Everyone Will Suffer in the Wake of Trump Administration’s Research Cuts

Trump Administration Policies Have Chilling Effects on Academia

Harvard Yard in the winter. Source: Shutterstock

By Paul Friedman

Tighter enforcement of immigration regulations and cuts in research grants under the Trump administration are having negative impacts on academic work in general and on not-for-profit professional associations, including the Academy of Management, in particular.

Academy of Management (AOM) Scholar Peter Bamberger of Tel Aviv University, the president of AOM, says you can see it clearly in the run-up to the AOM’s annual meeting in Copenhagen. Among other issues, there is concern about how the visas of foreign students are being treated by authorities such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“A good number of the research papers that have been accepted for presentation come from doctoral students from the United States; many of the doctoral students in the United States are foreign doctoral students; and some of the foreign doctoral students in management in the U.S. are considering the potential costs of leaving the U.S. to present their paper,” Bamberger said.

“We are concerned that some of these foreign Ph.D. students, rather than taking that risk, may opt to stay at their offices in the USA and not present their research, which would obviously be deleterious to our science,” he said.

“It would be very unfortunate if innovative papers and important findings are not presented at the 2025 conference because foreign U.S.-based scholars are concerned about the validity of their visas.”

Bamberger said he doesn’t know any AOM members whose students have been deported, but he does know that some AOM scholars are among those being hit by cuts in federal funding for research.

“Those individuals who had grant money to study diversity, equity, and inclusion—that’s all gone,” Bamberger said. “Those individuals don’t have the grants anymore and as a result, the research stops.

“Now, it’s the right of a government to determine how it wants to allocate funding for research, so I can’t necessarily say that this is something that’s undemocratic or unfair,” he said. “That was the result of the election, but it is having a problematic effect.”

Bamberger said he sees an ironic example of how cuts in research can have unexpected results.

“A lot of that research on DEI is not necessarily pro-DEI,” he said. “For example, my own research on gender and racial pay equity suggests that contemporary policies oriented towards enhancing the equity have significant unintended negative consequences, including compensation compression.

“So when you cut off the funding for all research that mentions certain keywords assumed to be related to DEI, you’re cutting off the funding of people doing research that indicates problems with DEI policy, as well as perhaps supporting policies that may be favored by certain politicians.”

AI Is a Tool to Boost Efficiency, Not to Reduce Headcount

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By Paul Friedman

Artificial intelligence is often seen as a threat to employment, but it can be used to preserve jobs in times of uncertainty such as the current one when many economists are sounding the alarm about a looming recession.

Academy of Management Scholar Peter Bamberger of Tel Aviv University said AI can be used to help businesses maintain skilled workforces when they may have to find ways to cut costs.

“What kind of jobs may disappear? What kinds of skills will you still need? What skills can we do without? There’s uncertainty there,” Bamberger said. “Perhaps you want to take that workforce and upgrade them over time.

“You have to know where your business is going and have a good sense as to what kinds of competencies you need,” he said. “There are clearly benefits to retaining your workforce as long as you can afford to train them to augment the AI and enhance its value.

“Increasingly organizations are doing this and using AI in this process.”

Bamberger said AI is now allowing organizations to better understand how to leverage and develop the talent in their workforce.

“Often we refer to something called the talent marketplace, something that organizations probably should have been doing decades ago, which is keeping inventories of their workforce’s competencies and skills,” Bamberger said. “AI is enhancing the ability of organizations to leverage the workforce they have in place by moving people around on short-term internal gigs in organizations and getting them prepared for positions that might open up in the future.

“These are systems that help organizations enhance the competency level of their workforce and limit the need to necessarily turn to the external labor market to secure the talent they need, which can be quite expensive,” he said.

“Ultimately it may offer a far more economical way to maximize the return from investments in human capital.”

There’s also a benefit of AI to employees, according to Bamberger.

“AI—having an understanding of the individual’s background and experiences and skills and competencies—can search through a wide range of projects that may require a month or two of work and then propose those to an employee during that individual’s slack time that they take on this additional project,” he said.

“And if they do enough of these projects over the course of two or three years, they’re going to be set to fill these new roles that they’re interested in doing and the organization needs them to fill.”

How Looming Stagflation May Affect Pay

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By Paul Friedman

At a time when some forecasts predict continuing or worsening inflation or stagflation and possibly a recession, pay transparency adds to the pressure on organizations’ decision-makers.

Peter Bamberger of Tel Aviv University, an Academy of Management scholar who published a book based on his research on pay transparency, said managers will need to build systems of compensation that are more justifiable and understandable to employees.

“The first step with pay transparency is not necessarily to disclose pay levels of one employee or another employee, but rather to disclose how pay is determined in the organization,” Bamberger said. “Most employees have no understanding whatsoever how their pay is determined in the organization and how other people’s pay is determined in the organization.

“Simply understanding pay processes and procedures, all the evidence suggests, has beneficial effects for both employees and employers with very few, if any, side effects—except that employers have to work harder to build these equitable and fair systems.”

Bamberger said pay transparency is always problematic for decision-makers.

“No one wants their decisions to be transparent to other people—transparency is great when we are the observers, but when we’re the observed, it’s a terrible thing,” Bamberger said. “It comes with potentially unintended negative consequences, especially when you have to think about what happens when people see that they are paid less than other people.

“It becomes problematic for the ones making the decisions, and it can be problematic for the organization,” he said. “So there are complications with pay transparency; there’s no question about it.”

Still, Bamberger said he believes that “sunshine is the best antiseptic,” and pay transparency can produce surprising positive results.

“What the evidence shows is that most employees underestimate how much their superiors are making, and when you think about that, it generates a tendency of individuals to think that they’ll do better by leaving their current organization,”

Bamberger said. “The grass is always greener; if I want a pay increase, I have to go outside, and that movement has costs to the current employer.

“So there’s merit, potentially, in letting people see what the potential income might be for moving up within the organization,” he said.

“I think organizations that are forced to be more accountable and hence build more effective pay systems—more explainable and justifiable pay systems—ultimately enhance the quality of the human capital they can bring in and hold to enhance their competitiveness, which becomes really important in a period of stagflation.”

Why We Love Time-Travel Tales

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By Daniel Butcher

People love stories that involve time travel, from books such as The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, and the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon (adapted into a TV series) and shows such as Doctor Who and Quantum Leap to comedy movies such as Groundhog Day, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Hot Tub Time Machine and action/adventure films such as the Back to the Future and Terminator series.

What’s so universally compelling about the concept?

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University said that the appeal of time-travel stories is that people often imagine what it would be like to travel backward and forward in time.

“We live in any given moment, but in those moments as we mentally time travel, we can remember select things, we can forecast things, and so we can create whatever story we want,” Shipp said. “When we see it in movie or show form, it fascinates us to be able to move into the future and see, ‘How did that play out?’—there’s a little bit of certainty that comes with that, so that’s one element.

“Another part of that is that we forget how things change,” she said. “For example, we assume, ‘If I am in an accident and suffer an injury and I lose the use of my legs, I would be so unhappy,’ and there’s a lot of research on this; yet we know that people have happiness set points.

“We forget the resilience that we have over time.”

Popular fantasy

“I was just thinking about this today in terms of the weather,” Shipp said. “We’re having this really weird cold snap in Texas, and so, of course, my brain is thinking, ‘Well, if this is what the weather is going to be from now on, I’m going to move someplace else.’

“But that thought assumes this experience would be the same in another 10 years, rather than be temporary or change in another way,” she said. “What do I know about what the future holds?

“Some of those time-travel films get us thinking about the elements we’ve forgotten about the past or what might be in the future, so it’s as much a fantasy as it gives us something to sink our teeth into when we think about what’s continuous versus what’s changing.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

Understanding Time to Manage It Better

By Daniel Butcher

Time flies when you’re having fun or in the zone at work, but it crawls when you’re in pain or doing a boring task.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on that topic with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that a key element of subjective time is people’s interpretation and perception of time itself.

“Working on the expense report, even 15 minutes probably feels like forever versus 15 minutes in a crisis situation feels like a blink of an eye,” Shipp said. “There are different ways in which we perceive time itself, the units of time, and that shapes how we structure our time.

“That could be things like deadlines—say you asked me, ‘Hey, can you get this to me by Thursday?’” she said. “That may seem like a very long deadline to you, but if I have a very busy week, maybe that feels like that’s way too soon.

“It has implications for how and when we work, especially how we work with each other.”

In Shipp’s and her colleagues’ research on different elements of subjective time, they looked at all the different ways in which people have studied time, and which aspects of it scientists haven’t studied. People who take time to examine how they perceive and interpret time may be able to improve their time management.

“We found was there are many gaps, both in how researchers and practitioners look at time,” Shipp said. “We found many ways in which you can better use your time if you think about it subjectively and not just objectively.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

Trade Tasks with Coworkers to Increase Meaningfulness

By Daniel Butcher

Many people want to be able to find meaning in their jobs, but fewer stop to take stock of their current roles and whether there’s anything that can be done to make them more meaningful.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on that topic with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that too many of us don’t slow down enough to think about the meaning of time at work and how we spend it.

“I don’t think people often stop and reflect about, ‘Is what I’m doing at work meaningful to me?’—not what’s prioritized in my job or for somebody else, but rather, ‘Is what I’m doing in my work meaningful to me personally?’” Shipp said. “Particularly if I have some choice—‘I get to work on this project’ or ‘I get to do this volunteer opportunity’—those things are more or less meaningful to different people, so finding ways to increase those activities can shape how meaningful your job is and help you to move away from meaningless tasks.

“Maybe do reports at your low-energy time of day, but do the meaningful activities at the time when you’re most productive and can most take them in. Then your work feels more fulfilling because you’re really synchronizing those things,” she said. “You also can offshoot or delegate things that you don’t find meaningful—quite frankly, I’ve done this with colleagues—you trade or swap tasks with somebody that you work with; maybe they do find those things meaningful, and so we can do a swap of job activities.

“Maybe I join a committee because it gives me a lot of meaning and I love it but that you think is not very meaningful, and vice versa.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

Why Time-Management Hacks Don’t Work for Everyone

By Daniel Butcher

When it comes to time-management tips, people respond to work schedules and deadlines differently, and what works for an early bird might not be useful for a night owl.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University said that time management is a common headache for many workers.

“There’s still a really big push to better manage your time, and even right now, I’m still seeing elements of post-pandemic burnout,” Shipp said. “My theory is that many people struggle with time management because leaders have never gotten down to the meaning of people’s time at work and an individual perspective of how workers are currently managing—or would prefer to manage—their time.

“Time-management hacks that are so commonly prescribed might work for some people but not for others—for some people, it might make it worse,” she said. “For example, it is widely prescribed to block your workday to work on certain things at certain times—but that overlooks how some people work better in a state of flow, working based on events, not time.

“There’s a couple of time-management issues that have been around for a long time, but we’re looking at them too simplistically, without understanding how people experience and view time individually.”

Instead, experts and influencers are touting life hacks, including time-management strategies, that resonate with a percentage of the population but might not work for everybody.

“It’s really comparable right now to the research on nutrition—they’re finding customized diets that are optimized for different metabolisms and making individual prescriptions for workouts and what to eat,” Shipp said.

“We used to think of this as ‘calories in, calories out,’ but now we realize, ‘Wow, it isn’t that simple, because you could eat the same things as me, but we have different outcomes because we have different biological makeups,’” she said

The same thing goes for individuals’ cognitive makeup and their chronological perceptions of time.

“For example, are you an early-morning person or are you a late-night person?” Shipp said. “That can affect your performance as your time management and task prioritization needs to be shared to your energy level.

“Similarly, rigid work schedules of certain hours in the office may work for some employees but not others,” she said.

“There are so many things that we don’t yet incorporate into workforce discussions that that would help us to get away from these blanket hacks and one-size-fits-all recommendations.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

The Pitfalls of Thinking about Your Jobs Instead of Your Career

By Daniel Butcher

Far too often, workers either stay too long in a job that isn’t a good fit, or, at the other extreme, hop from job to job without a coherent plan for achieving their desired career path.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University said that when it comes to people deciding whether their current job is a good fit or which jobs to apply for, they shouldn’t miss the forest for the trees. Put another way, think of each job you apply for in the context of the career that you’d like to have over the long haul.

“Career-planning is a long-lived topic, but in many ways, people have moved away from thinking about careers and instead it’s just a string of jobs—maybe you have this job for a year and that job for a year, but none of them ties into a larger career path,” Shipp said. “One of the things that you may regret is accepting a job without thinking about your fit over time, for example.”

Over time, it’s crucial to plan for the career you want and articulate the story you’re telling yourself, the narrative of what that looks like, and whether the job you’re in or applying to fits that narrative, she said.

“If we aren’t doing long-term career planning and lose the ability to think of ourselves as the protagonist in a continuous story from past to present to future, then people can make job changes that don’t necessarily fit or work any better than where they were before,” Shipp said.

“Many companies in America seem to simply accept this job-hopping trend, recruiting constantly to overcome the short-term tenures that are now so common,” she said. “But individuals can create a better experience for themselves if they give some thought to their career narrative.

“If crafted thoughtfully, they may even find a better fit with an organization that values the same things.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

An Overlooked Challenge of RTO Mandates

By Daniel Butcher

It may be counterintuitive, but if leaders and managers are willing to be more flexible in how employees manage their own time, then they may get more productivity out of them. That goes against the grain as the U.S. federal government, tech giants including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and financial-services titans including J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock have all issued return-to-office (RTO) mandates.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on the how we experience time with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that the subjective nature of how we perceive time and the variance of which hours people are most productive at work are factors that contribute to the “square-peg-in-a-round hole” awkwardness of requiring employees to be in the office five days every week from nine to five.

“That’s why things like the return-to-office mandates can be challenging. Even things as simple as saying, ‘We’ll do a hybrid schedule, but you’ll need to be in the office during these hours on these days of the week; here’s when we’ll be back,’” Shipp said.

“That assumes that schedule works for everyone, and it’s hard to meet individual needs while you impose collective schedules,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think about it; it means, in fact, we should think about it more–but it takes a lot of talent to do this.”

People appreciate flexibility

“First of all, we have to be aware that people need individual flexibility, so from a leadership perspective, we have to start asking employees, ‘What do you value? When do you like to work? What’s meaningful to you? What’s your background about time management?’” Shipp said.

“I don’t think a lot of leaders do that, because if they don’t know their own personal views and uses of time, they’re certainly not assuming that employees are different from them,” she said.

“My research would indicate that individuals could be very different about people’s scheduling preferences and time-management habits, yet leaders make those assumptions and never have them become explicit.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile

There’s More than One Way to Manage Time Effectively

By Daniel Butcher

While managers often set rigid work schedules, to-do lists, and deadlines, more flexibility can enable workers to prioritize tasks in ways that help them manage their time more effectively.

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on the subjective experience of time with Karen Jansen of North Carolina State University, said that there’s no one-size-fits-all method of time management that’s effective for everyone.

“Our research on how people perceive and interpret time makes us stop and question fixed time-management suggestions: ‘Start your day in this way,’ or ‘Work at this pace and do these things,’ or ‘Here’s how you focus 100% of the time,’” Shipp said. “Those hacks can be great if you need them, but for some people, that’s not what they need.

“For many people, quite frankly, what we need is more thought into questions like, ‘What do I subjectively perceive about time, and where did I get my understanding of time?’” she said.

Shipp said that she began thinking about how work influences our perception of time when looking at her parents’ schedules, as well as her own early work experiences.

“My dad was a banker, so he had bankers’ hours, and then my very first job was at a government facility where we had to track our time to the 10th of an hour and charge it to different accounts, so I became really aware of time,” Shipp said. “It’s hard for me to step away from the office at three o’clock, because I think, ‘Nope, this time must be allocated in this way until after five o’clock.’

“When we start to question those socialization influences, we say, ‘Is this assumption about time helping me or is this harming me?’” she said. “That’s what subjective time brings in, the awareness of different ways to perceive the passage and meaning of time in concert with objective time: clocks, calendars, and schedules.

“If we think of time subjectively, we can better manage our time and our energy in ways that are fulfilling and productive, both for our work and for ourselves.”

A sample of Shipp’s AOM research findings:

• Subjective Time: What It Is and Why It Matters at Work
• Paths to Retaining Employees Who Go the Extra Mile