Caroline A. Bartel
Associate Professor of Management

• PHD, University of Michigan, 1998
• MA, University of Michigan, 1996
• BA, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1992

Dr. Caroline Bartel is an associate professor of Management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. She is Co-Director of the Center for Leadership Excellence. Dr. Bartel received her PhD from the University of Michigan; her research and teaching focus on sustaining employee engagement in the workplace, particularly in organizations and professions undergoing change. In 2008, she received the Trammell/CBA Foundation Teaching Award for Assistant Professors in the McCombs School of Business.

Dr. Bartel teaches to diverse audiences, having designed undergraduate and graduate courses, and executive training seminars at the University of Michigan, New York University, and University of Texas at Austin. Her courses focus on how individual and group behavior are shaped by structural, social and political forces within organizations.  

Dr. Bartel has studied how organizations in various industries (e.g., consulting, consumer products, news publishing and broadcasting, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications) can maintain the motivation, performance and commitment of employees during times of organizational growth as well as decline (layoffs and downsizing). She has examined an array of change initiatives, such as corporate citizenship and community outreach, virtual work and telecommuting, and organizational restructuring (e.g., mergers, matrixed work teams). Dr. Bartel’s current research focused on how organizations facing threat and uncertainty manage their identity and culture, and the subsequent impact on individual and group effectiveness (e.g., productivity, learning and innovation). Dr. Bartel’s research appears in many leading journals, including The Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, The Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organization Science.

Ethan R. Burris
Associate Professor of Management

• PHD, Cornell University, 2005 
• MPhil, Cornell University, 2003

Dr. Ethan Burris is an Associate Professor of Management and the Chevron Centennial Fellow at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the Graduate Advisor (Director of the PhD program for the Management Department) and Co-Director of the Center of Leadership Excellence for the McCombs School. He earned his Ph.D. in Management from Cornell University and has served as a Visiting Scholar at Google. He teaches and consults on topics relating to leadership, managing power and politics, building engagement in groups and teams, social enterprise, and negotiations. The recipient of numerous research and teaching awards, Dr. Burris received the McCombs School Award for Research Excellence in 2015, the Fawn and Vijay Mahajan Teaching Excellence Award for Executive Education in 2015, the Hank & Mary Harkins Foundation Award for Effective Teaching in Undergraduate Classes in 2012, the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2011, the ING Professor of Excellence award in 2011, and the 2009 Trammell/CBA Foundation Teaching Award for Assistant Professors. He was also named to the "Faculty Honor Roll" in 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2013.

Dr. Burris’ current research focuses on understanding 1) the antecedents and consequences of employees speaking up or staying silent in organizations, 2) leadership behaviors, processes and outcomes, and 3) the effective management of conflict generated by multiple interests and perspectives. In particular, he has investigated how leaders shape employees decisions whether to speak up or stay silent, and how these voice behaviors influence the performance of employees who offer their input and leaders and organizations who receive it. His research has appeared in several top management and psychology journals, such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and has been covered in major media outlets such as the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and the Houston Chronicle.  

Dr. Burris has collected data from and served as a consultant for a variety of professional firms, ranging from several Fortune 100 technology companies, a Fortune 100 insurance company, Fortune 500 companies in the casual dining and grocery industries, several financial services organizations, hospitals, a defense contracting company, a commercial real estate firm, governmental agencies, and many retail organizations.

Laura (Mainville) Guenther
Director, Center for Leadership Excellence