Academy of Management Honors Michigan Ross Professors with Several Top Awards

Four members of the management and organizations faculty at the Ross School of Business have earned prestigious honors from the Academy of Management, a pre-eminent professional association for business school faculty and practitioners worldwide. 

Sue Ashford: Organizational Behavior Division Lifetime Achievement Award

Sue Ashford, the Michael and Susan Jandernoa Professor of Management and Organizations and chair of Management and Organizations, was named the 2020 recipient of the OAM’s Organizational Behavior Division Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognizes Ashford’s body of research work in the areas of individual proactivity, leadership, job insecurity, and the gig economy.

Members of the award committee wrote, “The depth and breadth of Sue Ashford’s scholarship over 30 years is remarkable and makes her a most distinguished role model in the field. Her work is notable not only for its rigor and relevance, but also its foresight. She foresaw the rise of work insecurity, the importance of finding voice towards superiors, and granting/claiming leadership before these became mainstream issues for scholars and managers.” 

Ashford also earned praise for her efforts as a role model and mentor, especially to women. “In our view, Sue Ashford is a role model of what ‘senior’ scholars in OB should be: Active and engaged in research, a visible player in the academy, and a committed mentor of the next generation,” the committee wrote. 

James Walsh: Management and Organizational Cognition Division Distinguished Scholar Award

James P. Walsh was named the 2020 recipient of the Management and Organizational Cognition Division Distinguished Scholar Award. Walsh is an A.F. Thurnau Professor; the Gerald and Esther Carey Professor of Business Administration; professor of Management & Organizations; professor of Strategy; and chair of Strategy.

Walsh’s honor recognizes his body of work on the cognitive processes that help or distort strategic decision-making and his groundbreaking work on organizational memory.

Members of the nominating committee commented on Walsh’s impact:

• “Jim Walsh is a brilliant scholar who pioneered the work on organizational memory, a topic that lies at the heart of many theories on managerial and organizational cognition.”
• “Jim Walsh's 1995 Organization Science piece pulls scholars into the study of managerial cognition.  He has been the inspiration for many research studies-- including my own!”
• “Jim Walsh has not only a foundational member of our division, leading MOC as the first chair when it was an interest group, but he has also served as president of the Academy of Management. His dedication to furthering scholarship and developing junior researchers has no bounds.”
• “Jim Walsh is the epitome of a distinguished scholar. The achievements he has made over his career so far have shaped the field in profound ways.”

Lindy Greer: Organizational Behavior Division Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior

Lindy Greer, associate Professor for Management and Organizations; Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Fellow; and the faculty director of the Sanger Leadership Center, won the 2020 Organizational Behavior Division Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior award. 

This award recognizes the publication that represents the most significant contribution to the advancement of the field of organizational behavior. The award went to “Blurred Lines: How the Collectivism Norm Operates Through Perceived Group Diversity to Boost or Harm Group Performance in Himalayan Mountain Climbing,”  published in Organization Science by Greer, J.A. Chatman, E. Sherman, and B. Doerr. The paper presents a theory explaining how collectivism causes people to to see less diversity than actually exists in a group, and it examines the impact on group performance.

The judges commented, “This work uses a rich, real-world data set to test important questions. The hypotheses are creative while the findings both challenge and clarify our notions of diversity.”

Jane Dutton: OB Division Mentorship Award

Jane Dutton, the Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Business Administration and Psychology, received the 2020 OB Division Mentorship Award.

This honor recognizes Dutton for excelling at mentoring others in achieving their career objectives through moral, social, and intellectual support — in particular, her work with doctoral students who now hold faculty roles in top business schools.

“Jane has a unique approach among mentors to help each of us to find, embrace, and pursue who we most want to be, as scholars, and as people. This is a selfless and difficult act, for it has shaped as many scholars as it has people who have taken different paths in their lives,” one colleague wrote. 

Another said, “I think that what is a more remarkable form of Jane’s social support is the way that she has influenced a number of people – including myself – to build entire communities of scholars to support each other.”