Randall Peterson's Research Interests

As a psychologist in a business school, my mission has been to bring the special insights and training of a psychologist to bear on problems of management. I seek to influence both the practice and theory of management by understanding small group leadership and decision-making. The driving concern behind my research program to date has been seeking to understand the problems of leadership in small groups: What style of leadership works best for small groups? How can senior management teams function in the absence of trust? Etc. I have focused on these themes with a variety of types of groups including work teams and top management teams and using a range of methodologies ranging from traditional methods like experiments and surveys to the q-sort method that I have pioneered. I have always emphasized innovation and quality of scholarship in my approach to my work, looking for the unique and untapped ways that the study of human behaviour might be brought to bear for understanding how organizations operate. My contributions to scholarship in organizational behaviour reflect these two priorities. The first area of contribution is to the development of theory in the area of leadership and small group research (e.g., top management teams). The second contribution is in developing novel methodological approaches in the study of group dynamics (e.g., the q-sort method).