Christine Pearson

Professor of Global Leadership | Thunderbird School of Global Management (Phoenix, AZ)

Christine Pearson is professor of global leadership at Thunderbird School of Global Management (a member of the Knowledge Network of Arizona State University). She has built a worldwide reputation as an expert on curtailing and containing dysfunctional behavior at work, from the dramatic sweep of organizational crises, to the corrosive impact of problems that escalate from low-intensity incivility and aggression in the workplace.

Pearson is highly sought after for her expertise by both academic and business sectors. She has helped numerous organizations plan for, avert and contain bad behavior – from devastating, business-threatening events, such as, workplace homicide, executive kidnapping, product tampering, aircraft accidents and consumer fraud – to the day-to-day erosion of workplace incivility.

As a consultant and executive-development adviser, Pearson has assisted organizations such as PepsiCo, Dow Chemical, NASA, Clorox, Transamerica, Cisco Systems, Kraft Foods, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, BellSouth/AT&T, Mobil, Chevron, Nortel Asia, the Islamic Development Bank, SABIC, and the Red Cross.

She has been cited in more than 600 newspapers and magazines, and featured on international radio and television broadcasts including the major U.S. networks, BBC, CBC, NPR, CNN and additional networks around the world. Her work has appeared in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., and Conference Board Review.

Pearson has written six books on crisis leadership and bad behavior at work that have been translated into Chinese, Arabic and Spanish. Her book credits include the first grounded practitioner book on crisis management (with Mitroff), the first international scholarly book on crisis management (with Roux-Dufort and Clair) and the first grounded practitioner book on workplace incivility (with Porath). Her work has been published in numerous academic journals including, for example, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Organization Science, Harvard Business Review, Human Relations, Organizational Dynamics, and Administrative Science Quarterly.

Pearson earned her doctorate in business from the University of Southern California.