Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill encompassing the ability of an individual or organization to "lead" or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints, contrasting Eastern and Western approaches to leadership, and also United States versus European approaches. U.S. academic environments define leadership as "a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task".
Organization development (OD) is the study of successful organizational change and performance. OD emerged from human relations studies in the 1930s, during which psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation. More recently, work on OD has expanded to focus on aligning organizations with their rapidly changing and complex environments through organizational learning, knowledge management and transformation of organizational norms and values. Key concepts of OD theory include: organizational climate, organizational culture and organizational strategies.
Force-field analysis is a development in social science. It provides a framework for looking at the factors (forces) that influence a situation, originally social situations. It looks at forces that are either driving movement toward a goal or blocking movement toward a goal. The principle, developed by Kurt Lewin, is a significant contribution to the fields of social science, psychology, social psychology, community psychology, communication, organizational development, process management, and change management.
James Gardner March was an American sociologist who was professor at Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Education, best known for his research on organizations, his A behavioral theory of the firm and organizational decision making known as Garbage Can Model.
Organizational behavior (OB) or organisational behaviour is the: "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". OB research can be categorized in at least three ways:
Conflict management is the process of limiting the negative aspects of conflict while increasing the positive aspects of conflict. The aim of conflict management is to enhance learning and group outcomes, including effectiveness or performance in an organizational setting. Properly managed conflict can improve group outcomes.
Kurt Lewin was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. Exiled from the land of his birth, Lewin made a new life for himself, in which he defined himself and his contributions within three lenses of analysis: applied research, action research, and group communication were his major offerings to the field of communication.
Karl Edward Weick is an American organizational theorist who introduced the concepts of "loose coupling", "mindfulness", and "sensemaking" into organizational studies. He is the Rensis Likert Distinguished University Professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
Edwin A. Locke is an American psychologist and a pioneer in goal-setting theory. He is a retired Dean’s Professor of Motivation and Leadership at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was also affiliated with the Department of Psychology. As stated by the Association for Psychological Science, "Locke is the most published organizational psychologist in the history of the field. His pioneering research has advanced and enriched our understanding of work motivation and job satisfaction. The theory that is synonymous with his name—goal-setting theory—is perhaps the most widely-respected theory in industrial-organizational psychology. His 1976 chapter on job satisfaction continues to be one of the most highly-cited pieces of work in the field."
Robert E. Kraut is an American social psychologist who studies human-computer interaction, online communities, internet use, group coordination, computers in organizations, and the role of visual elements in interpersonal communication. He is a Herbert Simon Professor of Human-computer Interaction at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Mark van Vugt is a Netherlands evolutionary psychologist who holds a professorship in evolutionary psychology and work and organizational psychology at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Van Vugt has affiliate positions at the University of Oxford, Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA).
Martin Kilduff is a British academic. He is Professor of Management at the UCL School of Management.
Anne-Françoise Rutkowski is a French psychologist and Professor Management of Information: Impact on Organization, Business and Society at the Tilburg University School of Economics and Management. known for her work on virtual collaboration.
Michele J. Gelfand is a cultural psychologist, best known for being an expert on tightness–looseness theory, which explains variations in the strength of social norms and punishments across human groups. She is currently a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Katherine Klein is an American organizational psychologist. Her research covers issues related to employee stock ownership, innovation and technology implementation, leadership, diversity, teams, and social networks, as well as methodological considerations related to multilevel organizational theory and research.
Carsten Karel Willem de Dreu is a Professor of Psychology at Leiden University and Behavioral Economics at the University of Amsterdam and member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received his PhD in social and organizational psychology from the University of Groningen (1993) and was president of the European Association of Social Psychology and the International Association for Conflict Management. In 2016 he was named Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.
Kathleen Sutcliffe is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Business at the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School and School of Medicine and the Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor Emerita of Business Administration at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. She studies high-reliability organizations and group decision making in order to understand how organizations and their members cope with uncertainty and unexpected events, with a focus on reliability, resilience, and safety in health care.
Jennifer A. Chatman is the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Chatman received her BA and PhD from UC Berkeley and began her career at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, before returning to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She served as the Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School.
Intergroup relations refers to interactions between individuals in different social groups, and to interactions taking place between the groups themselves collectively. It has long been a subject of research in social psychology, political psychology, and organizational behavior.
Randall Scott Peterson is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Academic Director of the Leadership Institute at London Business School.
