FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Dissertation Award
FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Dissertation Award
The Center for Leadership at FIU is pleased to sponsor the FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Dissertation Award in partnership with the Network of Leadership Scholars. Now in its fourteenth year, this award honors an individual whose dissertation makes an outstanding contribution to the field of leadership. The recipient of the award will receive a $3,000 cash prize and be honored at the Network of Leadership Scholars meeting at the Academy of Management Annual Conference.
Applications for the 2025 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Dissertation Award are now open
The deadline for submitting applications is April 28, 2025. Read below for more information on submissions.
Additional details
- Previous Recipients
2024 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Moritz Appels
Assistant Professor in Organizational Behavior
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University RotterdamThe co-recipient of the 2024 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Dissertation Award is Dr. Moritz Appels. Dr. Appels is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.
He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Mannheim, Germany. Through his research, Dr. Appels seeks to understand how corporate leaders shape and are shaped by organizational and societal change, with a particular focus on controversial political behaviors and strategic leadership. His work has been published or is in press in outlets including Journal of Management and Business & Society.
2024 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. McKenzie Preston
Assistant Professor, Management and Organizations Department
Stern School of Business, New York UniversityThe co-recipient of the 2024 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Dissertation Award is Dr. McKenzie Preston. Dr. Preston is an Assistant Professor at NYU Stern School of Business in the Management and Organizations department. He completed his Ph.D. at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies questions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), leadership, and voice in the workplace.
2023 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Catherine Deen
Senior Lecturer in HR and Organisational Behaviour
School of Business, University of New South Wales Canberra, AustraliaThe recipient of the 2023 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Catherine M. Deen. Dr. Deen is Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of HR and Organisation Behaviour at the School of Business, University of New South Wales Canberra. Dr. Deen received her Ph.D. in Business from The Australian National University. Her dissertation focused on establishing foundational knowledge about micromanagement including its construct definition, measurement, and nomological network.
Aside from her work on micromanagement, Dr. Deen’s research focuses on the dark side of human behavior in organizations, gendered victimization at work, and the plight of vulnerable workers. Her research has been published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Management, and The Leadership Quarterly. Throughout her career, Dr. Deen has served in various educational leadership roles and was a recipient of the US State Department’s International Visitor’s Leadership grant for inclusive higher education.
2022 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Michelle K. Lee
Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organizations
Smith School of Business, Queen's UniversityThe recipient of the 2022 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Michelle K. Lee. Dr. Lee is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organizations at the Smith School of Business, Queen's University. Dr. Lee received her Ph.D. in strategic management from the University of Washington. Her dissertation research studies how the social class background of executives influences career outcomes including selection to the chief executive position and the class pay gap. More broadly, her research interests include social class, strategic leadership, shareholder activism, and corporate social responsibility. Her research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal and Journal of Management Inquiry and covered by the Wall Street Journal. Prior to academia, she worked for Deloitte and Mazars in New York City.
2021 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Hemant Kakkar
Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations
Fuqua School of Business at Duke UniversityThe co-recipient of the 2021 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Hemant Kakkar. Dr. Kakkar is an assistant professor of management and organizations at the Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Professor Kakkar received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the London Business School. His research draws on social psychology and evolutionary theories of status and influence to examine judgments and behaviors of individuals and groups within social hierarchies.
His research is published in leading academic journals including Academy of Management Journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Applied Psychology, Nature Human Behavior, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and Nature Human Behavior.
His research is also covered by several popular press outlets, such as The Washington Post, Forbes, The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Times UK and the Harvard Business Review. He teaches Foundations of Organizational Behavior to Masters students at Fuqua. He won the Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2021 for the MMS program. Before joining academia, Professor Kakkar worked as a technical consultant in Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.
2021 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Cynthia Maupin
Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and Leadership
School of Management at Binghamton UniversityThe co-recipient of the 2021 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Cynthia Maupin. Dr. Maupin is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and Leadership for the School of Management at Binghamton University, and she earned her Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Georgia. Dr. Maupin is the recipient of the 2021 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Her dissertation titled "The Costs and Benefits of Leader-Driven Communication Structures for Promoting Rapid System Recovery after Exogenous Shocks" not only advances leadership science by highlighting the conditions under which leader-driven communication is effective (and ineffective), but also provides actionable recommendations for real-world leaders who are tasked with helping their organizations to recover in the aftermath of a crisis.
Her research investigates the factors that promote effective leadership, leadership development, and teamwork processes, and has been published or is in press at outlets including the Journal of Applied Psychology, The Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Management, Human Relations, Group and Organization Management, Small Group Research, and Industrial and Organizational Psychology Perspectives on Science and Practice.
2020 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Anyi Ma
Assistant Professor, Department of Management, A.B.
Freeman School of Business, Tulane UniversityThe recipient of the 2020 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Anyi Ma. Dr. Ma is an Assistant Professor of Management in the Department of Management at the A.B. Freeman School of Business, Tulane University.
Her research concerns the topic of agency, which historically has been conceptualized as the tendency to assert the self and master the environment.
In her dissertation, she developed a new multi-factor model of agency perceptions and found that conceptualizing agency perceptions in a more nuanced way can reconcile contradictory findings about female leadership advantage and disadvantage. Specifically, she found that women were advantaged when they were perceived as hardworking, competent, self-assured, and independent, and they were disadvantaged when they were perceived as dominant.
Dr. Ma's research has been published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Leadership Quarterly, and Harvard Business Review. She received her Ph.D. from Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.
2019 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Jackson Lu
Assistant Professor, Work and Organization Studies
MIT Sloan School of ManagementThe recipient of the 2019 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Jackson Lu, whose research has been published in premier scientific journals (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nature: Human Behaviour, Organizational Behavioral and Human Decision Processes, Proceedings of National Academy of Science, Psychological Science) and featured in major media outlets (e.g., BBC,The Economist, The Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, NPR, New York Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post). He received his Ph.D. from Columbia Business School.
2018 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Jasmine Vergauwe
Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Developmental, Personality, and Social Psychology
Ghent UniversityThe recipient of the 2018 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Jasmine Vergauwe, whose dissertation titled “Personality and leadership: Trait-perspectives on charisma, curvilinear relationships, and measurement innovations” was selected from a strong group of international submissions. In her work, she introduced and validated two new trait-based measures of charisma, and demonstrated that while more charisma may boost career success 15 years later (e.g., higher managerial levels), too much charisma can hurt leaders’ effectiveness. Apart from these substantive contributions, her dissertation makes a methodological contribution to the leadership assessment domain by describing the advantages of the “too little/too much” scale to measure leader behavior. Dr. Vergauwe received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Ghent University in Belgium, and she is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Ghent’s Department of Developmental, Personality, and Social Psychology. Her work has been published in several top-tier journals, including Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Research Methods, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Harvard Business Review.
2017 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Dorothy Carter
Assistant Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology
University of Georgia
The recipient of the 2017 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Dorothy Carter. Dr. Carter’s dissertation, titled, The Motivational Drivers of Leadership Emergence in Multiteam Systems, was selected from a pool of high-quality scholarly work across five different countries. Dr. Carter’s dissertation leveraged a social network approach to identify key drivers of emergent leadership relationships connecting members of complex interdependent systems comprised of multiple component teams. Her findings reveal that the goals emphasized within component teams underpin constituent members’ participation in leadership processes in relation to members of other component teams, and ultimately, the patterns of leadership relationships that arise across component teams shape the success or failure of the system as a whole. Dr. Carter earned a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Psychology from Wright State University. Dr. Carter’s research focuses on the factors that support collaboration effectiveness in teams and larger collectives. Her research has been published or is in press in multiple outlets, including Journal of Applied Psychology, The Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Management, Group and Organization Management, and The Oxford Handbook of Leadership. She is also the Primary Investigator on a project funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to enhance the multiteam collaboration processes that will be necessary in order to send a team of humans to Mars. Dr. Carter is a member of The Academy of Management, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and The Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research.
2016 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Wongun Goo
Assistant Professor of Business Administration & Management
Indiana University East
The recipient of the 2016 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award was Dr. Wongun Goo, whose dissertation was titled, “Just Right: A Person-Environment Fit Approach to Visionary Leadership.” The 2016 award received scholarly work from six countries and representing eighteen universities, from which Dr. Goo’s work was selected as a winner. His work not only advances leadership theory by highlighting employees’ need for leadership as an important individual difference, but also makes substantial contribution to practice by demonstrating how too much of a good thing (visionary leadership) can be detrimental. Wongun Goo received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University and he is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Business and Economics at Indiana University East. His research interests also include person-environment fit, job design, leadership theory, and leader-follower relationship. Dr. Goo is a member of the Academy of Management and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
2015 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Joo Hun Han
Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Resource Management
Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyThe recipient of the 2015 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Joo Hun Han. Dr. Han dissertation was titled, “Admiration or Envy? Effects of LMX Differentiation on Group Processes and Performance under Different Reward Systems”. His dissertation was selected from a pool of scholarly work coming in from four countries and representing sixteen universities. Joo Han received his Ph.D. from the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Resource Management at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Dr. Han’s research examines the intersection between leadership and human resource practices with focus on their joint effects on employee attitudes, emotions, and performance at multiple levels. His interests also lie in strategic human resource management, compensation, and employee citizenship and counterproductive behavior. His work has been published or is in press at the Journal of Applied Psychology and Human Resource Management. Dr. Han is a member of the Academy of Management and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
2014 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Emily Grijalva
Assistant Professor
University of BuffaloThe recipient of the 2014 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Emily Grijalva, whose dissertation titled, Narcissism and Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of Linear and Nonlinear Relationships was selected from numerous submissions representing more than four countries. Dr. Grijalva received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and will be starting in the fall as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Buffalo. Her research interests include Narcissism (links to leadership effectiveness, LMX & counterproductivity; personality development; facets), Leadership (leader emergence and personality, gender and leadership) and Research Methods (measurement/psychometrics, meta-analysis). Her work has been published in Personnel Psychology, Academy of Management Perspectives and Applied Psychology: An International Review.
2013 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Amy Ou
Assistant Professor
National University of SingaporeThe recipient of the 2013 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Amy Y. Ou, whose dissertation, Understanding Humble Chief Executive Officers: Connection to Top Management Team Integration and Middle Manager Responses was selected from numerous submissions representing four countries. Dr. Ou is an assistant professor in the department of Management and Organization at the National University of Singapore. She received her Ph.D. from the Arizona State University. Her research interests include strategic leadership, organizational culture, and cross-cultural management. Her work have been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Journal of Management.
2012 FIU Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award Recipient
Dr. Stephen Courtright
Assistant Professor
Texas A&M UniversityThe recipient of the 2012 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award is Dr. Stephen Courtright. Dr. Courtright’s dissertation titled, “Fired Up or Burned Out” Exploring the Effects of Leadership Challenge Demands on Leadership Behaviors through Engagement and Burnout” was selected from numerous submissions representing more than nine countries.
Stephen Courtright is an assistant professor of management in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He earned a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Iowa and a B.S. in Accounting from Brigham Young University-Idaho.
Dr. Courtright’s primary areas of expertise are team and leadership effectiveness. His research?which has garnered awards from the Academy of Management, Society for Human Resource Management, and the Network of Leadership Scholars?has been published or is in press at Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Organizational Dynamics, and Group & Organization Management. His work has also been featured by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report, and ABC Radio. He has consulted for several organizations, including John Deere and the Veterans Health Administration, on issues related to team and leadership development. He is a member of the Academy of Management and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.