Expertise

Organizational change; organizational effectiveness; organizational resilience; organizational theory; human resource management; relational coordination

Profile

JODY HOFFER GITTELL IS PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She serves as Executive Director of the Relational Coordination Research Collaborative, which brings practitioners and researchers together to transform organizational relationships for high performance. She also serves as Chief Scientific Officer of Relational Coordination Analytics, Inc., a spinoff from Brandeis University offering measurement, evaluation and visualization of relational coordination networks to organizations seeking to improve performance.

Dr. Gittell’s research explores how coordination by front-line workers contributes to quality and efficiency outcomes in service settings. She has developed a theory of relational coordination, proposing that work is most effectively coordinated through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect, and demonstrating how organizations can support relational coordination through the design of their work systems.

Gittell's discovery of relational coordination and its performance effects is documented in The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance (McGraw-Hill), and in High Performance Healthcare: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve Quality, Efficiency and Resilience (McGraw-Hill). In Up In the Air: How the Airlines Can Improve Performance by Engaging Their Employees (Cornell University Press), Gittell, Bamber, Kochan and von Nordenflycht analyze the transformation of the global airline industry. In Sociology of Organizations: Structures and Relationships (Sage Publications), Gittell and Godwyn compare the relational organizational form to the bureaucratic form, proposing a hybrid driven by reciprocal relationships that are scalable, replicable and sustainable. Her newest book, Learning to Coordinate: A Relational Model of Organizational Change (Stanford University Press), under development with Edmondson and Schein, will offer a dynamic multi-interventional model of change.

In addition to writing books, Gittell has published the underlying research in scientific journals including Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Management Science, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Management Studies, Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Journal, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Medical Care, Health Services Research, Health Care Management Review, Journal of Nursing Management, and Journal of Early Childhood Research.

Gittell was selected Outstanding Young Scholar of the Year by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. She has won a Best Book Award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a Best Paper award from the Human Resource Division of the Academy of Management, the Douglas McGregor Memorial Award for Best Paper of the Year in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, and an Honorable Mention for the Douglas McGregor Memorial Award for Best Paper on Organizational Change.

Gittell received her PhD from the MIT Sloan School of Management, her MA from The New School and her BA from Reed College, and taught for six years at the Harvard Business School before joining the faculty of Brandeis University. She has served as Chair of the Board for Families First Health and Support Center, as MBA Program Director at the Brandeis Heller School, and as Acting Director of the MIT Leadership Center. She currently serves on the boards of Reed College, the Labor and Employment Relations Association and the Endowment for Health. She lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with her husband Ross and their daughters Rose and Grace.