Christine Beckman is the Director of the USC Price Center for Social Innovation. She is also the Price Family Chair in Social Innovation and a Professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy. She is the current Editor at Administrative Science Quarterly and Past Division Chair of the Organization and Management Theory division of the Academy of Management. She previously served on the faculty at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. At Maryland, she was the Academic Director for the Center for Social Value Creation, diversity officer, and facilitated a peer network for junior faculty women. At UC Irvine, she was a Chancellor’s Fellow from 2008-2011 and Faculty Director of the Don Beall Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. She was the 2006 Western Academy of Management Ascendent Scholar.
Professor Beckman has published over 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals. She is known for her research on organizational learning, interorganizational networks, inequality, innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly on how collaborative relationships and diverse experiences facilitate organizational change. Her research sites are varied and include urban charter schools, F500 companies, Silicon Valley start-ups, law firms, the U.S. Navy, and German football teams. Her 2020 book, Dreams of the Overworked: Living, Working and Parenting in the Digital Age, is an ethnographic account of working parents’ efforts to be Ideal Workers, Perfect Parents and Ultimate Bodies. The book highlights how technology intensifies these myths of perfection, celebrates the people who actually do the work of scaffolding the dreams of those around them, and reveals the hidden sources of gender inequality in everyday life. She is a native Californian and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University.