Kira Schabram
Assistant Professor in Management & Organization
Department Management and Organization
Office Address 434 210 Business Building
Email Address
schabram@psu.edu
Kira Schabram
Assistant Professor in Management & Organization
Department Management and Organization
Office Address 434 210 Business Building
Email Address
schabram@psu.edu
I research how employees can make a positive difference through their work without sacrificing themselves in the process. In short, I seek to explain how employees can do good while also doing well.
Expertise
My topics of inquiry are meaningful and sustainable work. I study employees who want to make a positive difference through their work in ways big and small, ranging from employees who view their work as a calling—a source of personal, social or moral significance— to those who engage in everyday acts of helping, kindness, and compassion. I examine the challenges that impede such aims to determine how employees can achieve them without sacrificing themselves in the process. I am a multi-methods scholar, leverage both qualitative (interviews and ethnographic observation) and quantitative data (e.g., field surveys, experience sampling, experiments), and have published inductive, deductive, and conceptual papers. As a secondary focus, this work has led me to also co-author publications on how our field develops and tests organizational theory.
Education
PhD, Organizational Behavior and Human Resources, University of British Columbia, 2016
MSc, Business Administration, Concordia University, 2010
BA, Literature Writing, University of California, 2005
BSc, Psychology, University of California, 2005
Courses Taught
MGMT 215 – Entr Mindset (3)
This course provides the opportunity to learn to think like an entrepreneur in the broader context of social entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, creative problem solving, opportunity recognition, and innovation. MGMT 215 Entrepreneurial Mindset (3) An entrepreneurial mindset can be applied to different situations such as social entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, creative problem solving, opportunity recognition, technology management, innovation and career development, etc. The skills and attributes of an entrepreneurial mindset can be used to expand career options and career paths for students in any major. Students will develop self-efficacy, leadership, recognition of new opportunities, resourcefulness, creativity and comfort with ambiguity. Further, this course will help students develop an appreciation for mistakes and failure as valuable learning opportunities. Through experiential exercises and problem based learning the student will be afforded the opportunity to study, apply and absorb an entrepreneurial mindset as an approach to viewing the world, to recognizing opportunities and to developing novel solutions. After taking this course the student, regardless of a student's major or college, will have a greater understanding of how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to problems and adopt entrepreneurial solutions to those problems to transform them from problems into opportunities.
MGMT 326 – Org Beh and Design (3)
Concepts, theories, and methods of managing people and designing organizations. MGMT 326 Organizational Behavior and Design (3) This introductory course covers the concepts, theories, and methods of managing people and designing organizations. Issues and challenges of managing at different organizational levels (individual, group, project, and total organization) are discussed and illustrated with real-world examples. Students learn about the latest means of designing high-performing organizations, including how to change an organization. This course will serve as a foundation for taking advanced management courses. The primary method of evaluation is an examination after each of the four major parts of the course, but class participation and short papers may also be used for evaluation.
MGMT 600 – Thesis Research (Variable)
Selected Publications
Paper was an editor-invited dialogue at the Academy of Management Review
2023 Top 5 AOM Insights article and video summaries
2023 Top 5 most read and Top 10 most cited Annals papers
2019 Best Positive Organizational Scholarship Papers Finalist
2018 AOM OB Division Best Paper Nominee
Paper was recognized as an invited presentation as part of the 2025-2026 Consortium for the Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis (CARMA) Lecture Series