Erik Dane

Professor of Organizational Behavior

Erik Dane

Erik Dane

Professor Dane teaches courses focused on personal, professional, and organizational transformation. His research has been published in a number of leading journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Discoveries, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Management, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Before joining Olin, he was a faculty member in the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, where he twice received the Jones School’s Scholarship Excellence Award. He is currently serving as Area Chair for the Organizational Behavior group.

Area of Expertise

Critical Thinking, Motivation, Innovation and Growth, Organizational Behavior

Education

  • Ph D 2007, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • MBA 2002, Tulane University
  • BA 2001, Tulane University

Awards/Honors

  • Professional MBA Reid Teaching Award, 2025
  • Poets and Quants' Professor of the Week, 2019
  • Best Paper Award "Exploring Intuition and its Role in Managerial Decision Making", Academy of Management Review, 2007

Teaching Interests

Organizational Behavior, Leadership, Mindfulness

Research Interests

Professor Dane studies managerial cognition. Through conceptual and empirical research projects, he explores how managers can focus their attention, solve problems, and make decisions as effectively as possible. Topics central to his research include epiphanies, expertise, intuition, mindfulness, and mind wandering.

Personal Interests

Physical fitness, mindfulness, philosophical conversations, creative writing

Selected Publications

  • "The unnarrated self: Meaning and motivation without self-stories", American Psychologist, with Daniel Newark, 2025
  • "Promoting and supporting epiphanies in organizations: A transformational approach to employee development", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 104295, 2024
  • "Attention, please: How the attention-related stories we tell our students in class influence their performance at work", Academy of Management Learning and Education, 73-88, 2021
  • "Suddenly everything became clear: How people make sense of epiphanies surrounding their work and careers", Academy of Management Discoveries, 39-60, 2020
  • "The hidden side of trust: Supporting and sustaining leaps of faith among firefighters", Administrative Science Quarterly, 398-434, with Michael Pratt, Douglas Lepisto, 2019
  • "Where is my mind? Theorizing mind wandering and its performance-related consequences in organizations", Academy of Management Review, 179-197, 2018
  • "Affect, emotion, and decision making", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47-55, with Jennifer George, 2016
  • "Mindfulness in organizations: A cross-level review", Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 55-81, with Kathleen Sutcliffe, Timothy Vogus, 2016
  • "Gaining career purpose through lightning bolts: Examining the strength and psychological foundations of work-related epiphanies", Journal of Management, with Markus Baer, Hannes Leroy, Richard Swartz, Aleksandra Wrobel, 2025

Contact

Erik Dane