New Chair for Notre Dame Management Department

The Department of Management at the University of Notre Dame will start the 2009-2010 academic year with a new chair at the helm. J. Michael Crant, who joined the Mendoza College of Business in 1990, has been named to the position, taking over from previous chair Robert Bretz in July.

The Fort Myers, Fla., native earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and an MBA from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies pro-active behavior in organizations, self-handicapping behaviors and work behavior in Asia, and is one of the creators of the proactive personality scale, the most frequently used measure of proactivity in organizational literature.

Crant’s courses include organizational behavior and leadership. Among his teaching honors, he most recently was the recipient of the Chicago Executive MBA Class of 2007 Outstanding Professor award. He will continue to teach organizational behavior in the MBA program.

Crant says his goal as management chair is to support the faculty in their teaching and research in any way he can. He also plans to “continue the positive momentum we gathered under Bob Bretz’s leadership.”

Robert F. Easley serves as the Management Department’s assistant chair. He holds a Ph.D. in Decision and Information Systems from Indiana University, Bloomington, and an M.B.A. from Pennsylvania State University. His current research focuses on economic modeling of Internet auctions, privacy and piracy in Internet commerce, recommendation systems and collaborative technologies.

The Department of Management at the Mendoza College of Business offers a broad, integrated program of study in which students specialize in particular areas of interest. Undergraduate students select between majors in consulting, entrepreneurship or information technology management, while MBA students can choose a leadership development, consulting or entrepreneurship concentration. Faculty research interests include workplace behavior, social capital, motivation, innovation, supply chain and information technology adoption.

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