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Research for the pursuit of truth and the betterment
of society Welcome
to my home page! Here you
will find some information about the classes that I am currently teaching,
which include:
(Links to
the above will be activated when I begin teaching the relevant course. The
password for accessing the relevant site will be communicated during the
first lesson). To see
student course evaluations click here. Potential
doctoral (or master's) students who wish to have me as a supervisor please read the attached before contacting me. |
Predicting elections: Child's play |
Research interests:
My primary
area of research is leadership--its antecedents and consequences--studied from
an applied psychology and management perspective. Specific areas that interest
me include leadership process theories, social cognition (information
processing and judgment heuristics, as applied to ratings of leaders),
individual differences predictors of leadership and performance, psychometrics
(measurement of personality and leadership perceptions), and motivation (it's
links to organizational level and individual level factors). I like to
primarily use quantitative experimental and cross-sectional methods and like to
place a lot of emphasis on the use of theoretically-driven quantitative
empirical research.
Why the
focus on leadership? Leadership is one of the social sciences most studied
phenomena. Unfortunately, too many popular works--not grounded in empirical
scientific findings--have been written about leadership, having either created
overly pessimistic or optimistic expectations about the utility of leadership.
Furthermore, too much money is wasted on programs or models--propagated by
unscrupulous consultants--that have not been scientifically tested or don't
work. Nowadays, the term is so cliché-laden that many are rightly quite
skeptical whether leadership really makes a difference to organizational
effectiveness, whether leadership potential can be developed, or whether we can
reliably assess personality traits associated with effective leadership.
However, after more than a century of research, scholars have a good
understanding of what constitutes good leadership, how to measure it, and most
importantly, are beginning to focus on how to develop it. Furthermore, we are
certain that leadership makes a difference--a big difference to organizational
effectiveness and the satisfaction of those with whom leaders work.
Take a look
at our book The Nature of Leadership--here is an interview I recently gave about the book.
Here are some reviews
on the book. Check out the book on Sage's
website)!
John
Antonakis, Ph.D.
Professor
of Organizational Behavior
Department
of Organizational Behavior