Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Anjali Bhatt, Harvard Business School "Who Switches Cultural Codes? Evidence from an Organizational Merger"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Anjali Bhatt - Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School, and Complexity Fellow, Santa Fe Institute
Title:
Who Switches Cultural Codes? Evidence from an Organizational Merger
Abstract:
What explains variation in how individuals adapt in culturally heterogeneous contexts? The most consequential cultural dynamics often occur at the intersection of multiple social groups and cultural codes, yet research on social learning and adaptation has predominantly focused on intragroup contexts and conformity to a single group culture. In this talk, I investigate the relationship between these two instances of cultural adaptation – intragroup conformity and intergroup code-switching. Theoretically, conformity may alternately indicate an individual’s capacity to learn and adapt to cultural codes (“skill”) or an individual’s signal of commitment to their group (“will”). I propose that these two theories can be disentangled based on individuals’ intragroup social status: low status individuals who exhibit intragroup conformity may be more likely to switch cultural codes in intergroup contexts, while high status individuals who exhibit intragroup conformity may tend to culturally entrench when exposed to multiple codes. I find evidence for these ideas by applying the tools of computational linguistics to a unique dataset of 1.5 million employee emails and personnel records from before and after an organizational merger of two U.S. regional banks. To circumvent the assumption of cultural homogeneity (a critical challenge for measuring culture), I exploit a random forest classifier to categorize the linguistic styles of messages as either breaching or conforming to existing cultural codes. I discuss implications for status-based theories of cultural boundary work, cultural adaptation in heterogenous contexts, and post-merger cultural dynamics.
Speaker Bio:
Anjali Bhatt is an Assistant Professor in the Organizational Behavior Unit at HBS and a Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute for the study of complex adaptive systems. Professor Bhatt completed her PhD in organizational behavior from Stanford GSB and her AB in physics and chemistry from Harvard College. Professor Bhatt's research investigates structural and cultural change in organizations, including the dynamics of hiring, M&A, and reorganizations. Her work employs a variety of computational methods, including simulations, natural language processing, and machine learning.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/91615317110
Passcode: NICO2022
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Lightning Talks w/ Northwestern Scholars!
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speakers:
Yessica Herrera, Visiting Scholar, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Talk Title: The Body Speaks: Visual Patterns of Psychological Stress
Aakriti Kumar, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Talk Title: Evaluating Elements of Empathic Communication with Experts, Crowds, and Large Language Models
Tingyu "Mark" Zhao, PhD Student, Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences
Talk Title: Noise Filtering in Complex Networks
Sign Up:
Sign up to present at a future Lightning Talk session. NICO Lightning Talks are open to graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/95387714084
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Rosemary Braun, Northwestern University "The Scale of Life"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Rosemary Braun, Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Biosciences, Northwestern University
Title:
The Scale of Life
Abstract:
Living systems exhibit surprising and beautiful self-organization at all scales. At the atomic level, proteins self-assemble into macromolecular complexes. The function of these machines is orchestrated within the cell by regulatory networks, whose activity is in turn dictated by, and coordinated with, the cells environment. This coordination takes place across large spans of space and time: the size and lifetime of organisms as large as the blue whale. Populations and ecosystems of many organisms in turn exhibit remarkable emergent dynamics. Today, advances in single-cell assays enable us to probe the molecular state of every cell in a sample in high-dimensional detail. But is this the correct scale at which to probe living systems? What can we learn from this data, and how can we abstract from the microscopic details to macroscopic phenotypes? In this talk, I will discuss some of our recent work bridging the cell and tissue/organism scales, and discuss some challenges and opportunities for the future.
Speaker Bio:
Rosemary Braun is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biosciences, Applied Mathematics [ESAM], and Physics at Northwestern University. A theoretical physicist by training, she earned her PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois, followed by a Masters in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute (NIH) before joining Northwestern as a faculty member. Today, she works at the intersection of statistics, mathematics, and biology to develop computational tools for analyzing high-dimensional data. In addition to her Northwestern affiliations, she is also Associate Director of the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology, as well as external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/97015976754
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)