My research examines core processes in organizational life: how authority and leadership are identified, how rewards and recognition are allocated, what arrangements foster productive collaboration, and who is treated as belonging or legitimate. Across my work, I often use gender as a case for understanding these processes, examining how gendered cultural expectations become attached to roles, forms of labor, and everyday interactions.
Although workplaces increasingly recognize women’s contributions, gender inequality persists in part because power and authority remain culturally gendered. My research examines how gender shapes the allocation of different forms of status and rewards across organizational contexts.
As organizations rethink when and where work happens, they also reshape the social conditions that influence collaboration, belonging, and cultural fit. I explore how workplace arrangements such as asynchronous interaction and remote work affect collaboration, cohesion, and perceptions of workplace belonging.
Individuals’ experiences in social institutions are impacted by everyday judgments about who is credible, legitimate, and belonging. My third research area investigates how gender shapes these judgments in interactional and collective decision-making contexts.
Hasenour, Kiersten and Lynn Smith-Lovin. Forthcoming. "Emotions." Encyclopedia of Analytical Sociology, edited by F. Bianchi and F. Barbera. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Hasenour, Kiersten and Ashley Harrell. 2026 "Exchange and Power." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by L. Spillman. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197852729.003.0120.
Hasenour, Kiersten and Lynn Smith-Lovin. 2025. "Affect Control Theory: A Formal Theory of Identity, Action and Emotion." Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by L. Walker and G. Peterson. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035306596.00011.
Rawlings, Craig, Edgar Cook, Kiersten Hasenour, E.K. Maloney, and Lynn Smith-Lovin. 2024 "Are Victims Virtuous or Vilified? The Stories We Tell Ourselves (and Each Other)". Annual Review of Sociology 50(1). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-030222-032739.
Hasenour, Kiersten. 2023. "Juror Gender and Influence in a Domestic Violence Trial." Social Sciences and Humanities Open 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2023.100745.