Research Girl Season

Jillian and I share a love for cats, coffee, tchotchkes, and research—not necessarily in that order. There’s something special about working on research with a close friend. I feel so much more at ease tossing around early ideas, even when they’re half-baked or sound a little out there. The comfort of collaboration makes the creative process feel less intimidating and a lot more fun.

What makes our partnership even more interesting is how different our academic backgrounds are. I come from the world of management, while Jillian’s expertise lies in social work. Both are rooted in the social sciences and deal with people in organizational settings, but our lenses are quite distinct. In management, I focus on optimizing organizational outcomes. Jillian, on the other hand, is deeply invested in individual mental health and well-being. Despite these differences, our fields complement each other beautifully. Both emphasize collaboration, communication, and navigating human systems—whether at the level of organizations or individuals.

Our research training reflects this complementarity. Jillian brings depth and nuance through qualitative methods like thematic coding and grounded theory. I contribute with survey research and quantitative analysis. Together, we’re able to integrate both approaches for a richer, more comprehensive understanding of the phenomena we study.

Our work has spanned a versatile range of topics—from caregiving to the post-pandemic experiences of grocery store employees. We’ve presented at conferences, participated in roundtables, and published together. Currently, we’re developing a unique class exercise based on inter-professional education. The goal is to help students from our respective disciplines collaborate on complex, real-world problems—just like we do.

And the best part? 

It is always Research Girl Season. 

Some of our work:

Caregiving research

Pandey, A., Graves, J.  Marsack-Topolewski, C. (2025). Connections Amid Caregiving Stress; Informal Caregiver Employee Stress, Work Outcomes and the Role of Relational Coordination. Journal of Managerial Issues. XXXVI(4), 273-291.

Pandey, A. & Graves, J. (2022). Relational Coordination as a Resource for Caregivers. Relational Coordination Collective Roundtable, Boston, Massachusetts, November.

Pandey, A., Graves, J. M., & Endres, M. L. (2022). Caregiver employee stress outcomes and moderators.  Midwest Academy of Management, Detroit, Michigan, October.

Pandey, A., Graves, J.M.  Marsack-Topolewski, C.N. (2023, August) CARING FOR CAREGIVERS: How Caregiving Stress Impacts Work Outcomes for Informal Caregiver Employees and how Flexible Work and Relational Coordination Can Help—Academy of Management Conference, Boston, Massachusetts.

Pandey, A. & Graves, J. (2022, November). Relational Coordination as a Resource for Caregivers. Relational Coordination Collective Roundtable, Boston, Massachusetts.

Pandey, A., Graves, J. M., & Endres, M. L. (2022, October). Caregiver employee stress outcomes and moderators. Midwest Academy of Management, Detroit, Michigan.

Pandey, A. & Graves, J. M. (2021, November). The Role of Relationships: How COVID 19 at the workplace impacted our understanding about factors influencing stress and wellbeing. Relational Coordination Collective Roundtable, Ann Arbor, Mi, Virtual.

Grocery Store Research

Pandey, A., Graves, J, Newell, S. & Avanigadda, E. ( 2024, November)Collaboration and Safety: Grocery Stores and Their Employees During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Relational Coordination Collective Roundtable, Berkely, California 

Newell, S., Pandey, A., & Graves, J. (2024  July). Disconnected Narratives: Perceptions of Workplace Safety.  Conference on Organizational Discourse, Bristol, United Kingdom.

Newell, S. E., Pandey, A., & Graves, J. (2024 June). The impact of perceptions of workplace safety on workplace outcomes.  Strategic Management Society Conference, Washington, District of Columbia.

In the Classroom

Graves, J. M. & Pandey, A. (2022). Using IPE Simulation for Social Work and Business Students in Non-healthcare Settings in the Era of COVID. Nexus Summit, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August.

Graves, J. M. & Pandey, A. (2022, August). Using IPE Simulation for Social Work and Business Students in Non-healthcare Settings in the Era of COVID. Nexus Summit, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

More on the Classroom Exercise

NOT a Statistics Course: How I fell in love with teaching Research Methods

    As the professor, I am technically not supposed to have favorites, but Diagnostic Techniques and Research Methods (MGMT 610) is one of mine. Every semester, it teaches me something new. 

  Funny thing is, I wasn’t even sure I’d like it when I first got assigned the course. I was a brand-new Assistant Professor, there wasn’t a single textbook that wasn’t drowning in statistics, and everyone who’d taught it before had their own take. So I did what made the most sense: I taught it the way I wish research methods had been taught to me. 

    I mapped it out like a research study- process and application. The course scaffolds across the semester: starting with the business case for research and the literature review, then moves into research design, variable selection, hypotheses development, codebook set up, sample size analysis, survey creation, data collection and finally data analysis. Only the basics for the last part- SPSS only with t-test, ANOVA, and simple regression. No Moderators. No mediators (Alas!)

    I almost got "THIS IS NOT A STATS COURSE" tattooed on my forehead! I placed the message everywhere- on the syllabus, on the LMS, and in emails. 

    Designing the course was the easy part (as if!). Teaching it was where the learning curve hit! I ran headfirst into the tension of teaching for evaluation and teaching for learning. It's hard for students to focus on learning when every mistake costs them points. So I introduced a "resubmit with changes to improve your grade" policy. 

    Then came the online version. Then the qualitative research component, and then managing group dynamics. Then, helping students find parsimonious, research-worthy problems.  And now? AI!

    Always a learning curve, always a new challenge!

Work in Progress

Armed with multiple terrible first drafts, countless syllabi, tangles of new ideas, scores of students, and many, many first days of the semester, here I am still trying to make sense of it. 

With appointment, tenure, and promotion behind me, it is no longer a frantic scramble for a job, then security and advancement. Now it is more of a gentle stroll towards becoming the academic I always wanted to be,- the seeker of new knowledge, the un-boring and quirky teacher, thinking, trying, learning.

Always with a good cup of coffee!