Jennifer Chatman


Jennifer A. Chatman is the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Chatman is the Co-Director of the Berkeley Haas Culture Initiative, the Assistant Dean for Learning Strategies at the Haas School of Business, an Editor for the journal Research in Organizational Behavior, and runs the Leading Strategy Execution Through Culture executive education program. Chatman received her BA and PhD from UC Berkeley and began her career at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, before returning to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She served as the Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School.

Research

Chatman's research focuses on cultures that emphasize innovation and adaptation buffers firms from economic volatility, how a chief operating officer's personality influences organizational culture, and how diverse groups perform in high pressure situations. Chatman has developed the Organizational Culture Profile for assessing organizational culture strength and content as well as the gaps between an organization’s current and desired culture.
Chatman’s research has been highlighted in The Atlantic, Business Week, Business 2.0, the Financial Times, Fortune, Inc., Glamour, The Jungle, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fast Company, and Working Mother. She was a keynote speaker for the Private Equity Women’s Conference, the AACSB Dean’s Conference, and the Economist Innovation Summit. She interviewed Jack Welch for the Commonwealth Club, Comcast, and NPR, and has appeared on television and radio over the years to talk about her research and consulting work. She has written articles that have appeared in academic journals.

Culture, adaptability, and firm performance

Chatman's research explores how organizational culture relates to organizational performance and also focuses on providing a conceptually rigorous and valid approach to assessing culture.
Relevant papers:
Classic research in psychology, dating back to Sherif’s pioneering work on the so-called "Robber's Cave" experiments showed that social norms, particularly those that orient group members toward group goals, are remarkably strong predictors of behavior. Professor Chatman’s work has been part of a more recent effort to link norms to processes and outcomes among diverse work groups.
Relevant papers:
Professor Chatman’s research on leadership focuses on reconceptualizing traditional theories of leadership which have, by many accounts, reached a point of stagnation. By stripping down the psychological basis of leadership in influence she is able to make more progress in understanding how leaders affect followers in organizations.
Relevant papers:
Professor Chatman's research and consulting focus on the business advantages of leveraging organizational culture and leading strategic change, and she has worked with a variety of organizations including Advantage Sales & Marketing, Adobe, Agilisys, ALZA, American Business Publishers, Apple University, Bayer, BioMarin, Boise-Cascade, BrassRing, British Telecom, California Public Utilities Commission, Case Inc., Chiron, Citigroup, City of San Leandro, Cisco Systems, The Clorox Company, The Coca-Cola Company, ConocoPhillips, Dey, DNV, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, eBay, Fannie Mae, First Data, First Republic Bank, Franklin Templeton Investor Services, Freddie Mac, Gallo Winery, Genentech, Goldman Sachs, Google, Guidant, Hawaiian Office of Cultural Affairs, Hotwire, Intel, Kaiser Permanente, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Maersk, Mars Inc., Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Motorola, Navigant, New York Life, Nike, Novartis, Occu-Med, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, OSIsoft, PG&E, Pixar Animation Studios, Portland Trail Blazers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Prudential, Qualcomm, Raiders Football, Roche, Salesforce, Sandia National Laboratories, Schneider Electric, Silver Spring Networks, Sony, Statoil, Sungevity, UC Berkeley Business and Administrative Services Division, United Capital, U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Treasury, True Ventures, Warburg Pincus, Wolters Kluwer, and The Weitz Company.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of Simpson Manufacturing and a Trustee of Prospect Sierra School. She teaches a variety of executive management and MBA courses focusing on leveraging high performance cultures, leading change, and making effective decisions. She has taught in executive education programs at a number of universities, and currently runs the Leading Strategy Execution Through Culture executive education program at Haas. She has served as the faculty Director of CEE and of the Ph.D. program at Haas, and the Chair of the Management of Organizations Group at Haas.

Publications

Culture and person culture fit