Jennifer Chatman

Jennifer A. Chatman is the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Chatman received her BA and PhD from UC Berkeley and began her career at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL before returning to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She served as the Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School.

Research

Professor Chatman’s recent research focuses on 1) how a culture emphasizing innovation and adaptation buffers firms from economic volatility, 2) how CEO’s personality influences organizational culture, and 3) how diverse groups perform in high pressure situations. Professor Chatman has developed the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP) for assessing organizational culture strength and content as well as the gaps between an organization’s current and desired culture.

Professor Chatman’s research has been highlighted in The Atlantic, Business Week, Business 2.0, The Financial Times, Fortune, Inc., Glamour, The Jungle, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Working Mother. She was a keynote speaker for the Private Equity Women’s Conference, the AACSB Dean’s Conference, and the Economist Innovation Summit. She interviewed Jack Welch for the Commonwealth Club, Comcast, and NPR, and has appeared on television and radio over the years to talk about her research and consulting work. She has written articles that have appeared in numerous academic journals.

Culture, Adaptability, and Firm Performance

One of the most important yet least understood questions is how organizational culture relates to organizational performance. Professor Chatman explores this in her research, which also focuses on providing a conceptually rigorous and valid approach to assessing culture.

Relevant Papers:

• Chatman, J., Caldwell, D., O’Reilly, C., & Doerr, B. (2014). Parsing organizational culture: The joint influence of culture content and strength on performance in high-technology firms, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35 (6): 785-808.
• O’Reilly, C., Caldwell, D., Chatman, J., & Doerr, B. (2014) The promise and problems of organizational culture: CEO personality, culture, and firm performance. Group and Organization Management, 39 (6): 595–625.
• Chatman, J. & Chang, V. (2014). Culture Change at Genentech. California Management Review. 56 (2): 113-129.

Norms and Group Composition

Classic research in psychology, dating back to Sherif’s pioneering work on the so-called “Robber’s Cave” experiments showed that social norms, particularly those that orient group members toward group goals, are remarkably strong predictors of behavior. Professor Chatman’s work has been part of a more recent effort to link norms to processes and outcomes among diverse work groups.

Relevant papers:

• Goncalo, J., Chatman, J., Duguid, M., & Kennedy, J. (2015) Creativity from constraint: How the PC norm influences creativity in mixed-sex work groups. Administrative Science Quarterly, 60: 1-30.

Leadership Reconceptualized as Influence and Status

Professor Chatman’s research on leadership focuses on reconceptualizing traditional theories of leadership which have, by many accounts, reached a point of stagnation. By stripping down the psychological basis of leadership in influence she is able to make more progress in understanding how leaders affect followers in organizations.

Relevant papers:

• Chatman, J. & Caldwell, D. (2014). Leading organizations: The challenge of developing a strategically effective organizational culture without succumbing to the negative effects of power. In D. Teece and M. Augier. Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management.
• O’Reilly, C., Doerr, B., Caldwell, D., & Chatman, J. (2013) "Narcissistic CEOs and Executive Compensation.” The Leadership Quarterly.

Speaking and board memberships

Professor Chatman's research and consulting focus on the business advantages of leveraging organizational culture and leading strategic change, and she has worked with a variety of organizations including Adobe, Apple University, Boise-Cascade, British Telecom, Chiron, Citigroup, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, ConocoPhillips, DNV, eBay, Fannie Mae, First Data, Franklin Templeton, Freddie Mac, Gallo Winery, Genentech, Goldman Sachs, Hotwire, Intel, Kaiser-Permanente, Maersk, Mars Inc., Microsoft, New York Life, Novartis, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, PG&E, Pixar, the Portland Trailblazers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Qualcomm, Roche, Sandia National Laboratories, Salesforce.com, Silver Spring Networks, Statoil, the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Treasury, True Ventures, and Warburg Pincus.

She is a member of the Board of Directors of Simpson Manufacturing (NYSE: SSD) and a Trustee of Prospect Sierra School. She is an academic partner with The Trium Group. She teaches a variety of executive management and MBA courses focusing on leveraging high performance cultures, leading change, and making effective decisions. She has taught in executive education programs at a number of universities, and is faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Executive Education (CEE) flagship program for senior executives, The Berkeley Executive Leader Program. She has served as the faculty Director of CEE and of the Ph.D. program at Haas, and the Chair of the Management of Organizations Group at Haas.

Awards

Professor Chatman has won a variety of research and teaching awards including Haas’ Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, and from the Academy of Management, the Dissertation Award, and the Best Paper of the Year Award, the Scholarly Impact Award and the Cummings Scholar Award. She was honored as the Ascendant Scholar by the Western Academy of Management. She won the Administrative Science Quarterly Scholarly Impact Award, the Accenture Award from the California Management Review and the award for the best paper of 2014 in Groups and Organization Management. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Management and an Editorial Board member of the Annals of the Academy of Management and the Annual Review of Organizational Behavior and Organizational Psychology.

Selected publications

• Goncalo, J., Chatman, J., Duguid, M., & Kennedy, J. (2015) Creativity from constraint: How the PC norm influences creativity in mixed-sex work groups. Administrative Science Quarterly, 60: 1-30.
• Chatman, J., Caldwell, D., O’Reilly, C., & Doerr, B. (2014). Parsing organizational culture: The joint influence of culture content and strength on performance in high-technology firms, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35 (6): 785-808.
• O’Reilly, C., Caldwell, D., Chatman, J., & Doerr, B. (2014) The promise and problems of organizational culture: CEO personality, culture, and firm performance. Group and Organization Management, 39 (6): 595–625.
• Chatman, J. & Chang, V. (2014). Culture change at Genentech. California Management Review. 56 (2): 113-129.
• Chatman, J. & Caldwell, D. (2014). Leading organizations: The challenge of developing a strategically effective organizational culture without succumbing to the negative effects of power. In D. Teece and M. Augier. Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Strategic Management.
• O’Reilly, C., Doerr, B., Caldwell, D., & Chatman, J. (2013) "Narcissistic CEOs and Executive Compensation.” The Leadership Quarterly.
• Sherman E. & Chatman J. (2011). Socialization. In The Encyclopedia of Management. E. H. Kessler (Ed.), Sage.
• Chatman, J., Goncalo, J., Kennedy, J., & Duguid, M. (2011). Political correctness at work. In E. Mannix & M. Neale, Research on managing groups and teams. Vol. 15, JAI Press, Elsevier Science: London.
• Chatman, J. (2010). Norms in mixed race and mixed sex work groups. In James P. Walsh and Arthur P. Brief (Eds.) Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 4 (1), 447-484.
• Chatman, J. A. (2010). Overcoming Prejudice in the Workplace. In J. Marsh, R. Mendoza-Denton & J. Smith (Eds.), Are We Born Racist?: New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology (pp. 75). Boston: Beacon.
• Chatman, J., & Kennedy, J. (2010). Psychological perspectives on leadership. In N. Norhia and R. Kurana (Eds.) Leadership: Advancing the discipline. PP 159–182. Harvard Business Press, Boston.
• O’Reilly, C., Caldwell, D., Chatman, J., Lapiz, M., and Self, W. (2010). How Leadership matters: The effects of leadership alignment on strategic execution. The Leadership Quarterly.21 (1): 104-113.
• Self, W. & Chatman, J. (2009). Identification and commitment in groups. In J. M. Levine and M.A. Hogg (Eds.), Encyclopedia of group processes and intergroup relations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Caldwell, D., Chatman, J., O’Reilly, C., Ormiston, M. & Lapiz, M. (2008). Implementing Strategic Change in a Heath Care System: The Importance of Leadership and Change Readiness," Health Care Management Review, 33 (2).
• Chatman, J. (2008). Integrating themes and future research opportunities in work group diversity. Capstone chapter in Phillips, K., Mannix, E., and Neale, M. (Eds.) (pp. 295–308). Research on managing groups and teams. Vol. 11, JAI Press, Elsevier Science: London.
• Chatman, J., Boisnier, A., Spataro, S., Anderson, C., & Berdahl, J. (2008). Being distinctive versus being conspicuous: The effects of numeric status and sex-stereotyped tasks on individual performance in groups. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 107: 141-160.

External links

• Jennifer Chatman's Haas Homepage
• Jennifer Chatman's Personal Homepage
• Jennifer Chatman's CV