2025 Academy of Management OB Division Career Award Winners
The Academy of Management Organizational Behavior Division has recognized five distinguished scholars with its 2025 Career Awards, celebrating exceptional contributions that embody the division's core values of Rigor, Relationships, and Relevance.
John Mathieu: Lifetime Achievement Award
John E. Mathieu, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut, has earned the Lifetime Achievement Award for over three decades of transformative contributions to organizational behavior and team research. His work exemplifies sustained excellence that has fundamentally shaped how we understand teams and organizational effectiveness.
Professor Mathieu is the recipient of the Joseph E. McGrath Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Groups, acknowledging his enduring commitment to advancing the interdisciplinary science of team behavior and dynamics. He was also honored with the Academy of Management's Research Methods Division Distinguished Career Award, recognizing his high-quality research and methodological expertise. He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology, American Psychological Association, and the Academy of Management.
Professor Mathieu's career is not only distinguished by the scientific quality and methodological rigor of his work, but he also practices engaged scholarship with several Fortune 500 companies, the Armed Services (Army, Navy, and Air Force), federal and state agencies (NRC, NASA, FAA, DOT), and numerous public and private organizations. His research has involved thousands of employees from 61 companies across 13 different cities in the U.S.
Sim Sitkin: Mentorship Award
Sim B. Sitkin, Michael W. Krzyzewski University Professor of Leadership at Duke University, receives the Mentorship Award for his exceptional career-long commitment to developing organizational behavior scholars through intellectual, social, , and moral support.
Professor Sim Sitkin has a rich portfolio of mentoring experience, serving as the dissertation chair for at least 14 doctoral students and serving on over 30 other dissertation committees. Letters from his mentees create a consistent picture of Sim as a generous and thoughtful mentor, not only with his own doctoral students but also with other students, postdocs, colleagues, and more. They speak of how he simultaneously encouraged students’ intellectual development and developed meaningful personal connections with each mentee. He invests extraordinary intellectual capital in developing independent thinkers through deep theory building, meticulous feedback, and long-term collaboration. His influence spans decades and continents, with countless mentees testifying to his integrity, generosity, and unwavering dedication to their growth. His legacy is a global community of scholars shaped by his wisdom, generosity, and unwavering commitment.
His impact extends far beyond individual mentoring relationships. As founding director of multiple centers including the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics and the Behavioral Science and Policy Center, Professor Sitkin has created lasting infrastructure for mentoring future scholars. His co-founding of the Behavioral Science & Policy Association specifically bridges the gap between research and practice, creating mentoring opportunities for scholars to translate their work into policy applications.
Jackson Lu: Cummings Scholarly Achievement Award
Jackson G. Lu, Sloan School Career Development Associate Professor at MIT, is the receipient of the 2025 Cummings Scholarly Achievement Award. He exemplifies early-career excellence through groundbreaking research that has fundamentally challenged conventional understanding of workplace diversity and organizational behavior. Professor Lu's research on the "Bamboo Ceiling" has revolutionized understanding of Asian American workplace experiences. His work has revealed why East Asians face leadership underrepresentation despite educational success, identifying cultural assertiveness rather than discrimination as the primary mechanism. This work has been featured in over 300 media outlets including BBC, The Economist, and New York Times, demonstrating exceptional translation of academic insights to public discourse.
Professor Lu’s work was characterized by the committee as rigorous, highly impactful, well-rounded and multidisciplinary, crossing wider topics of organizational behavior with culture and diversity. He has published extensively in our top journals and is the lead author on most of the articles, showing great thought leadership. His work puts communities to the forefront, highlighting their challenges and thereby adds impact to organizational behavior research and his research has received high levels of media cover in the past. He has been very active in helping the profession, for example as senior editor at Organization Science. In the words of the committee “If we are wanting to reward academics who excel in research, teaching, and service—then Jackson exemplifies this and then some. He is an excellent representative of our field.”
Herman Aguinis: Societal Impact Award
Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar at George Washington University, receives the Societal Impact Award for his exceptional ability to translate rigorous academic research into practical applications that benefit organizations and society worldwide.
Professor Aguinis exemplifies global scholarly impact, ranking among the world's top 100 most impactful researchers in Economics and Business according to Web of Science since 2018, with over 65,000 Google Scholar citations. His research in performance management, corporate social responsibility, and diversity has been implemented across six continents, affecting millions of employees through evidence-based organizational practices.
His policy influence extends to the highest levels, including expert testimony in the Ricci v. DeStefano U.S. Supreme Court case and five-year service on the Board of Examiners for the United States Foreign Service. As President of the Academy of Management and consultant to organizations including the United Nations, AT&T, and Accenture, Professor Aguinis has consistently bridged academia and practice.
Ronit Kark: Societal Impact Award
Professor Ronit Kark, Bar-Ilan University, Exeter School of Business and Technical University of Munich receives the Societal Impact Award for her multifaceted contributions to gender and leadership research, her engagement in educational initiatives and social activism, and her unwavering commitment to advancing gender equality and fostering inclusive leadership practices.
Beyond academia, Prof. Kark actively engages in social activism and consultancy projects to advance women's leadership. She is also involved in the strategic developed of training programs for NGOs and serves voluntarily on advisory committees and boards of many different organizations that are leading social change (‘We Power’, to promote women to politics; ‘Studio of Her Own’ for women artists, The Abraham Fund for Jewish-Arab Co-existence’, to promote employment of Arab women; Breaking the Glass Ceiling and Engineering the Future, to promote educational systems to foster girls’ involvement in STEM and engineering; and the Committee for Gender Equity of the Olympic Sports Association, to promote women’s involvement in sports).
These five exceptional scholars represent the diverse ways organizational behavior research can achieve excellence while serving society. From Professor Mathieu's foundational theoretical contributions and Professor Sitkin's mentoring legacy to Professor Lu's innovative early-career achievements and the practical societal impact of Professor Aguinis and Professor Kark's work, each recipient demonstrates how rigorous research, meaningful relationships, and societal relevance can combine to advance both the academic field and human welfare. Their recognition by the Academy of Management OB Division celebrates not just individual achievement, but the collective power of organizational behavior scholarship to create positive change in organizations and society.