ProfessorKevinCorley

Prof. Kevin Corley is a Professor of Management and PhD Director for the Management & Entrepreneurship department. His expertise lies in understanding how individuals and organisations approach change, and how leaders can use times of uncertainty and ambiguity to the benefit of their organisation and followers. As a teacher and coach, his focus is providing leaders with the tools to effectively implement organisational change utilising strategic thinking, adaptability, power and influence, and negotiations. With both academic and industry experience, and a career-long interest in leading organizational change, Kevin brings value to a broad cross section of industries and organizations.

As a scholar, his research is driven by the question “Why do people experience change the way that they do?” He is widely published on issues related to organisational change, identity and culture in most of the field's top journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and the Strategic Management Journal, among others. He also has a growing stream of publications related to field research, qualitative research methods, and theory development. Kevin has won multiple professional awards, including most recently being named the 2022 Distinguished Scholar for the Management & Organizational Cognition division of the Academy of Management. Kevin has served as associate editor of the Academy of Management Journal and currently serves on several editorial boards. Given his expertise in the process of organisational change and leadership’s role in those changes, he has worked closely with a range of Fortune 100 organizations, including Avnet, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, BP, Chevron, JDA Software, SAP, and SRP, as well as several mid- to small-size businesses.

Kevin earned an undergraduate degree in Business from Miami University (Ohio) with a focus on organizational behavior and information technology. Upon graduation in 1993, he joined Ernst & Young as a change management consultant in Chicago. Intrigued by the question as to what happens to people confronted with IT changes, and interested in teaching and research, Kevin left consulting and earned a Ph.D. in Business from the Pennsylvania State University with a focus on Organizational Behavior in 2002.

Kevin began his professorial career at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign as an assistant professor in 2002. He joined the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State Univ in 2005, ultimately achieving the position of Professor in 2014 until his departure in May 2022. Kevin has also been a visiting professor at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. He has delivered talks at business schools across Europe and North America, including Oxford, Cass/Bayes, Warwick, Aalto, Hanken, INSEAD, IE, IESE, Bocconi, the Munich School of Management, ESSEC Paris, EPFL, ETH Zurich, HEC Montreal, Yale, Dartmouth, UC-Boulder, Boston University, and Boston College.