Research

Job-Market Paper

When Conflict Does Not Kill Practice: Contested Survival of D&I Programs Amidst Institutional Complexity
Working paper (solo-authored). Presenting at the Academy of Management annual meeting, Philadelphia, August 2026; targeting Administrative Science Quarterly.

DEI programs are contested terrain: the same program that survives a decade in one firm is dismantled in eighteen months at its competitor. Received wisdom says practices persist only when they align with dominant organizational values. Drawing on a nine-year comparative study of four technology firms, I show the opposite can be true: conflict itself can build committed leadership support for contested diversity initiatives, equipping leaders to protect and sustain these practices despite organizational resistance. Program survival, the paper argues, is a product of contestation — not consensus.

Draft available on request.

Publications

Preston, M. C., Boyd, T. L., Leigh, A., Burgess, R., & Marsh, V. L. 2024. “An ally by any other name: Examining the effects of racial minority leaders as allies for advancing racial justice.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 181: 104321. doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2024.104321

Across three experiments, we find that racial minority leaders who advocate for their own racial group are viewed as showing ingroup favoritism — dimming their perceived effectiveness as allies and as leaders — but a simple shift in framing, publicly amplifying the voices of lower-level employees, reduces that penalty.

Under Review

Leigh, A., Nwadei, T., White, M., Lattimore, B., & Marsh, V. L. “A threat is in the news: The cross-group effects of race-based mega-threats on members of different racially stigmatized groups.” Revise & resubmit (first round), Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Working Papers

Marsh, V. L., Das, S., Delavallade, C., Rouanet, L., & Koroknay-Palicz, T. “Assessing both agentic and communal workplace social, emotional, and behavioral skills in Africa: The ESTEEM framework.” Preprint available.

Social and emotional skills predict workplace outcomes, but the instruments that measure them were built for single countries and student samples. The ESTEEM framework measures both agentic and communal workplace skills, validated in African labor-market contexts.

Reports & Frameworks

Marsh, V., Delavallade, C., Das, S., Rouanet, L. M., Koroknay-Palicz, T., & McDaniel, D. 2025. “Assessing Workplace Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills in Africa: The ESTEEM Framework.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 11128. World Bank Open Knowledge PDF

In Preparation

Marsh, V. L., Crowley, R., & Hekman, D. R. “The make-vs-buy decision for diversity & inclusion work: When do employees view homegrown vs. consultant-provided programs as more authentic?”

Dissertation

Employee Perceptions of Workplace Practices: Turnkey versus Tailored Diversity Programs (University of Colorado Boulder, 2021)

A study of innovation in diversity practices among Silicon Valley technology firms, including a longitudinal analysis of how a DEI mentorship program sustained itself through an economic downturn — the empirical seed of my current research agenda.