Elizabeth George (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is the KPMG Professor of Management Studies at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
Her research focuses on differences between people at work, and how these differences affect their interactions with each other, and ultimately their outcomes at work. Specifically, she has studied how relations at work are shaped by the different types of work contracts held by individuals (short-term versus open-ended contracts), and how these affect workgroup relationships, trust in the management, performance, and the nature of work. A second stream of work examines how differences in demographic characteristics (for example gender/ethnicity) affect individuals in work groups. Her work has found that the effects of differences are asymmetrical depending on the status hierarchies within which individuals work. This work underscores the importance of knowing how difference is viewed by both those in the minority and those in the majority. Her work has been published in major international academic journals and has also been used by the International Labor Organization and the US Society for Human Resource Management to help inform public policy and management practice. She has served on the Board of Governors and the executive committee of the Managerial and Organizational Cognition and the Organizational Behavior Divisions of the Academy of Management. She is co-editor-in-chief the Academy of Management Annals and has previously been co-editor in chief of Organizational Psychology Review and associate editor on the Academy of Management Annals, Australian Journal of Management, and Organization Studies. She serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Academy of Management Discoveries. She has held academic positions at universities in Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.