What causes employee attitudes and how should they be measured ? How do employee attitudes vary across cultures? What employee attitudes are most related to customer satisfaction and business performance? What motivates employees to perform? …to join an organization? …to leave an organization? How can job performance success or failure be predicted? How does personality relate to job performance? How does organization change impact employee attitudes and motivation? These are the types of research questions I have been interested in and have investigated over the years in a variety of organizations.
Lise Saari
My research and practice span the range of industrial/organizational psychology topics, including employee selection, management assessment, leadership, performance appraisal, training, employee attitudes, motivation, and organization change. I have a Ph.D. in organizational/social psychology from the University of Washington. My doctoral dissertation investigated employee motivation in both laboratory and field studies.
I have worked in both academic and organizational settings, with most of my career in multi-national companies. I was director of Global Workforce Research at IBM, senior manager of People Research for the Boeing Company, and research scientist at Battelle Research Institute. These roles included studies at Battelle on safety issues, people research and management development at the Boeing Company, and worldwide responsibility for employee research, including all surveys globally, at IBM.
My research has involved a variety of countries and cultures. These include studies conducted in Japanese power plants, research at Battelle’s London and Geneva offices, studies on leadership in China for Boeing, and two years in Europe as part of my global role at IBM.
In addition to teaching at NYU, I teach in Singapore and Taipei for Baruch's International Executive Program. I have also taught at the University of Washington and Richmond International University in London. I serve on professional and editorial boards and have over 75 publications and presentations. Additionally, I serve as an Industrial/Organizational Psychology representative to the United Nations.
American Psychological Association, Fellow
Association for Psychological Science, Fellow
International Association of Applied Psychology
Society for Industrial/ Organizational Psychology, Fellow
Contact Information
Lise Saari
Lise.Saari@nyu.edu Department of PsychologyNew York University
6 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003