Management

Dr. Laura Rees joined the College of Business at Oregon State University (USA) from the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University (Canada), where she was a faculty member in Organizational Behaviour. Prior to Queen's, Laura was a faculty member at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a Post-Doctoral Scholar at Vanderbilt University. She received her A.B. in Economics from Harvard University, and her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on two major areas which investigate emotions, automatic behavior (e.g., habits), attitudes, authenticity, and other influences that often arise spontaneously and without much conscious thought, but profoundly shape performance and well-being at work.

More specifically, Laura's first line of research examines the complexity and often surprising nature of emotions—often momentary, but powerful, influences—particularly in negotiation and decision-making. Her second line of research examines other influences on workplace behavior that are more durable across time and context, including habits, attitudes, and desires for authenticity. Laura's research incorporates a conceptual and multi-method empirical approach to examine these topics in the contexts of negotiation, decision accuracy and performance, persuasion and cooperation, and interpersonal perceptions and interactions in the workplace. She also draws heavily on these ideas in her teaching, which includes courses on negotiations, ethics, organizational behavior, and leadership. 

Her research has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, among others, as well as numerous book chapters. Laura has taught courses on negotiations, organizational behavior and leadership, and ethics to undergraduate, MBA, and other master's students. She has written several negotiation cases and leads negotiation workshops for a variety of university and executive audiences. She is currently developing two podcast series with colleagues in the US and Singapore, focused on the application of cutting-edge scholarship in negotiation and conflict management, found at www.NegotiationandConflictTeam.com.