Gita Johar, the Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business, has been appointed to a newly created position as Vice Dean for Research at Columbia Business School, effective on July 1, 2010. In her new position, she will work closely with School’s new Cross-Disciplinary Areas (CDAs), which integrate research and teaching across academic divisions, the University and the practitioner community.
"As a natural next step in our intellectual strategy, I have asked Gita to lend her unique experience and conscientious, strategic thinking to the development and implementation of these and other research-oriented initiatives for groups of faculty and individual colleagues," Dean Glenn Hubbard said.
Since joining Columbia Business School in 1992, Johar has earned a reputation as both an excellent teacher and a respected thought leader in her field. She is the faculty director of the School’s Behavioral Research Lab, where she has been instrumental in the lab’s growth, and an active participant in the work of the Social Enterprise Program and the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business. Her research interests include consumer psychology and decision making, marketing communication and miscommunication, self-regulation and the illusion of control.
Johar has chaired the Marketing Division's PhD program and mentored several PhD students over the years. Last year, she was a key participant in the School’s 10,000 Women project, made possible through a collaboration with Goldman Sachs, at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Johar has served as the associate editor for several of the leading journals in the field of consumer behavior. She holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management and a PhD from New York University.
"I’m delighted to take on this critical role. Cutting-edge research that impacts theory as well as practice is the essence of what our outstanding faculty does," Johar said. "I look forward to working closely with my colleagues to maintain the prominence and visibility of our research and build interdisciplinary ties by leveraging our centers and Cross-Disciplinary Areas, both within, as well as outside, Columbia University."
The School’s two CDAs are in Competitive Strategy and Decision Making and Negotiations. Competitive Strategy is anchored in psychology, organizational sociology and economics and other fields that are useful in the study of the integrated strategy of a firm. The Decision Making and Negotiations CDA brings together faculty members who share research expertise on the behavioral aspects of decision making and negotiations.