Ya-Ru Chen

Biography

Ya-Ru Chen’s research focuses on cross-cultural differences and similarities in employees’ behaviors and attitudes. She has compared the ways in which employees in different cultures react to performance feedback, relate to their own groups and other groups, and negotiate with their business counterparts. Her recent work examines how employees obtain, maintain, and experience status and power in their different cultural environments and in globally diverse settings. She also looks at how power and status concerns affect leadership effectiveness and influence business interactions across cultures.

Chen has published extensively in leading psychology and management journals, including Psychological Review, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Organization Science. Prior to joining the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, she was on the faculty at the Stern School of New York University and Rutgers Business School. Chen also has extensive experience in senior executive education in China.

Her work received the Best Paper Award from the Organization Behavior Division of the Academy of Management in 2002 and the Best Micro Best Paper Award at the International Association of Chinese Management Research in China in 2008 and 2021. Chen has been on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, and Administrative Science Quarterly.

In addition to her academic accomplishments, she is academic dean of China Initiatives at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, the architect and the driver of the Cornell-Tsinghua Finance MBA program, and the Cornell-Peking MMH/MBA program. She earned her PhD in psychology from Columbia University.

Education

PhD Columbia University, 1996
MA Teachers College, Columbia University, 1991
BA Soochow University, 1986