My scholarly contributions are in three major areas. First, as an organizational/social psychologist, I have focused on planned change processes in groups and organizations. My most recent work has been in mapping a new field of intervention practice, Large Group Interventions, which are ways for the whole organization to come together and participate in decisions. I began this work with a special issue of The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, in 1992. I published Large Group Interventions: Engaging the Whole System for Rapid Change (with Billie Alban)in 1997 that describes all the methods currently available and compares them. In March 2005, we published another special issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science on current uses of Large Group Methods. In Spring 2006, we published the Handbook of Large Group Methods.
Closely aligned with investigations of organizational change is my interest in the changing role of women in work organizations. In 1998, I .studied a new generation of senior executive women in Japan (parallel to work I did in Japan in the 1980s). I have also studied women and competition and commuting couples.
I have also been conceptualizing and doing research on trust in organizations, a requirement for collaborative change efforts. In several book chapters (with Roy Lewicki), we have developed a staged model of trust development and types of trust.
In 2007, I did field research on a faculty and staff diversity initiative at Purdue University which involved the whole university and led to significant changes. I expect that study to be published by the Purdue Press in Fall 2008