John Paul Stephens

I am an Assistant Professor (read: researcher and teacher) in the Department of Organizational Behavior. I am excited about pursuing a diversity of research interests that are all ultimately concerned with how human beings relate to each other in the unique context of organizing. Some of the questions I am most excited about in my research are “How do individuals know the quality of their joint actions with others in the course of coordinating as a group?”, “What affects this kind of knowing?” , and “How do individuals together repair the course of coordination when it becomes disrupted?” How we pay attention to our own and others’ contributions to collective work, and the (aesthetic) sense or feeling of the quality of the work as a whole all seem to inform us about what is going on with ourselves and the group in the moment. Emotions also seem to play a role in how we feel about our involvement in collective work and thus for how we would repair when coordination breaks down. Leaders also matter since they can direct individuals’ attention to what is happening with the group as a whole, and shape how we feel about our contributions and the work of the collective.

In exploring some of these questions with my dissertation work, I have stumbled on concepts such as aesthetics (the tacit sense of the gestalt quality of an object, a person, an interaction, or an organizational process), routines, embodiment, materiality, and practice theory. This has led me to consider the importance of our bodies in organizations, for helping us sense what is happening in our social and material environments.

As a doctoral student in Organizational Psychology at the University of Michigan, I became involved in the newly-established Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship . There, I became involved in work that examines strengths of good character – that which marks humanity as excellent and virtuous, how they relate to person-job fit, and how recognizing strengths alongside areas for improvement can be helpful for developing young leaders. Like the domain of coordination, some of my POS work continues to be about relationships, and particularly the “micro-bits” of relationships – the connections or momentary interactions that together comprise relationships. Having high-quality connections (HQCs) matters for one’s health and creativity, as well as for one’s resilience at work. The work continues to accurately measure HQCs and their impact.