Adam Cobb

Adam Cobb’s research examines the historical development and reconfiguration of the employment relation. He is currently examining how corporatefinanced welfare benefit plans help structure and support the relationship between workers in firms, how those structures have changed, and the ways in which individuals understand and respond to the changing nature of work. A second focus is on the role corporate disaggregation has played in rising income inequality in the U.S. over time. An overarching theme in Adam’s research is examining the ways in which organizations can serve as promulgators of social change.

Companies

• Associate Professor The University of Texas at Austin - Red McCombs School of Business (2020)
• Assistant Professor The University of Texas at Austin - Red McCombs School of Business (2018 — 2020)
• Assistant Professor University of Pennsylvania (2011 — 2018)
• PhD Student in Management and Organizations Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan (2006 — 2011)
• Business Planning Analyst Hewlett Packard (2005 — 2006)

Education

• PhD University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of Business (2006 — 2011)
• MBA McCombs School of Business, Univeristy of Texas at Austin (2003 — 2005)
• BA Southwestern University (1995 — 1999)

Academic Leadership & Awards

• 2020 Professional Awards Practice Implications Best Paper Award, Academy of Management Review
• 2019 CBA Foundation Research Excellence Award for Assistant Professors, Univ. of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business
• 2019 Best Paper Award (“Take a Stand or Keep Your Seat...”) Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability Annual Meeting
• 2019 John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award, Labor and Employment Relations Association
• 2017 Best Article Award, Academy of Management Review
• 2017 Research Impact on Practice Award, Organizations and Natural Environment Division, Academy of Management

Publications

Richard A. Benton, J. Adam Cobb, and Timothy Werner. Firm Partisan Positioning, Polarization, and Risk Communication: Examining Voluntary Disclosures on COVID-19. Strategic Management Journal , forthcoming.

J. Adam Cobb, J. R. Keller, and Samir Nurmohamed. How do I Compare? The Effect of Work-unit Demographics on Reactions to Pay Inequality. ILR Review, forthcoming.

Mary Hunter-McDonnell and J. Adam Cobb. 2020. Take a Stand or Keep Your Seat: Independent Director Exit after Social Activist Challenges. Academy of Management Journal 63(4), 1028-1053.

Ken-Hou Lin, Carolina Aragão, and J. Adam Cobb. 2020. Women, Minorities, and Non-union Workers Continue to Dominate Low-wage Markets, and Experience Job Insecurity and Limited Upward Mobility. PRC Research Brief 5(10).

Richard Benton and J. Adam Cobb. 2019. Eyes on the Horizon? Fragmented Elites and Short-Term Focus of the American Corporation. American Journal of Sociology 124(6), 1631-1684.

J. Adam Cobb. 2019. Managing the Conflicting Interests of Workers and Shareholders: Evidence from Pension Assumption Manipulations. ILR Review 72(3), 523-551.

J. Adam Cobb and Ken-Hou Lin. 2017. Growing Apart: The Declining Firm-Size Wage Preumium and its Inequality Consequences. Organization Science 28(3), 429-446.

J. Adam Cobb and Flannery G. Stevens. 2017. These Unequal States: Corporate Organization and Income Inequality within the United States. Administrative Science Quarterly 62(2), 304-340.

Marc Lavine, J. Adam Cobb, and Christopher Roussin. 2017. When Saying Less is Something New: Social Movements and Frame Contraction Processes. Mobilization 22(3), 275-292.

J. Adam Cobb, Tyler Wry, and Eric Y. Zhao. 2016. Funding Financial Inclusion: Institutional Logics and the Contextual Contingency of Funding for Microfinance Organizations. Academy of Management Journal 59(6), 2103-2131.

J. Adam Cobb. 2016. How Firms Shape Income Inequality: Stakeholder Power, Executive Decision-Making, and the Structuring of Employment Relationships. Academy of Management Review 41(2), 324-348.

J. Adam Cobb. 2015. Risky Business: The Decline of Defined Benefit Pensions and Firms' Shifting of Retirement Risk. Organization Science 26(5), 1332-1350.

Tyler Wry, J. Adam Cobb, and Howard Aldrich. 2013. More Than a Metaphor: Assessing the Historical Legacy of Resource Dependence and its Contemporary Promise as a Theory of Environmental Complexity. Academy of Management Annals 7, 439-486.

Gerald F. Davis and J. Adam Cobb. 2010. Corporations and Economic Inequality Around the World: The Paradox of Hierarchy. Research in Organizational Behavior 30, 35-53.

Gerald F. Davis and J. Adam Cobb. 2010. Resource Dependence Theory: Past and Future. Research in the Sociology of Organizations 28, 21-42.