About the Contributors

Kajsa Asplund is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Management and Organization at the Stockholm School of Economics. Her doctoral research focuses on how employees’ social identities are affected by Talent Management and Performance Management practices. The research also investigates the consequences of these identity-related dynamics in terms of loyalty, commitment, and work effort.

Jean M. Bartunek is the Robert A. and Evelyn J. Ferris Chair and Professor of Management and Organization at Boston College. Her Ph.D. in social and organizational psychology is from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a past president and fellow of the Academy of Management. In 2009, she won the Academy of Management’s Career Distinguished Service Award, and she was chair of its Ethics Adjudication Committee from 2009 to 2012. Her research interests center on organizational change and academic-practitioner relationships. She is currently an associate editor of the Academy of Management Review and the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.

Pernilla Bolander is Associate Professor at the Department of Management and Organization at the Stockholm School of Economics, where she also took her Ph.D. Her research interests focus on how HR processes are put into practice in organizations. More specifically, recent research projects have investigated how individual employees are described, assessed, categorized, and quantified in different HR processes. In her earlier research, she has studied employee selection and competence mapping initiatives and now focuses on Talent Management.

Sarah J. Brazaitis is Senior Lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Organization and Leadership Department where she teaches courses on team dynamics to graduate students and executives and runs three experiential group relations conferences (based on the Tavistock model) annually. Her research centers on the interplay of social identity and group dynamics. She maintains a practice of organizational consulting with a focus on teams, executive coaching, and leadership development. She is a Fellow of the A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems and a past member of their Board of Directors. Sarah is a licensed psychologist in the state of New York.

David Coghlan is a Professor Emeritus and Fellow Emeritus at the Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He specializes in organization development and action research and is active in both communities internationally. He has published over 150 articles and book chapters. Recent books include: Inside Organizations (Sage, 2016), Organizational Change and Strategy (Routledge, 2016), Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization (4th ed. Sage, 2014), Collaborative Strategic Improvement through Network Action Learning (Edward Elgar, 2011). He is co-editor of the The Sage Encyclopedia of Action Research (2014) and of the four volume sets Fundamentals of Organization Development (Sage, 2010) and Action Research in Business & Management (Sage, 2016). He serves on the editorial advisory boards of Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Action Research, Action Learning: Research and Practice, Systemic Practice and Action Research, The OD Practitioner among others.

David Cooperrider, Ph.D., is Distinguished University Professor and holds the Fairmount Santrol – David L. Cooperrider Professorship in Appreciative Inquiry, the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, where he is the faculty founder of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. David is also the Honorary Chairman of Champlain College’s David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry at the Robert P. Stiller School of Business. David is best known for his original theoretical articulation of “AI” or Appreciative Inquiry with his mentor Suresh Srivastva. David advises a wide variety of corporations including Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Verizon, Cleveland Clinic, Fairmount Minerals, McKinsey, and Wal-Mart as well as the Navy, Red Cross, United Nations, and hundreds of international private voluntary organizations (the GEM project.) David is also a founding Board Member of the Taos Institute and the International Association of Positive Psychology. David has published 25 books and authored over 100 articles and book chapters. He has served as editor of both the Journal of Corporate Citizenship with Ron Fry and the current academic research four-volume series on Advances for Appreciative Inquiry, with Michel Avital. David’s books include Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change (with Diana Whitney); The Organization Dimensions of Global Change (with Jane Dutton); Organizational Courage and Executive Wisdom (with Suresh Srivastva); and The Strengths-based Leadership Handbook (with Brun & Ejsing.)

Asha N. Gipson is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Social-Organizational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. Since starting her Ph.D. program, Asha has taught, coached, trained, and consulted with undergraduates, graduate students, and executives. Her research interests focus on building leader and group capacities with a special emphasis on Black and millennial populations. In addition to her studies, she also teaches courses on group dynamics and industrial-organizational psychology at Brooklyn College and Hunter College. She currently serves on the executive committee of the New York Center for the Study of Groups, Organizations, and Social Systems, an affiliate of the A.K. Rice Institute. Asha received her B.A. from Pomona College and her M.A. in Social-Organizational Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Todd D. Jick is Professor at Columbia Business School and previously Harvard Business School. He has co-authored the textbook, Managing Change, with Maury Peiperl, and The Challenge of Organizational Change with Rosabeth Kanter and Barry Stein. He also has authored more than 75 case studies on Organizational Change. He has been active in Executive Education, and founding President of Global Leadership Services, a leading firm in Executive Development and Training, Executive Team Development, and Change coaching. He has inaugurated courses in Change Management at leading business schools including Columbia, Harvard, London Business School, and Insead.

Elise B. Jones is a doctoral student of Management and Organization in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Her research focuses on the negotiation of individuals’ work and non-work identities, particularly on how people identify with disparate identities across conditions of uncertainty. Her work incorporates themes from gender, diversity, positive psychology, and organizational effectiveness and change. She has presented her work at the Academy of Management, Work and Family Researchers Network, and Association for Women in Psychology conferences. Prior to her academic career she worked in diversity, business strategy, and product management capacities at several high-tech companies.

Mitchell Lee Marks is Professor of Leadership at San Francisco State University and President of the consulting firm JoiningForces.org. He consults with a wide variety of organizations in the areas of organizational change, team building, leadership development, corporate culture, human resources management, and the planning and implementation of mergers, acquisitions, restructurings and other major workplace transitions. He is the author of eight books—including Charging Back Up the Hill: Workforce Recovery after Mergers, Acquisitions and Downsizings and Joining Forces: Making One Plus One Equal Three in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Alliances. He has published scores of articles in practitioner and scholarly journals including Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Human Resource Management. He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Philip H. Mirvis is an organizational psychologist whose studies and private practice concern large-scale organizational change, the workforce and workplace, and business leadership in society. An advisor to companies and NGOs on five continents, he has authored 12 books including The Cynical Americans (social trends), Building the Competitive Workforce (human capital investments), Joining Forces (human dynamics of mergers), To the Desert and Back (business transformation), and Beyond Good Company. Mirvis serves as board member of PYXERA Global and formerly Foundation for Community Encouragement and Society for Organization Learning. He received a career achievement award as “Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner” from the Academy of Management. He teaches Exec-Ed in business schools and firms globally and leads a study of corporate social innovation.

Debra A. Noumair is Founder and Director of the Executive Masters Program in Change Leadership (XMA), Director of Executive Education Programs in Change and Consultation, and on the faculty of the Social-Organizational Psychology Program in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. The focus of her work is on applying systems psychodynamics to executive education as well as to organization change at multiple levels with individuals, teams, and organizations. Dr. Noumair is co-author of Organization Development: A Process of Learning & Changing, 3rd Edition, co-editor of the Emerald annual book series, Research In Organization Change and Development, and coeditor of Group Dynamics, Organizational Irrationality, and Social Complexity: Group Relations Reader 3. She is an Associate Editor for The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and on the International Advisory Board of The Journal of Social and Organisational Dynamics.

William A. Pasmore, Ph.D., is Professor of Practice at Teachers College, Columbia University and Senior Vice President at the Center For Creative Leadership. As a thought leader in the field of Organization Development, he has published 28 books including Leading Continuous Change, Designing Effective Organizations, Creating Strategic Change, Relationships That Enable Enterprise Change and Sociotechnical Systems: A Sourcebook. He served as Editor of The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and, along with Richard Woodman, were the Founding Editors of Research In Organizational Change and Development.

Danielle L. Pfaff is an advanced doctoral student in the Social-Organizational Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include group dynamics, gender stereotypes, and emotional labor, and her dissertation focuses on emotion management in senior women leaders. She currently coordinates on-site logistics for the Executive Masters Program in Change Leadership and the Principles and Practices of Organization Development Program at Teachers College and supports the administration of both the Masters Program in Social-Organizational Psychology and the ongoing group relations work at Teachers College. She also interns at Russell Reynolds Associates in their Leadership & Succession Practice. Danielle received her B.A. from Tufts University in Clinical Psychology.

Staci Lynne Ripkey, Ed.D. is Assistant Dean for Student Affairs and Academic Support Services and and an adjunct assistant professor at New York University’s College of Dentistry. With more than a decade of experience as a higher education administrator, Dr. Ripkey has also held roles in medical education at Columbia University, and in undergraduate liberal arts education at New York University. She holds a doctorate in Higher and Postsecondary Education and a Master of Education in Organization and Leadership from Columbia University, as well as a Master of Arts in Higher Education Administration from New York University.

Christine M. St. John is a Ph.D. candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, focusing on deepening our awareness and understanding of the underlying meanings and beliefs that drive group dynamics in order to work toward more just and equitable organizations and increased impact of social movements. Chris works as an independent organizational and leadership development consultant in the social sector to help build organizational, team, and individual capacity for learning. Chris is an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College and holds a B.A. in Sociology from the College of the Holy Cross and an M.A. in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University.

Kinthi D. M. Sturtevant has over 25 years as a practitioner managing change programs for global companies and diverse industries. As VP/Partner in IBM Global Business Services and a leader in PwC’s OCM practice, she supported clients, developed methods and training for generations of consultants. She was IBM’s Director, Values-based Culture and VP, OCM CoE, where she led development of change methods, tools, and technologies for a community of 8,000 internal practitioners. She lectures to clients, at Teachers College and Columbia Business School. She has psychology degrees from Yale, Teachers College, Columbia, and a certificate in Advanced OCM from Harvard Executive Education.

Marvin Weisbord had a 50-year career as manager, writer, researcher, and consultant to corporations and medical schools. He was a founder and co-director of Future Search Network, a global non-profit whose members manage strategic planning meetings for communities worldwide. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organization Development Network, which voted his book Productive Workplaces one of the “Top Five Most Influential OD books of the Past 40 Years.” For 20 years, he was a partner in the consulting firm Block Petrella Weisbord, a member of NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, and of the European Institute for Transnational Studies (eit). He is a fellow of the World Academy of Productivity Science and has been a Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania; Visiting Research Scientist, Norwegian Institute of Technology; Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Organizational Dynamics Program, University of Pennsylvania; Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Ashridge Business School, Hertfordshire, UK; and Resource Faculty Member, Organization Systems Renewal Program (OSR), Antioch and Seattle Universities. His books include Organizational Diagnosis (1978), Productive Workplaces (3rd edition, 2012), Discovering Common Ground (1992), and (with Sandra Janoff) Future Search (3rd edition, 2007), Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There! (2010) and Lead More, Control Less (2015).

Andreas Werr is Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) and Head of its Department of Management and Organization. He is also Head of the Center for HRM and Knowledge work at the SSE Institute for Research. He holds a Ph.D. from SSE and his research has focused on different aspects of knowledge work in general and of management consultants in specific. More specifically, he has researched and published on topics including knowledge management, purchasing professional services, HRM in knowledge intensive organizations, knowledge integration in knowledge intensive teams and knowledge flows across organizational boundaries. Current research engagements focus on the quantification of competence and qualifications in the context of HRM.

Richard W. Woodman (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Professor Emeritus of Management at Texas A & M University where he taught for 38 years. His research and writing on organizational change and organizational creativity has been widely published in leading journals and scholarly books. Dr. Woodman is the former editor of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and a founding editor (along with Bill Pasmore) of the annual series, Research in Organizational Change and Development currently published by Emerald. In a former life, Dr. Woodman was a Military Intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, worked for several petroleum companies, and was vice-president of a financial institution.