Sara Perry, Ph.D.
Ben Williams Professor in Management; Professor of Management | Baylor University
Waco, TX, UNITED STATES
Dr. Perry researches management-related topics, including remote work, negotiation, employee stress and health, innovation and leadership.
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Biography
Sara Perry teaches and conducts research in management-related topics, including remote work, negotiation, employee stress and health, innovation and leadership. Her specialties include organizational behavior, negotiation, human resource management and industrial/organizational psychology. She also has consulting experience in public safety organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Dr. Perry speaks to various groups and offers workshops on stress management and negotiation and conflict resolution.
Areas of Expertise (13)
Work From Home
WFH
Great Resignation
Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Management
Organizational Behavior
Negotiation
Innovation
Leadership
Statistics
Data Analytics
Employee Stress and Health
Remote Work
Accomplishments (3)
Young Researcher Award (professional)
Awarded in April 2017 by Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business
Best Presentation Award (professional)
Awarded in June, 2015 by ASEE Engineering Management track
Best Paper in Innovation Track (professional)
Awarded by the Southern Management Association.
Education (3)
University of Houston: Ph.D., Industrial and Organizational Psychology
University of Houston: M.A., Industrial and Organizational Psychology
University of Missouri Columbia: B.S., Computer Science
Affiliations (6)
- Academy of Management
- American Psychological Association
- American Society of Engineering Education
- Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists
- Society of Human Resources Management
- Southern Management Association
Media Appearances (18)
Living the dream: work in the 21st century will be much more fun
PassW0RD (UK) online
2023-01-23
AUDIO: Sara Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management at Baylor, is a guest on the PassW0rd radio program that focuses on the future of work. A scholar on remote/hybrid work, Perry’s from 23:10-32:43 and again from 34:17-36:49.
Finding work-life balance with remote work
Phys.org online
2022-11-17
Baylor remote/hybrid work expert Sara J. Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management, is quoted about the positives and challenges of remote work, suggesting that businesses who help employees respond to these challenges will benefit with a more productive and healthier workforce.
How work gossip has changed in the age of hybrid work
Fast Company online
2022-11-08
Add another benefit to working from home: With fewer serendipitous watercooler conversations, a fully remote team may slow down office gossip, says Sara J. Perry, professor of management at Baylor University, but it may be a little more complicated with hybrid teams.
Business Review: No One Is An Island
KWBU-FM online
2022-07-14
AUDIO: Sara Perry, Ph.D. associate professor of management, presents ideas for employers who are supporting employees working remotely, which is more common than ever in this digital age.
Future of Work Wednesdays: A Conversation About Hybrid Work with Dr. Sara Perry of Baylor University
Robin online
2022-06-15
Sara Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management at Baylor, is interviewed about the future of hybrid work and its various challenges and opportunities.
One Simple Practice Change Could Remove Hybrid Working Stress
CMS Wire online
2022-05-23
Sara Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management who researches employee stress and remote work, is quoted in this article about tension related to hybrid work. Perry said it can be tied to a lack of autonomy or employee choice as research shows that workers want flexibility and the opportunity to work in the way that suits them best.
Hating hybrid work? Here’s how to make it less painful.
The Washington Post online
2022-04-13
Sara Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management and an expert in employee stress and well-being, remote work and leadership, is among the work experts quoted in this article about how employees can successfully navigate the challenges of hybrid work.
Business Review - Remote Psychology
KWBU-FM radio
2021-11-03
AUDIO: in this episode of “The Business Review,” Baylor marketing expert and researcher Sara Perry, Ph.D., explains why remote work isn’t for everyone.
Expert in time management gives advice
Baylor Lariat online
2021-09-01
Sara Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management, and Monique Felix, character formation coordinator at the Student-Athlete Center for Excellence, offer advice on time management, providing tips to help students structure their day.
7 Traits of High-Quality Remote Job Candidates
Business 2 Community online
2021-06-22
This article about business leaders and recruiters alike being able to recognize traits that indicate a candidate will be successful in a remote role cites a recent study by Baylor management professor Sara Perry, Ph.D., which found that individuals with both high amounts of emotional stability and autonomy were best able to cope with strain (i.e., exhaustion, disengagement and dissatisfaction) in a remote work environment.
The Pandemic Challenged Conventional Thinking About Work. Can We Go Back To Business As Usual?
“The Source” Texas Public Radio online
2021-06-08
AUDIO: Remote work expert Sara Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management at Baylor, is a guest on “The Source” on Texas Public Radio to discuss the future of work in a post-pandemic world and if the traditional workplace will – or should – return to its pre-COVID ways.
Business Review: Remote Psychology
KWBU-FM radio
2021-03-04
AUDIO: Working from home may sound like a dream job, but in this episode of “The Business Review,” Baylor marketing expert and researcher Sara Perry, Ph.D., explains why remote work isn’t for everyone.
Why Control Over Boundaries Is Key To Successful Work-Life Balance
Forbes online
2020-08-14
This article references a study conducted by Baylor researchers Sara Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management and Emily Hunter, Ph.D., associate professor of management, Hankamer School of Business, on “Stress in remote work: two studies testing the Demand-Control-Person model,” which analyzed the autonomy of remote workers in relation to their stress levels and emotional stability.
No One is an Island: Support Remote Employees
KWBU-FM online
2020-07-02
Expectations and feelings of isolation are just a few challenges employers face when supporting remote workers. In this episode of the Business Review, Sara Perry, Ph.D., assistant professor of management, offers her research-based ideas on how employers can best help their employees.
Introverts vs. extroverts: How personality traits affect working from home
CTV online
2020-06-04
Baylor management professor Sara Perry, Ph.D., an expert source on working from home, is interviewed for this article about her 2018 study, which found that employees with low emotional stability have a harder time thriving in remote work settings.
Baylor Expert on Remote Work Shares 5 Key Tips to Make the Most of Working from Home
Baylor Media and Public Relations online
2020-03-25
The international response to the COVID-19 public health crisis has led millions of workers to make home their new office as communities and organizations promote social distancing to slow the spread of the virus. For many individuals, this spring marks the first time they will have worked from home for a substantial amount of time. Sara Perry, Ph.D., assistant professor of management in Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, an internationally-recognized remote work researcher and author of a 2018 study published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, offers tips in five key areas for employees to consider as they make the most of working from home. “Research has given us some good empirical evidence of key areas that will help remote work be more successful,” Perry said.
How to Work From Home, if You’ve Never Done It Before
The New York Times
2020-03-12
Sara Perry, Ph.D., professor in Baylor University's management department, is a featured expert in this story about working from home and remote work as a result of coronavirus. From the article: "Dr. Perry said it’s important to continue to make the same transition, even if you’re just moving from one spot on the couch to the other. So put your work materials and your laptop away (or just shut work applications if you want to use your computer for something else). She added that this is crucial right now because 'you’re already being challenged in terms of your personal resources,' she said. 'You still have to take that recovery time from work.'”
Out of Office: Is Remote Work Stressing You OUT?
Remotely One online
2020-01-29
An article by Sara Perry, Ph.D., assistant professor of management, who is an expert on issues of work-life balance. In this article, she addresses her research – and the research of others – regarding remote work.
Articles (7)
When is Empowerment Effective? The Role of Leader-Leader Exchange in Empowering Leadership, Cynicism, and Time Theft
Journal of ManagementNatalia Lorinkova and Sara Perry
2017-05-01
Applying arguments from social exchange theory, we theoretically derive and empirically test a multilevel model that informs theory on leadership, cynicism, and deviant withdrawal. Namely, we examine the moderating effect of the upward exchange relationship of a leader on empowering leadership behaviors as they affect subordinate psychological empowerment, cynicism, and time theft. In a sample of 161 employees across 37 direct supervisors, empowering leadership was associated with reduced employee cynicism both directly and indirectly through employee psychological empowerment. The positive relationship between empowering leadership and employee psychological empowerment, however, was significant only when the leader enjoyed a high-quality relationship with his or her own boss. In turn, cynicism was associated with increased time theft, suggesting that employees may reciprocate frustrating experiences by withdrawing in minor, yet impactful and deviant, ways in efforts to balance their exchange with the organization.
Managing the innovators: Organizational and professional commitment among scientists and engineers
Research Policy2016 How can leaders best manage commitment among innovators? We applied theory on dual allegiance to multiple targets of commitment, in conjunction with person-organization fit theory, to explore the dynamics of organizational and professional commitment among scientists and engineers working in hybrid, research-focused organizations. These types of organizations are founded on large-scale multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration between academe and industry. Using both individual- and organizational-level variables collected from 255 academic science and engineering researchers working in 22 National Science Foundation-funded Engineering Research Centers, our analyses revealed that researcher innovation orientation (i.e., the predisposition to approach work in novel ways) was positively associated with organizational and professional commitment. Those relationships were moderated by two factors: organizational productivity in late-stage technology transfer and the researcher‘s perceived role significance (i.e., in fulfilling the strategic mission of the organization). The strongest positive relationship between innovation orientation and organizational commitment emerged among researchers who perceived high role significance and worked in highly productive organizations. A negative relationship between innovation orientation and professional commitment also emerged among those individuals. Post-hoc analyses revealed that highly innovative, senior researchers who perceived high role significance were the most likely to report higher levels of both organizational and professional commitment. Leaders of multi-disciplinary research centers who are aware of the complexity of dynamics among organizational commitment, professional commitment, and role significance may be better equipped to effectively manage science and engineering researchers.
The exhausted short-timer: Leveraging autonomy to engage in production deviance
Human Relations2015 This article explores the conditions under which autonomy may lead to production deviance (unsanctioned, non-task-focused behavior) rather than acting as a motivational job characteristic. In a study of 260 manual laborers, we applied Conservation of Resources Theory to propose an interaction among autonomy, emotional exhaustion and employment opportunity in predicting production deviance. We suggest that employees who experience emotional exhaustion may leverage autonomy to engage in production deviance in efforts to conserve and protect remaining energy reserves, particularly when they feel they can secure ‘better’ opportunities than their current job. Results of hierarchical moderated multiple regression analyses revealed that workers reporting high levels of autonomy, emotional exhaustion and employment opportunity also manifested the highest levels of production deviance.
Developing students’ twenty-first century skills through a service learning project,
Journal of Learning in Higher Education2015 It is increasingly important for students to develop practiced and applied knowledge, teamwork skills, and civic engagement in addition to core curriculum knowledge in order to be prepared for the demands of the 21st century workforce. We propose that service-learning, or learning through an applied community service project, can uniquely address these essential 21st century skills. Thus, in this paper, we outline a specific service-learning project geared towards improving these skill-sets. Then, we design an experiment to test the efficacy of this project in increasing these skills by comparing students who completed this project to those in a control condition. Results support study hypotheses that service-learning increases teamwork and civic engagement, and partially support the hypothesis that it increases practiced and applied knowledge. Additionally, students in the service-learning condition outperformed students in the control condition on a test of core-curriculum knowledge. Thus, this study supports the overall assertion that service learning can be used to successfully teach students 21st century skills.
When does Virtuality Really "Work"? Examining the Role of Work-Family and Virtuality in Social Loafing
Journal of Management2013 We sought to clarify the relationship between virtuality and social loafing by exploring two work–family moderators—family responsibility and dissimilarity in terms of family responsibility—and two mediators—cohesion and psychological obligation—in two studies. We expected that “busy teams” (i.e., comprising similar individuals with many family responsibilities) would exhibit the strongest positive virtuality–social loafing relationship, and teams comprising similar individuals with few family responsibilities would experience a weaker virtuality–social loafing relationship. We expected that individuals working with dissimilar others would report consistently high levels of social loafing regardless of virtuality. Furthermore, we expected cohesion and psychological obligation to one’s teammates would mediate these effects. Similar individuals in teams indeed exhibited different virtuality–social loafing relationships in both studies, suggesting that the flexibility provided by virtuality might be more effective in teams comprising similar people with few family responsibilities. Study 2 further revealed that cohesion and obligation may mediate these effects, such that high levels of these mediators were associated with low levels of social loafing in similar teams comprising people with few family responsibilities. We discuss contributions to the virtual work and social loafing literatures, as well as the work–family and team literatures. We also suggest several specific actions managers can take on the basis of these findings, including for employees with few versus many family responsibilities.
Servant leaders inspire servant followers: Antecedents and outcomes for employees and the organization
The Leadership Quarterly2013 Despite widespread adoption of servant leadership, we are only beginning to understand its true utility across multiple organizational levels. Our purpose was to test the relationship between personality, servant leadership, and critical follower and organizational outcomes. Using a social influence framework, we proposed that leader agreeableness and extraversion affect follower perceptions of servant leadership. In turn, servant leaders ignite a cycle of service by role-modeling servant behavior that is then mirrored through coworker helping behavior and high-quality customer service, as well as reciprocated through decreased withdrawal. Using a multilevel, multi-source model, we surveyed 224 stores of a U.S. retail organization, including 425 followers, 110 store managers, and 40 regional managers. Leader agreeableness was positively and extraversion was negatively related to servant leadership, which was associated with decreased follower turnover intentions and disengagement. At the group-level, service climate mediated the effects of servant leadership on follower turnover intentions, helping and sales behavior.
Personality and counterproductive work behaviour: Using conservation of resources theory to narrow the profile of deviant employees
Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology2011 We leverage conservation of resources (COR) theory to explain how conscientiousness and emotional stability (ES) are associated with resource management strategies that may reflect instrumentally driven counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). Specifically, we investigated how the relationship between conscientiousness and CWB varies as a function of the level of available personal (i.e., ES) and organizationally provided (i.e., experienced job constraints) resources. Results from two surveys administered 4 weeks apart to US employees indicate that the negative relationship between conscientiousness and CWB is positive among employees who are low in ES.
