Charleen Case

Dr. Case is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Using theory and methods from organizational behavior, social psychology, and the evolutionary sciences, Dr. Case investigates how people socially navigate cross-hierarchy relationships at work. Adopting an interdisciplinary lens and a person X situation experimental approach, she examines how humans' deep-seated motives for status, affiliation, and kin care affect social decision-making and interpersonal behavior within mentoring relationships, hierarchy-bridging coalitions, and leader-follower interactions. A chief aim of her work is to uncover when, why, and how employees' motivations cause them to behave in ways that promote (or frustrate) effective group functioning and group member wellbeing. 

Dr. Case received her BA in Psychology and Anthropology from Miami University. During her undergraduate studies, she was a Junior Visiting Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for Evolutionary Studies in the Biological Anthropology Department at the University of Cambridge. She also conducted primatology research, including fieldwork within the Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She earned her MS and PhD in Social Psychology from Florida State University. While completing her PhD, she spent three years as a Visiting Research Fellow in the Management and Organizations Department at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.