Kyle Emich

Associate Professor, Management University of Delaware

  • Newark DE

Prof. Emich's research explores the role of individual attributes in team dynamics and other collective environments.

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Spotlight

2 min

How Philadelphia Eagles' head coach achieves Super success with 'Ted Lasso' management style

Not long after Nick Sirianni was hired by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2021, fans started noticing similarities between the head coach and TV’s Ted Lasso. The University of Delaware's Kyle Emich can discuss how Sirianni's team approach compares to the more top-down structure favored by Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid. Like Lasso – a high school football coach on the Apple TV show of the same name who takes over an English soccer club with no prior experience – Sirianni is responsible for the culture, first and foremost. He relies on his coordinators, who call the plays. In essence, he is a more collaborative leader. By contrast, Reid is a top-down coach who currently calls the plays and always has, dating back to his time as coach of the Eagles. Philadelphia fans became more than a little weary of him saying "that's on me" at post-game press conferences following disappointing losses. With back-to-back Super Bowl titles under his belt with the Chiefs, it's difficult to argue with the success of Reid's style now. This could be fodder for sports talk radio, but it's also something Emich, a professor of management, can discuss from an academic perspective. The professor says there's advantages and disadvantages to both: "The main advantages for the top-down approach are speed of decision-making and extreme novelty (you can do whatever pops into your head). The advantages of the coordinator approach are a larger information base to draw from and specialized knowledge." "The more team-based approach has a lot of potential, but is difficult to execute well because it requires coordination." Emich, who has discussed management and sports teams several times in the past (including Super Bowl LII, when the Eagles defeated the New England Patriots), is available for interviews.

Kyle Emich

2 min

Strong team culture will pull Phillies' through latest playoff disappointment

[Updated Oct. 25, 2023] The Philadelphia Phillies magic run in the MLB playoffs has ended, but there's no doubt their unusually strong "Brotherly Love" will continue to carry them through another tough end to the season. Kyle Emich, professor of management at the University of Delaware, can talk about the team's bond with each other and unique rituals. They include blaring the fluffy pop song "Dancing on My Own" after key victories and a potentially vulgar hand signal that players flash from the dugout after big hits. The study of love in teams is not entirely new, said Kyle Emich, professor of Management at the University of Delaware. Companionate love, as opposed to romantic love, focused on compassion, caring and feelings of affection toward one's teammates, has been linked to satisfaction and working together as a team, while preventing burnout (key to late-season performance), he said. Emich added: A positive clubhouse culture can help a team remain confident after failure (which every team endures at some point), develop and commit to innovative solutions that may be risky and feel safe voicing concerns, which may need to be overcome to move forward. We have all been on teams where members bottle up problems until, of course, they eventually burst ruining team performance. Positive teams don't do that. It's not just nice that the Phillies seem to get along so well, this sense of chemistry and support may underlie their stellar performance. To arrange an interview with Emich on this topic or any relating to teams – especially in the workplace – simply click the "contact" button on his ExpertFile profile.

Kyle Emich

2 min

Sixers' summer soap opera: What the Harden-Morey rift can teach us about organizational dynamics

Did star point guard James Harden quit on the Philadelphia 76ers? Or did general manager Daryl Morey break his promise that a large contract would be coming his way after the former MVP took a pay cut last season? As is almost always the case, the answer sits somewhere in the middle, and that's a complicated place for it to be. But Kyle Emich, professor of management at the University of Delaware, said there are lessons in the latest Sixers' offseason debacle that can be applied to teams and culture in the workplace: When you are part of an organization, you need to feel what's called "task significance" to be motivated to do your job. This means that you need to feel that your job has a positive impact on the organization or broader society. The problems between Harden and Morey indicate that, although playing for the fans may give him some motivation, he no longer believes that the organization is a positive entity. This will greatly decrease his motivation, which influences practice and on-the-court performance (assuming he goes back on his threat to return). There is an even larger potential influence on things he is not paid for, but that are very important for the 76ers (such as informal mentoring of players like rising star Tyrese Maxey; acting as a role model (e.g., arriving early/leaving late), giving the organization positive press and his presence and demeanor at training camp (which he says he won't attend). Whether or not people realize it, organizations are emotional environments. Different emotions do different things and this sense of betrayal and anger is likely to make Harden actively move against the Sixers. This is obviously not ideal. Because Harden is a role model, we need to also be aware of emotional contagion. It is possible teammates will look at the front office with increased scrutiny, which will harm any new players brought in or anyone affected by front office moves. Emich is available for interviews, and can be contacted directly by clicking on his profile.

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Biography

Kyle Emich earned his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior at Cornell University and is currently an associate professor of management at the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware.

His research explores the role of individual attributes, particularly perceptions and emotions, in team dynamics and other collective environments. This has particular implications for leadership, responding to disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and race, equality, and ethics.

Kyle has published in a number of management and psychology journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organizational Research Methods and Psychological Science. His work has also been cited in media outlets such as TIME Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Scientific American.

Kyle has taught both undergraduate and MBA students at Cornell University, Fordham University and the University of Delaware. He currently offers courses in organizational behavior and groups, teams and leadership.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise

Cognitive Processing
Leadership
Organizational Behavior
Team Dynamics
Group Dynamics

Media Appearances

Paradox Mindset: The Source of Remarkable Creativity in Teams

INSEAD Knowledge  online

2022-07-25

Teams are more successful if they embrace internal differences and explore conflicting ideas instead of glossing over them. “The experience was magical. I had enjoyed collaborative work before, but this was something different,” said Daniel Kahneman of the beginnings of his years-long partnership with fellow psychologist Amos Tversky that culminated in a Nobel Prize in economic sciences three decades later.

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Women less likely to get their ideas endorsed at work than men

Yahoo News  online

2021-03-31

You’re having a conversation with your boss and you put forward an idea for a new project. You’ve thought it through thoroughly and considered what challenges might crop up, and how you would overcome them.

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Ethical leadership is key to surviving a crisis

Newswise  online

2021-01-26

You don’t have to be an ethical leader to win a Super Bowl or an election or rise to the level of CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But according to a new study co-written by Kyle Emich, associate professor of management in the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, possessing the characteristics of “ethical leadership” is absolutely essential in order to steer an organization through a crisis.

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Articles

When Majority Men Respect Minority Women, Groups Communicate Better: A Neurological Exploration

Small Group Research

2023

Groups must leverage their members’ diverse knowledge to make optimal decisions. However, the gender composition of a group may affect this ability, particularly because solo status female members (one female grouped with males) are generally allocated lower status than their male counterparts, so their knowledge is more likely to be ignored.

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Better Together: Member Proactivity Is Better for Team Performance When Aligned with Conscientiousness

Academy of Management Discoveries

2023

Proactivity, the tendency to create change in the work environment, typically improves team performance. This relationship is far from perfect, however. We explore inconsistencies in the team proactivity literature to shed light on an important question – when is member proactivity beneficial or dysfunctional for teams? First, we consider the composition of member proactivity at the team level and whether a simple ‘more is better’ heuristic neglects a more complex relationship linking member proactivity to team coordination and performance.

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Team Composition Revisited: Expanding the Team Member Attribute Alignment Approach to Consider Patterns of More Than Two Attributes

Organizational Research Methods

2023

The attribute alignment approach to team composition allows researchers to assess variation in team member attributes, which occurs simultaneously within and across individual team members. This approach facilitates the development of theory testing the proposition that individual members are themselves complex systems comprised of multiple attributes and that the configuration of those attributes affects team-level processes and outcomes.

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Accomplishments

UD Women’s Leadership Institute Fellow

2022-2024

SWUFE-UD Joint Institute Fellow

2022-2025

Small Group Research Reviewer of the Year

2018

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Education

Cornell University

PhD

Organizational Behavior

2012

Cornell University

MS

Organizational Behavior

2009

State University of New York at Oswego

BA

Psychology

2006

Affiliations

  • Small Group Research : Editorial Board
  • Journal of Management Inquiry : Editorial Board
  • Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes : Editorial Board
  • Academy of Management : Member
  • American Psychological Association : Member
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Event Appearances

Configurational Research in Teams

The Academy of Management Meetings  Seattle, WA

Team Composition Revisited: Expanding the Team Member Attribute Alignment Approach to Consider Patterns of More than Two Attributes

17th Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGRoup) Conference  Hamburg, Germany

Control and Change Together: Conscientiousness and Proactivity Alignment Improves Team Performance

Western Academy of Management  Kona, HI

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