employer rejections. We then turn to issues of gender and careers. There is much evidence on the particular challenges that have faced women managers and executives in moving up the corporate ladder. We examine that evidence and discuss possible responses by managers and by organizations. We also discuss how individuals and organizations can manage the challenges of balancing work and personal life throughout the career.

• OIDD2930 - People Analytics

  This course examines the use of data to understand and improve how people are managed in organizations. People really are organizations' most important asset, providing the critical link in converting strategy and capital into value. Yet throughout most of our history, most organizations have relied on long-standing traditions, hear-say, political expedience, prejudice and gut instinct to make decisions about how those people should be managed. Recent years have seen a growing movement to bring more science to how we manage people. In some cases, that means ensuring that whatever practices and approaches we adopt are backed up by solid evidence as to their effectiveness. Often, organizations will seek to go further, analyzing their own data to identify problems and learn what is working and what is not in their own context. This course applies the insights of the people analytics movement to help students become better managers and more critical analysts within their organizations. The course aims to develop students in three specific ways. First, it will provide students with an up-to-the-minute grounding in current evidence about managing people, providing a knowledge base that can ensure that their future management is guided by best practices. Second, we will develop the skills and understanding necessary to be thoughtful, critical consumers of evidence on people management, allowing them to make the most of the analysis available to them as they make people decisions. Third, we will provide guidance and practice in conducting people analytics, preparing students to gather data of their own, and making them more skilled analysts. We will pursue these goals through a mixture of lecture, case discussion, and hands on exploration of a variety of data sets.

• Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2024
• Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2022
• Penn Undergraduate Research Mentorship (PURM) Award, 2021
• Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Summer Institute, 2019
• Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise Research Grant, 2019
• Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship, 2017
• Arts & Sciences Council Committee Faculty Research Grant, Duke University, 2017
• Arts & Sciences Council Committee Faculty Research Grant, Duke University, 2015
• Royster Society of Fellows Dissertation Completion Fellowship Award, 2013
• Howard W. Odum Award for Excellence, University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, Department of Sociology, 2013
• Ewing Marion Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship, 2012

• Female-led start-ups embrace Plan B — then C, D, E . . . , Financial Times - 03/07/2022

Knowledge @ Wharton

• Football & Motorsports with Brian Burke, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/27/2024
• How Much Do Corporate Carbon Emissions Cost?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/26/2024
• Malcolm Gladwell on Diversity, Success, and Changing His Mind, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/26/2024
• Learning from Japan: A New Leadership Model, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/26/2024
• The Best Time to Ask for Donations | Katy Milkman, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/26/2024
• How to Protect Precious Personal Data from the Growing Danger of Cyber Attacks, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/26/2024
• The Regulatory Challenges of AI in Finance, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/25/2024
• Building Stronger Family Offices by Sharing Knowledge and Securing the Future, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/21/2024
• Sara Pollack, Pinterest’s Global Head of Consumer Marketing, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/21/2024
• State of the NBA with Seth Partnow, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/20/2024