Steffanie Wilk

Professor of Management and Human Resources

Management & Human Resources

Background

Steffanie L. Wilk is a Professor of Management and Human Resources at The Ohio State University, where she teaches courses in organizational behavior and strategic human resources. She received her Ph.D. from the Industrial Relations Center at the University of Minnesota and was formerly at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Wilk teaches classes on Organizational Behavior to the honors undergraduates and Strategic Human Resource Management to both graduate and undergraduate students. She is the recipient of a 2008 and 2014 MBA Teaching Award and a 2010 Undergraduate Teaching Award from the Fisher College of Business. She also received a Pacesetter Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in 2009.

Professor Wilk’s research focuses on worker mobility and workplace boundaries and her most recent work focuses on the challenges and opportunities of service-related work, including burnout and turnover, emotional labor, and attendant performance implications. The Academy of Management (AOM) has recognized her research on the benefits and costs of prior experience and she won the best dissertation award by the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychologists (SIOP) for her work on individual mobility. Her research on service center employees was supported by a grant from the Russell Sage and Rockefeller Foundation’s “Future of Work” Program. She has been retained as an expert witness in cases involving selection systems and has consulted for both public and private sector organizations in the area of selection, turnover and absenteeism, and organizational change. She has published work inAcademy of Management JournalOrganization ScienceJournal of Applied PsychologyPersonnel Psychology and American Psychologist.

Professor Wilk is active in her field, serving on the editorial board of three of the top journals in her field: Journal of Applied PsychologyAcademy of Management Journal, and Organization Science. She also has served on award committees for SIOP and the Human Resource Division of AOM as well as is a regular presenter for the AOM’s Organizational Behavior Division Doctoral Consortium.

Areas of Expertise

  • Mobility of workers and the permeability of organizational boundaries (e.g., how does information and experience transfer?)
  • Emotional demands of service work (e.g., do customers, supervisors, or peers create the most stress for call center workers? What effect does it have?)
  • Social relationships and networks of contacts at work (e.g., how do our relationships improve our performance?)
  • Why and how we help ourselves or help others in organizations

Education

  • 1995 Ph.D. in Industrial Relations with an emphasis in Staffing, Training and Development, and Organizational Behavior. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
  • 1989 B.A. specializing in Industrial Relations. Rockhurst University. Kansas City, Missouri.

Publications

  • Lount, Robert and Steffanie L. Wilk. 2014. Working harder or hardly working? Posting performance eliminates social loafing and promotes social laboring in workgroups. Management Science, 60(5), 1098-1106.
  • Rothbard, Nancy P. and Steffanie L. Wilk. 2011. Waking up on the right or wrong side of the bed: Start-of-workday mood, work events, employee affect, and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 54(5), 959-980.
  • Dokko, Gina, Steffanie L. Wilk and Nancy P. Rothbard. 2009. Unpacking prior experience: How career history affects job performance. Organization Science, 20, 51-68.
  • Wilk, Steffanie L. 2007. “In the Pursuit of Quality and Quantity: The Competing Demands in Call Centers.” In P. Cappelli (ed.) Strategic Employment Relationships, London: Cambridge University Series.
  • Wilk, Steffanie L. and Lisa Moynihan. 2005. Display rule “regulators”: The relationship between supervisors and worker emotional exhaustion, Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 917-927.
  • Batt, Rosemary, Larry W. Hunter and Steffanie L. Wilk. 2003. “How and When Does Management Matter? Job Quality and Career Opportunities for Call Center Workers.” In E. Appelbaum, A. Bernhardt, and R. J. Murnane (eds.) Low-Wage America: How Employers are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 270-316.
  • Wilk, Steffanie L. and Peter Cappelli. 2003. Understanding the determinants of employee selection. Personnel Psychology, 103-124.
  • Wilk, Steffanie L. 1999. A human capital approach to discrimination: Matching workers and jobs, Performance Improvement Quarterly, 12(1), 52-58.
  • Wilk, Steffanie L. and Raymond A. Noe. 1997. The role of psychological contracts in determining employees' participation in development activities, Training Research Journal, 3, 13-38.
  • Noe, Raymond A., Steffanie L. Wilk, Ellen J. Mullen and James E. Wanek. 1996. “Employee development: Issues in Construct Definition and Investigation of Antecedents,” in J.K. Ford and Associates (eds.) Improving Training Effectiveness in Work Organizations, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., 153-188.
  • Wilk, Steffanie L. and Paul R. Sackett. 1996. Longitudinal analysis of ability-job complexity fit and job change, Personnel Psychology, 49(4), 937-967.
  • Wilk, Steffanie L., Laura Burris Desmarais and Paul R. Sackett. 1995. Gravitation to jobs commensurate with ability: Longitudinal and cross-sectional tests, Journal of Applied Psychology, 80(1), 79-85.
  • Sackett, Paul R. and Steffanie L. Wilk. 1994. Within-group norming and other forms of score adjustment in pre-employment testing, American Psychologist, 49(11), 929-954.
  • Noe, Raymond A. and Steffanie L. Wilk. 1993. Investigation of the factors that influence employees' participation in development activities, Journal of Applied Psychology, 78(2), 291-302.

Working Papers

  • Wilk, Steffanie L. and Erin Coyne Makarius. Choosing the company you keep: Racial relational demography outside and inside of work.
  • Doyle, Sarah, Robert B. Lount, Steffanie L. Wilk, and Nathan Pettit. Helping Others Most When They’re Not Too Close: Status Distance as a Determinant of Interpersonal Helping in Organizations.
  • Lebel, R. David, Katherine Klein, Nancy P. Rothbard, Steffanie L. Wilk, and Gina Dokko. The Way You Do the Things You Do: How Conscientiousness and Extraversion Shape the Evaluative Consequences of Individual Innovation.
  • Makarius, Erin Coyne, Nancy P. Rothbard, Steffanie L. Wilk. Building Bridges: Boundary Management Preferences, Social Networks, and Performance.
  • Makarius, Erin Coyne and Steffanie L. Wilk. Big Fish in Little Ponds: A Multilevel Approach to Reputation in Organizations.
  • Wilk, Steffanie L., Erin Coyne Makarius, and Gina Dokko. Scars or blemishes?: How unemployment spells affect worker mobility.
  • Ramarajan, Lakshmi, Nancy P. Rothbard, and Steffanie L. Wilk. Discordant and Harmonious Selves: The Effects of multiple intrapersonal identities on perspective taking, interpersonal problem solving and performance.

Courses

BUSMHR 3200H - Managing Individuals in Organizations: Organizational Behavior and Human Resources
Principles for managing the performance of individuals and groups in organizations; introduction to organizational behavior theory and its application to staffing, training, compensation, and appraisal. Prereq: Econ 2001.01 (200) and 2002.01 (201); or equivalents; and enrollment in the Business Administration Honors Cohort Program. Not open to students with credit for BusMHR 701 or 701H.
BUSOBA 7266 - MBOE Leading Operations
The explicit link between problem solving and lean activities such as policy management, standardized work, visual management, human resources management and "go see" (gemba) activities are explained. Prereq: Enrollment in MBOE. Not open to students with credit for 844.
MBA 6200 - Organizational Behavior and Team Effectiveness-EMBA
An overview of factors that influence individual, group and organizational work performance and techniques to improve it; analytical frameworks for determining effectiveness of given techniques in specific circumstances. Prereq: Enrollment in Executive MBA program or permission of instructor.