Dr. Shawn Quan, Anderson School of Management

Name:

Dr. Shawn Quan

Title:

Assistant Professor

Department:

Anderson School of Management

Describe your research in about 200 words.

My research explores the marginalized, untraditional, and unseen aspects of work, specifically: (1) How can individuals from overlooked or marginalized backgrounds work and thrive? (2) How do seemingly nonwork factors impact work? One recent work explores how Alaskan Native employees balance their paid wage work and traditional cultural subsistence hunting and gathering, shift such balance across natural temporal cycles, and adopt a community-first orientation on career planning. I adopt inductive and deductive methodologies, leverage novel research sites, and utilize data from interviews, ethnography, archival sources, field surveys, experiments, and meta-analyses. I also explore how social class origin brings unique challenges or privileges for employees well into adulthood, and how first-generation graduates navigate the new landscape on their path to upward mobility. Overall, I’m motivated to amplify the voice of those who don’t often have one in our white-collar workplaces.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

My students taught me to always be curious and open about the world, and to appreciate the kindness of strangers.