Sarah Otner

I am an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) of Organizational Behaviour at Kingston Business School.

Previously, I was a Junior Research Fellow in the Department of Management & Entrepreneurship at Imperial College Business School, an Affiliate Fellow of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College London, and a Visiting Lecturer at ESMT Berlin.

I am also an alumna and current affiliate of the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. I earned a Ph.D. in Management (Organisational Behaviour) and an MSc.Res. in Organisational & Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an A.B. (cum laude) in Psychology from Harvard College.

Research

I am a behavioral scientist focused on how individuals gain and maintain social status for themselves, and how they judge deservingness to allocate social status to others. My principal research interests combine organization theory, strategy, networks, and innovation; I use approaches from economic sociology, social psychology, and economics. I adopt interdisciplinary research tools – including experimentation, computational social science, and mixed-methods approaches. Building on Robert K. Merton’s theories of status and competition, I endeavor to identify pathways to impact for society to solve its “wicked problems”, especially inequality.

My research focuses on awards and prizes. I study the design of, and the mechanisms that drive, competitions. My current work involves peer effects among elites, and invisible status effects during blinded judging. A second stream of my research examines innovation tournaments, and particularly Grand Challenge prizes. My ongoing projects include: prize scarcity, prize sharing, establishment of new prizes, and prize refusals.

Research Profile

Keywords: Status, Prizes, Hierarchy & Networks, Culture, Evaluation, The Matthew Effect, Elites, Innovation, Expertise, Meta-Research, Big Data

Education

• Ph.D. London School of Economics and Political Science (2007 — 2014)
• Postgraduate Certificate Higher Education Academy (2007 — 2009)
• MSc. The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (2006 — 2007)