Faculty
Keith Leavitt
Scott and Loni Parrish Chair in Business and Professor of Management
Management

Keith Leavitt

541-737-8631

keith.leavitt@oregonstate.edu

Faculty
Keith Leavitt
Overview
Overview
Background
Publications

Overview

Biography

Research areas: Organizational Behavior; Business Ethics.

Research interests: Social cognition; workplace identity; behavioral ethics; machine learning and work; epistemology and research methods.

Dr. Keith Leavitt's research interests include behavioral ethics, identity and situated judgment, and research methods/epistemology. Specifically, much of his research focuses on how social expectations and constraints inform or inhibit ethical behavior in the workplace. His research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (OBHDP), the Journal of Management, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Research Methods, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, and the Journal of Business Ethics. He previously served as an Associate Editor at OBHDP and currently serves on the editorial boards of AMJ, OBHDP, and JAP. He is currently serving as the Program Chair (second year of the elected five-year leadership track) of the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management, and is a former Associate Editor at OBHDP.

Keith's work has been featured in over 200 news and media outlets including the New York Times, Forbes, NBC News, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, Vice News, Wall Street Journal Radio, The Huffington Post, Time Magazine, and prominently on the front of his mother's refrigerator. 

In his spare time, he enjoys mountain biking, fly fishing, skiing, the occasional existential crisis, and trying to ignore rapidly-accumulating indicators of middle-age.  

Credentials

Doctorate in Management and Organization (Ph.D.) University of Washington, Seattle, WA Concentration: Organizational Behavior/ Human Resource Management, Spring 2009. Minors: Research Methods and Sociology (Institutional Analysis).

Career Interests

Research areas: Organizational Behavior; Business Ethics.

Research interests: Social cognition; workplace identity; behavioral ethics; machine learning and work; epistemology and research methods.

Dr. Keith Leavitt's research interests include behavioral ethics, identity and situated judgment, and research methods/epistemology. Specifically, much of his research focuses on how social expectations and constraints inform or inhibit ethical behavior in the workplace. His research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (OBHDP), the Journal of Management, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Research Methods, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, and the Journal of Business Ethics. He previously served as an Associate Editor at OBHDP and currently serves on the editorial boards of AMJ, OBHDP, and JAP. He is currently serving as the Program Chair (second year of the elected five-year leadership track) of the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management, and is a former Associate Editor at OBHDP.

Keith's work has been featured in over 200 news and media outlets including the New York Times, Forbes, NBC News, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, Vice News, Wall Street Journal Radio, The Huffington Post, Time Magazine, and prominently on the front of his mother's refrigerator. 

In his spare time, he enjoys mountain biking, fly fishing, skiing, the occasional existential crisis, and trying to ignore rapidly-accumulating indicators of middle-age.  

 

 

Background

Experience

  • Professor of Management, College of Business (July 2023-present).
  • Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Management,  College of Business (September 2021-present).
  • Associate Dean for Research and Associate Professor,  College of Business (July 2020-September 2021).
  • Associate Professor, College of Business (Fall 2015-Spring 2020).
  • Assistant Professor, College of Business (Fall 2011-Present).        
  • Assistant Professor, Army Center for the Professional Military Ethic, United States Military Academy at West Point (Summer 2009-Summer 2011).

Honors & Awards

  • Scott & Loni Parrish Professor of Business (2024-present).
  • College of Business External Research Award (2024).
  • College of Business Prominent Scholar Award (2022).
  • College of Business Prominent Scholar Award (2021).
  • College of Business Prominent Scholar Award (2020).
  • College of Business Scholarly Impact Award (2020).
  • Best Reviewer Award, Academy of Management Journal (2019).
  • OSU College of Business Betty S. Henry Amundson Faculty Scholar Award in Ethics (2015-2024).
  • Betty & Forest Simmons Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award, OSU College of Business (2018).
  • College of Business Prominent Scholar Award (2018).
  • College of Business Prominent Scholar Award (2017).
  • Finalist, Academy of Management Review 2015 Best Paper Award.
  • Western Academy of Management Ascendant Scholar (early career) Award (2015). 
  • College of Business Dean's Professorship in Excellence (2013-2015).
  • College of Business 2013 Excellence in Scholarship Award. 
  • Organizational Research Methods 2011 Best Paper Award.
  • Academy of Management Journal 2010 Best Paper Award.
  • 2011 Saroj Parasuraman Award for outstanding publication (presented by the gender and diversity in organizations division of the Academy of Management).
  • Outstanding reviewer award, Academy of Management Annual Meeting (OB division), 2010.
  • Outstanding reviewer award, Academy of Management Annual Meeting (MOC division), 2009.
  • Graduate teaching excellence award, University of Washington Business School, 2007.
  • Kindergartner of the week (with no distinction), Crosby Elementary School, 1982.

Publications

Academic Journal
Finance

“Experimental Shareholder Activism: A Novel Approach to Organizational Research”

Decision making processes and consequent policy decisions of top management teams often have tremendous impact on employee careers and wellbeing, but the difficulty of accessing executive decision making has made studying such processes especially difficult. Whereas scholars have often relied on their own professional networks to gather small samples of executives or leveraged proxy measures compiled from publicly-available documents, we propose and demonstrate an alternative approach which we term Experimental Shareholder Activism (ESA). ESA allows researchers to directly study executive leadership via the shareholder proposal process—under Rule 14a-8—by purchasing relatively small amounts of stock in a company, and experimentally manipulating features of shareholder proposals to elicit responses from key stakeholders within the company. This approach allows for the direct examination of executive decision making with the benefit of quasi-experimental design. We describe the method, identify vocational and career-relevant areas of inquiry best suited to ESA, and discuss manipulations readily embedded in shareholder proposals. We then provide a toolkit for scholars interested in studying executive decision making on employee career and Human Resource-related outcomes, and demonstrate the viability of such an approach via a pilot experiment.
Details

2020 Elsevier Jonathan Kalodimos Keith Leavitt View on: