Research profile: Dana Kabat‑Farr

Dana Kabat-Farr is a management scholar whose research focuses on workplace social experiences – both negative (incivility, harassment) and positive (citizenship, organizational and supervisor support) – with the goal of uncovering pathways for employees and organizations to thrive. She holds particular expertise in assessing relationships between workgroup "tokenism" and gender harassment. Dr. Kabat-Farr has found that women who are underrepresented in their workgroup are at increased risk of being targeted with gender harassment, but not at increased risk for sexual-advance forms of harassment. The opposite pattern emerged for token men – who experienced decreased risk of mistreatment when in the minority. Her research exposes a contextual risk factor for women making inroads into traditionally male-dominated environments.

In her investigation of incivility as covert discrimination against women and people of colour, Kabat-Farr’s research uncovers the subtle, insidious ways interpersonal treatment perpetuates bias, yielding contexts unwelcoming to diverse employees. Her work has brought new insights on the ability of uncivil perpetrators to secure letters of reference for future employment. Troublingly, she finds that people who demonstrate rude behaviour, especially those who are also high performers, are still offered letters of reference. Most recently, Kabat-Farr is examining the relationship between organizational support and job insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her initial emergent finding indicates that as job insecurity increased, perceptions of support from the organization and supervisor decreased, underscoring the need to double-down on extending accommodation and resources to employees during this tumultuous time.