Jacqueline Gerber

Dr. Jacqueline Gerber is an Associate Professor of Information Systems and Technology at the Palumbo-Donahue School of Business. Dr. Gerber teaches courses in the business core, the information systems & technology major, and the master's program in analytics & information management. Dr. Gerber has received numerous research and teaching awards, most recently, Duquesne University's Rangos Prize in 2022.

Her research studies emerging technology and how different user groups engage with it to accomplish tasks. Her current research interests include behavior in public online communities and social computing environments, the utilization of public online communities and mass collaboration systems by organizations, and the visual display of information in a systems context. Dr. Gerber has conducted research related to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia.

Prior to joining the faculty, she worked at Microsoft as a Most Valuable Professional along with a number of corporations in IT-related positions.

When not working with students on campus, she enjoys walking her dog, Rupert, cooking for her family, and biking along Pittsburgh's riverfront trails.

• Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
• B.B.A., Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College

Dr. Gerber's research focuses on emerging technologies and the behaviors surrounding the technologies. She asks questions regarding how the emerging technologies affect how people interact, make decisions, and comprehend information presented to them. Her current efforts are focused on include social networking technology and mass collaboration systems.

In the area of social networking technology, Dr. Gerber's studies examine the publicness of social networking and how users change their behavior in light of the publicness. Currently, she is examining the impact of boundary-blurring social networking websites in a hiring context and, in particular, focusing on the impression formed by recruiters when boundary-blurring social networking sites are viewed.

Her research on mass collaboration systems, and in particular Wikipedia, focuses on policy systems and how the users manage the creation of product. Present studies examine rule-breaking in mass collaboration systems and how the users come to an agreement in an environment where rule-breaking is permitted. She and her co-authors are also working on a study of contentious objects in mass collaboration systems and how they can be managed. Contentious objects exist when multiple parties disagree about how the object should exist and are given a forum to express their disagreement. This work puts forth a new perspective on boundary objects, which can act to bring two or more parties together, by introducing contentious objects, which permanently act to divide two or more parties and create tension.