Research
The Department of Organizational Sciences and Communication fosters a collaborative and engaged research environment. Students are expected to work closely with peers and faculty on research, and some even collaborate with faculty and students on interdisciplinary projects in other academic units, such as the GW School of Business.
Our faculty are regularly awarded prestigious research grants to further their work in our core program areas, and they receive recognition of their scholarship in top academic journals. For more information on faculty research, view their individual bio pages or visit News & Events.
Communication
Faculty research within the Communication Program has included the study of organizational culture and mental health in China’s public transit organizations, the LGBTQ experience within college athletics, and the identity and psychological well-being of second-generation Asian American immigrants.
Faculty in This Area
Organizational Sciences
Research within the Organizational Sciences Program has focused on topics relating to women’s leadership development, how people deal with complex choices, mentorship on corporate boards and voluntary business standards for multinational enterprises.
Faculty in This Area
I-O Psychology
Faculty from the Industrial-Organizational Psychology Program have delved into research relating to the future of workforce training, perceptions of generational differences, college women’s attitudes toward leadership, the relationship between team diversity and performance, virtual reality algorithms in virtual interviews, adaptive organizational culture, organizational decline and the psychological effects of employee surveillance.
Faculty in This Area
Research News
Fresh Ideas for Developing Women’s Leadership
Associate Professor Gelaye Debebe’s 2019 book, Women's Leadership Development: Caring Environments and Paths to Transformation, offers an interdisciplinary framework of leadership effectiveness and brings this framework to life with detailed and illuminating descriptions of four leadership transformations. The book will be of interest to academics who teach leadership or conduct leadership research, HR professionals who are seeking fresh ideas for how to maximize the impact of leadership training for women, and anyone with a passion for personal growth and development.
Lauren Lanzo Wins 2019 SIOP Scholarship
Lauren Lanzo, PhD '25, won the prestigious George Thornton Graduate Scholarship Award for outstanding scientist-practitioner from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. The scholarship is awarded annually to a graduate student in industrial-organizational psychology who exemplifies the scientist/practitioner model. Lanzo's winning submission was entitled "Relationship Quality and the Impact on Team Effectiveness."
Undergraduate Wins Best Student Poster at SIOP Conference
Organizational Sciences minor Ian Siderits, BA '19, won the 2019 John Flanagan Award for the best student contribution at the annual Society of Industrial-Organizational Psychology (SIOP) conference. Siderits accepted the award along with his co-authors Jerod White, Sarah Zarsky, Dan Ravid and Associate Professor Tara Behrend. Their poster, “Twenty Years of Technology at SIOP: Are I-O Psychologists Lagging?” examines the timeliness of technology research at SIOP conferences since 1998. Learn more about their winning poster on the WAVE Lab website.
New Paper Highlights Negotiation Challenges Across Cultures
Meina Liu, associate professor of communication, recently published a paper in Communication Research focusing on the ways individuals from Hong Kong and the United States handle negotiations. Liu believes that a better understanding of these cultural differences will help people learn how to maintain composure during a dispute and prevent it from escalating to an impasse.
Applying Industrial-Organizational Psychology to the Job Market
How do we prepare students for the future of work? Associate Professor Tara Behrend co-edited the book Workforce Readiness and the Future of Work (Routledge, 2019) that addresses this question. This volume of contributions from leading scholars argues that the large-scale multifaceted efforts required to ensure a reliable and strong supply of talent and skill in the U.S. workforce should be addressed systematically, simultaneously and systemically across disciplines of thought and levels of analysis.
Professor Studies Link Between Communication, Sexual Behavior
Katrina Pariera, assistant professor of communication, recently published a paper in the International Journal of Sexual Health that looks at how women talk about sex with their female friends. “Sex is at the heart of many of our most vexing social issues, and helping people become better communicators about sex is one way we can address some of those issues,” Pariera says.
Millennial Stereotypes Often Rooted in Myth
David Costanza, associate professor of psychology and organizational sciences, put together a special issue of the journal Work, Aging and Retirement called Generations, Age, and the Space Between and found that a lot of what we think we know about millennials is not backed by research.
