The organizational behaviour (OB) program is designed for students interested in conducting applied research on people in organizational settings. Our program is designed to be accessible to students from a variety of academic backgrounds, such as social sciences, business, and education.

The OB area coursework exposes you to current research and theory from throughout the field. Courses cover psychological processes in organizations, organizational theory, interpersonal and group processes, multilevel dynamics, and specialized topics such as conflict and negotiation, and theory-building.

In addition to coursework, you work collaboratively with a faculty advisor to design and conduct research studies that enhance knowledge about OB and fulfill program requirements.

Broadly speaking, faculty in the OB group are interested in how organizations and their members build, maintain, enhance, and damage professional connections and the effects these can have on individual, group, and organizational productivity and well-being. Some of our current research cover topics including occupational health and safety, the dynamics of trust, examination of institutions, traditions, workplace harassment, founders’ influence on their firms, culture and identity cross-cultural management, women’s career issues, transformational leadership, pro-social and anti-social behaviours in teams, network and alliance dynamics, negotiations, situational constraints individual differences, and social entrepreneurship, among others. Additional detail on faculty interests and current projects can be found below.

Learn more about our professors’ research areas here.

Julian Barling’s current research has two different themes, both of which focus on employee well-being. His first theme focuses on the nature and consequences of transformational leadership. Second, he addresses issues related to a safe workplace, from both a psychological and a physical perspective, involving research on workplace violence, occupational safety, and work stress. Julian previously served as the editor of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, was on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Psychology, and served as chair of the APA’s task force on Workplace Violence. He was co-editor of the Handbook of Work Stress and the Handbook of Organizational Behavior. Julian was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology. In 2009 he was elected as a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Sciences. Julian holds a Queen’s University Research Chair and received Queen’s University’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision in 2009.

Susan Brodt’s research interests are in interpersonal and small group processes in organizations. She is currently studying the social and cognitive dynamics of trust (trust building, violation, and repair) in manager-subordinate relationships, in negotiations, and in virtual or distributed work groups. Underlying Susan’s research is an emphasis on relationships and social aspects of organizational life, and how management practices, technology, and other organization factors can foster (or undermine) effective and satisfying work relationships.

Bill Cooper’s research interests are in political and interpersonal processes in organizations. His current projects deal with self-promotion at work, the use of strong inference in research, the impacts of social, economic and human capital, whether the strength of situations matter, and the status of idiosyncrasy credit theory of leadership.

Tina Dacin’s research intersects micro- and macro-organizational behaviour. She examines institutional change and the role of traditions, culture and identity in individual careers, organizations and society. Tina also writes on the topic of alliances and the social dimensions of collaboration. More recently, she is focusing her interests towards the study of social entrepreneurship and the cultural, institutional and social resources leveraged by social entrepreneurs. She currently serves as Departmental Editor at the Journal of International Business Studies and as a Senior Editor at Organization Science. She has served as Division Chair of OMT Division in the Academy of Management and various roles including program track chair for the Academy of International Business, College of Organization Science and the Corporate Strategy and Governance Interest Group for the Strategic Management Society.

Christopher Miners’ research focuses on abilities, personality traits, and intra- and interpersonal processes that facilitate job performance and promote well-being. He is interested in the influence of emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence on social network centrality and job performance. He is also interested in personality traits and emotions as they relate to job performance, and to psychological and physical well-being. Christopher’s current research examines job characteristics that serve as boundary conditions for the relation between emotional intelligence and job performance. He has also started to examine the determinants of followers’ reactions to a leader’s message, including the leader’s emotional delivery of the message.

Kelley Packalen’s broadly interested in how career histories of founders may influence firm level outcomes. First, she looks at how people's prior work experiences, affiliations and their status may interact to help or hinder them in subsequent career decisions. Second, she considers the regional differences in the types of individuals who become involved in an industry. Professor Packalen also evaluates the emergence of networks with a particular focus on the temporal relationship between different types (i.e. individual, organizational) of networks as well as the changing regional dynamics in the network structure of an industry over time.

Jana Raver’s research focuses primarily upon interpersonal relations and group processes at work. Current topics of investigation include examining the nature and implications of employee behaviours that support each other (e.g., helping behaviours) versus undermine each other (e.g., workplace harassment, insults). A second area focuses upon the integration of diverse or dissimilar employees into work groups and organizations. She has also conducted cross-cultural studies on conflict and on cultural tightness-looseness. Her research spans multiple levels of analysis, including studies at the individual, dyadic, group, organizational, and national levels.