An Expert on Team Dynamics, Mathieu Says His Specialty is Critical as Workplace Norms Change Rapidly

Professor John Mathieu will receive the 2025 Academy of Management’s Organizational Behavior Lifetime Achievement Award later this month recognizing his impactful work in the field.

Mathieu, a UConn Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, is an expert in organizational behavior, team effectiveness and optimization, and leadership. His work has ranged from investigating the dynamics of teamwork in a space capsule, to aligning strategy among multiple military organizations, to synchronizing the delivery of care for cancer patients.

The Academy’s pinnacle career-achievement award recognizes Mathieu among an elite group of international scholars. It is the third time he has received such a prestigious academic achievement honor in the last decade.

Subhead: Walking in the Footsteps of Giants

Mathieu said he is humbled by the recognition.

“The people who were the early winners of this award were gurus when I was coming into the field. They were the top scholars of the day, and they shared their time and expertise with me. They were role models, sources of support, and great people,’’ he said. “From them I aspired to pay it forward and to help and develop other professionals in organizational behavior.’’

His most recent research has focused on the cancer-care continuum, a topic he is passionate about.

“Healthcare is a very complex system and until a few years ago it was very broken,’’ he said. “But now the big cancer centers, such as Sloan-Kettering, Dana Farber, Anderson, and others, are developing networks for cancer care, to make it a more integrated process from early diagnosis to treatment to recovery.’’

The Workplace Is Ever-More Complicated

Leadership and teams research is growing in significance today, particularly in the workplace, he said.

“The world is getting more chaotic and it is spinning quickly,’’ Mathieu said. “The old, bureaucratic structures aren’t cutting it anymore. The face of work is changing, the way we conduct work is evolving, and the way we interact at work is becoming more complex.’’

“Fewer of us work in an office five days a week; we assemble clusters of people to collaborate on a project, then disband them; and there is more pressure to be versatile, nimble and manage people effectively. In addition, new tools, like AI, are changing the ways we work and learn,’’ he said.

“Leaders need to invest in employee talent, enable them, and then unleash them, in order to reap the most benefit,’’ he said. “Employees need to be adaptable and learn on the fly in order to be effective.”

Mathieu Nominated by 30 Peers

Travis Grosser, the interim department head in the Boucher Management & Entrepreneurship Department at the School of Business, said Mathieu is most deserving of the recognition.

“With this award, John joins an elite group of eminent organizational behavior scholars at the pinnacle of the field. I cannot think of a more deserving person for this career-defining award,’’ he said.

“Beyond his exceptional research contributions, John has served as an exemplary role model, mentor, and collaborator for numerous generations of UConn doctoral students and faculty,’’ Grosser said. “This honor reflects the caliber of excellence that defines our department and our university.’’

Mathieu was nominated for the award by a team of former Ph.D. students, who contacted 30 professional acquaintances and asked them to submit recommendations to the 21,000-member Academy.
While Mathieu said he is proud to see the impact of his work, he is equally excited to have mentored so many outstanding students.

“Having the work that I produced be recognized is rewarding and gratifying,’’ he said. “But what is more exciting is that now I can watch my former students train future generations of scholars. That’s a huge force multiplier, directly or indirectly touching hundreds or thousands of faculty researchers. It’s gratifying to have created those ripples.’’

Advised Fortune 500 Companies, NASA and More

This is the third time that Mathieu has received a lifetime career award. He received the Joseph E. McGrath Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Groups from the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research in 2015, and the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in 2017. He has also been recognized with the Academy of Management’s Mentorship Award in 2017 and the Academy of Management’s Research Methods Division Distinguished Career Award in 2022.

He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology, American Psychological Association, and the Academy of Management. He joined the UConn faculty in 1999 and is the GE Professor in Business. He has worked with many Fortune 500 companies, three branches of the Armed Services, federal and state agencies, including NASA and the FAA, and numerous public and private organizations.

Mathieu has produced more than 150 publications, given some 250 presentations at national and international conferences, and has been a principal investigator or co-investigator on more than $11.5 million in grants and contracts. He has also serves on the editorial boards of top journals.

Mathieu will deliver a keynote address at the Academy’s 2026 conference in Philadelphia.