Distinguished Research Professor 2019

Jason Colquitt, the William Harry Willson Distinguished Chair in the Department of Management, conducts research that clarifies the benefits of managing employees fairly. He has been a major force in growing this research area from a narrow social psychology topic to a thriving research field. He explores behavior that leaders can develop in themselves to treat their employees fairly, as well as the impact of fair behavior on employee trust in leaders, satisfaction with work and commitment to employers. Colquitt developed a four-dimensional measure of fairness that is by far the most commonly used measure in the field. He was one of the first to find that fairness occurs as a workplace climate—a collective, shared experience—and that “justice climates” have important implications for team performance. His work includes meta-analyses, longitudinal field studies, laboratory experiments and theory papers. Many of the most productive scholars in the field today got their starts as his Ph.D. students.