Faculty and Research

Robin Ely is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. She investigates how organizations can better manage their race and gender relations while at the same time increasing their effectiveness. Her research in this area focuses on organizational change, group dynamics, learning, conflict, power, and social identity. Robin also teaches in Harvard's Executive Education programs, the IWF Leadership Foundation Fellow Program, and the Women's Leadership Forum.

Robin has published numerous articles on these topics in books and journals and lectures both in the US and abroad to academics and practitioners alike. She frequently consults to organizations in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors on issues related to race, gender, and organizational change. She has taught courses in statistics, teams, and group dynamics, with a special emphasis on race, ethnicity, and gender relations as relations of power. Most recently, she has studied men and masculinity on offshore oil platforms and investigated the effects of racial diversity on performance in retail banking. She is currently launching a study of senior women's experiences of power and authority in professional service firms.

 For the past several years, Robin has maintained an active faculty affiliation at the Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons Graduate School of Management, in Boston. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard Business School, Robin was at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, and at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Yale University, completed the doctoral coursework in Social Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and received her bachelors degree from Smith College. Robin is a member of the Academy of Management and an Associate Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly.