Research Research Areas Research Funding Faculty Publications Research Resources

Research Areas

Over the past five years, the DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies has attracted more than $1 million in research funding, supporting innovative research that advances our understanding of organizations, markets, consumers, workplaces, and the broader business environment.

Our faculty have two areas of collective strength; Consumer and Organizational Behaviour and Corporate Governance.

The sections below provide an overview of our core research areas.

Researchers in the Consumer and Organizational Behaviour (COB) cluster focus on the study of human behaviour in consumption and organizational contexts, with a particular focus on being, doing, and influencing. This includes studying the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of consumer, employee, and leader behaviour. Rather than viewing consumers and organizational members as having distinct roles, we take an interdisciplinary approach and study these entities as fulfilling both consumer and organizational roles, taking a social-psychological perspective to bridge the gap between consumer and organizational behaviour disciplines. COB goes deeper than examining how people consume at home and behave at work, it is about understanding how such phenomena impact our lives, our state of being, and the broader social world. By studying the perspective of individuals, groups, and society, we develop research that benefits organizational, consumer, and employee welfare, and quality of life for all.

Faculty research expertise in this domain includes examining globalization, culture, and consumption to consider how globalization is shaping culture, modifying value systems, affecting social identities, and ultimately, altering the dispositions and behaviours of individuals and groups worldwide; social influence topics such as conformity, normative social influence, the influence of leaders, social networks, social values and identities, and understanding social change; and, sustainability, where research focuses on conceptualizing sustainability from a consumer and employee perspective, on individual differences that impact sustainable behaviours, on situational changes that can be implemented to encourage sustainable outcomes, and on the role of labour market institutions in creating equitable and sustainable workplaces.

Researchers in the Corporate Governance cluster study the systems, processes, structures, and frameworks used to control and direct any corporation (for-profit and non-profit) in the best interests of all stakeholders. Stakeholders are not limited to shareholders and employees, but also include customers, suppliers, government, the community, and many more. Faculty study the legal, regulatory, and ethical environment that set the stage for governance. They examine how the internal and external mechanisms of corporate governance provide incentives to management to balance the interests of all stakeholders; how corporate social responsibility affects firm performance, value, risk, and policies; how employee voice, non-mandatory behaviours and other forms of citizenship in the workplace impact organizational outcomes; and, how the development of leadership affects stakeholders. Researchers have training in economics, finance, human resource management, industrial relations, psychology, and statistics, and their research interests are deeply rooted in social science.