Stuart Bunderson honorary professor of Group and Organization Management

Professor J. Stuart Bunderson has been appointed honorary professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business. The chair, Group and Organization Management, is part of the Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour Department. Previously, Bunderson was associated with this department as an unpaid professor.

Bunderson’s research fields are teams, diversity and leadership. He is particularly interested in diversity in teams and how teams learn, in the expertise in workgroups and in power and status within organizations. He frequently works with Professor Gerben van der Vegt of FEB.

Expertise of newcomers in teams

In a recently completed project, Bunderson and Van der Vegt discovered that workgroups sometimes do not profit sufficiently from new members. They investigated the consequences of newcomers in groups in terms of learning and innovation. Remarkably, it turned out that well-functioning groups in particular make very poor use of the knowledge and expertise of newcomers. This is because the members of such groups are happy with the status quo and less inclined towards change.

Curriculum Vitae

Stuart Bunderson has a Bachelor’s degree with honours in psychology and a Master’s degree with highest honours in Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University in Utah (US). He gained a PhD in 1998 from the University of Minnesota with a thesis on Strategic Management and Organization. He then joined the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University, where he is currently Professor of Organizational Ethics and Governance.