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USC University of Southern California

Michàlle Mor Barak

Dean Endowed Professor of Social Work and Business

Social work and management expert, focusing on global workforce diversity

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Michalle Mor Barak
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Rank:  Tenure Track Faculty

Michàlle Mor Barak

Dean Endowed Professor of Social Work and Business

Social work and management expert, focusing on global workforce diversity

Media Contact

Biography

Michàlle Mor Barak is in the vanguard of a new breed of social work and management experts focusing on global workforce diversity. In her award-winning book, Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace (SAGE, 5th edition, 2022), she proposes an original model for creating an "inclusive workplace"– one that helps businesses, as well as public nonprofit organizations, integrate with society via expanding circles of inclusion at the organizational, community, state/national and international levels. The book has won the CHOICE award from the Association of College and University Libraries and the Academy of Management's Terry Book Award for "the most significant contribution to management knowledge."

Her scholarly publications were among the first to introduce the construct of inclusion to the discourse about global diversity management through groundbreaking research. Two measurement scales that Mor Barak and her research team established and validated — the Mor Barak Inclusion-Exclusion Scale (MBIE) and the Diversity Climate Scale — have been widely used in for profit and nonprofit research and in corporate employee surveys and were translated to more than ten languages.

Her current research projects focus on diversity, work-family balance, social support and corporate social responsibility. They examine the impact of organizational culture on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and retention as well as individual well-being, mental health and turnover. Her studies test theoretically based models in both nonprofit and for profit organizations nationally and internationally. Mor Barak's research demonstrates that diversity management and inclusion, when adopted as key business strategies, represent more than just doing the right and moral thing. They also constitute good business. Diversity management is essential if corporations are to adapt to an increasingly diverse workforce, and it gives them a competitive advantage in recruitment, retention, customer relations, marketing and developing a positive corporate image.

An internationally renowned scholar, Mor Barak has led conferences on diversity at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy, as well as at the Borchard Foundation's Chateau de la Bretesche in France.

To reference the work of Michalle Mor Barak online, we ask that you directly quote their work where possible and attribute it to "Michalle E. Mor Barak, faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)

Media

Michalle Mor Barak 2016 USC School of Social Work Commencement SpeechSocial Change and Innovation - Work Settings: Michalle Mor BarakSession 2 Blind Spots in Work Life Research through a Global LensSOWK 707 Financial Management: Introduction to Financial Aspects of Managing Diversity & InclusionSOWK 707 Financial Management: Introduction to Diversity and Inclusion Climate PageSOWK 707 Financial Management: Inclusive Workplace PageSOWK 707 Financial Management: Defining Diversity Management PageSOWK 707 Financial Management: Science of Inclusion Page

Education

University of California, Berkeley

PhD

University of Haifa, Israel

MSW

University of Haifa, Israel

BA

Area of Expertise

  • Global Inclusive Workplace
  • Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace
  • Social Work and Business
  • Inclusion and exclusion of women and minorities in workplace
  • Support systems in crisis situations
  • Organizational Management
  • Work-family balance
  • Corporate Social Responsibility & Employee Engagement

Industry Experience

  • Social Services
  • Human Resources
  • Public Policy
  • Education/Learning
  • Research
  • Political Organization
  • Program Development
  • Employment Services

Research Interest

Diversity/Cross Cultural Military Social Work Organization/Workplace

Accomplishments

2023
Named in the 50 Faces, 50 Years Academy of Management 50th Anniversary of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Division

2022
Named Among the Top 100 Most Impactful Social Work Scholars in a study identifying the top contributors to social work journal scholarship using a composite measure of scholarly impact and controlling for self-citations and author order (Hodge, & Turner, 2022)

Named Among the World’s Top 2% Scientists for career/life time contributions according to Stanford University-Elsevier Report.  Baas, Jeroen; Boyack, Kevin; Ioannidis, John P.A. (2021), “August 2021 data-update for "Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators"”, Mendeley Data, V3, doi: 10.17632/btchxktzyw.3

2021
Best Paper Award, Academy of Management Annual Conference, for the paper “Inclusive Leadership, Policy-Practice Decoupling, and the Anomaly of Climate for Inclusion” GDO, August, 2021

2018
Award for Leadership in Doctoral Education, Group for Advancement of Doctoral Education (GADE)

Elected and Inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW)

2017
Mary Parker Follette Award for Best Paper, Journal of Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership and Governance, for "The Promise of Diversity Management for Climate of Inclusion:  A State-of-the Art Review and Meta-Analysis" with co-authors Lizano,*, E.L., Kim*, A., Duan, L., Hsiao*, H.Y., Rhee*, M.K., Brimhall*, K.A. (*denotes doctoral students)

2016
Academy of Management, Division of Gender and Diversity in Organizations Award for Scholarly Contributions to Educational Practice Advancing Women in Leadership

2015
Invited to the Executive Board of the Network for Social Work Management (NSWM)

2014
Sterling C. Franklin Distinguished Faculty Award for Research and Scholarship

Invited to the Executive Board of Phi-Kappa-Phi Honor Society, established in 1897 to recognize and encourage superior scholarship

2013
Borchard Foundation Bretesche Award for an international roundtable on global diversity and inclusion at the Chateau de la Bretesche in France

2011
Ranked #4 among the 100 authors of the most influential articles in the social work discipline over the past decade based on overall and yearly citations. (Hodge, D.R., LaCasse, J.R., &  Benson, O., 2011.  Influential publications in social work discourse:  The 100 most highly cited articles in the disciplinary journals: 2000-09.  British Journal of Social Work, July, 1-18.)

2007
Academy of Management George R. Terry Best Book Award for “the Most Outstanding Contribution to the Advancement of Management Knowledge”- Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace

Fellow, Global Business Round Table, Center for Work and Family, Boston College

2006
Choice Award for Outstanding Titles from the Association of College and Research Libraries for the book Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace - only 15 titles in the business and management category received this award nation-wide

Inducted as faculty to Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society

2005
The Mellon Award for Excellence in Mentorship

2004
Installed as the first Lenore Stein-Wood and William Wood Professor of Social Work and Business in a Global Society

2003
Sterling C. Franklin Distinguished Faculty Award for Research and Scholarship

Borchard Foundation Bretesche Award for an international roundtable on global diversity and inclusion at the Chateau de la Bretesche, France

2001
Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Award, for an international conference on global diversity at the Bellagio conference center, Bellagio, Italy

Best Paper Award, Institute of Behavioral and Applied Management, for "Diversity, inclusion, and commitment in organizations: International explorations," Mor Barak, M.E., Findler, L. and Wind, L.H. 2001, Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 2(2), 72-91

Articles & Publications

The Practice and Science of Social Good: Emerging Paths to Positive Social Impact | SAGE Publications

Michalle E. Mor Barak
To explore the practice and science of social good and identify avenues for producing research and evidence-based practice in this area. The main proposition of this paper is that social good has the potential to promote ideals that directly align with social work values, offer new alliances and innovative technologies for achieving them, and spark interest in macro practice.
 

Increasing workplace inclusion: The promise of leader-member exchange | Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance

2016 With increased workforce diversity, human service organizations are recognizing the need to create inclusive workplaces; yet little is known about how leaders can enhance workplace inclusion. We collected data at three time points in 6-month intervals from a public child welfare organization (n = 363). Using latent change score models, we analyzed whether leader-member exchange influenced how inclusion changed over time. Results indicate that favorable perceptions of leader-member exchange are associated with increased feelings of inclusion 6 and 12 months later. Findings highlight the importance of improving leadership interactions with their employees to increase workplace inclusion.
 

The promise of diversity management for climate of inclusion: a state-of-the-art review and meta-analysis | Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance

2016 Applying a theory-based conceptual model of organizational diversity, climate of inclusion, and beneficial/detrimental outcomes, this study analyzes 30 qualified studies (N = 496,740 workers) published during the past 2 decades. Results indicate that although diversity is associated with both beneficial and detrimental outcomes, diversity management efforts that promote a climate of inclusion are consistently associated with positive outcomes (? = .42, 95% CI = .29, .54) (N = 290,854). Findings suggest that human service organizations should move beyond a sole focus on increasing diversity representation to developing policies and practices that engender a climate of inclusion.
 

Job stress and mental health among nonregular workers in Korea: What dimensions of job stress are associated with mental health? | Archives of environmental & occupational health

2013 Although nonregular workers experience higher job stress, poorer mental health, and different job stress dimensions relative to regular workers, little is known about which job stress dimensions are associated with poor mental health among nonregular workers. This study investigated the association between job stress dimensions and mental health among Korean nonregular workers. Data were collected from 333 nonregular workers in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, and logistic regression analysis was conducted. Results of the study indicated that high job insecurity and lack of rewards had stronger associations with poor mental health than other dimensions of job stress when controlling for sociodemographic and psychosocial variables. It is important for the government and organizations to improve job security and reward systems to reduce job stress among nonregular workers and ultimately alleviate their mental health issues.
 

Availability

  • Keynote
  • Moderator
  • Panelist
  • Author Appearance
  • Corporate Training

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