Wayne State University School of Business Administration

Ariel S. Levi

Senior Lecturer of Management

a.levi@wayne.edu
(313) 577-4581

Academic Degrees

  • Ph.D., Yale University, 1982
  • Post doctoral: NIMH, Columbia University, 1983
  • BA, University of California, 1976

Teaching Interests

  • Organizational Behavior
  • Social and Political Influences on Business
  • Human Resource Management
  • Organizational Change and Development

Research Interests

  • Perceptions of and reactions to affirmative action and diversity programs on the part of beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries
  • The effects of different forms of affirmative action and diversity programs on individual and organizational outcomes
  • The organizational framing of diversity programs and the effects of different framings on program acceptance among employees
  • Judgment and decision making at the individual, group, and organizational level, including: biases in probability estimates of future events
  • Analysis of decision fiascoes from the perspective of behavioral decision theory; managerial priority-setting and decision making in crises, problems, and opportunities.
  • Factors affecting individual loyalty and commitment to groups
  • Implications of evolutionary psychology for motivation and commitment to groups in organizations
  • Cognitive and motivational factors influencing performance evaluation.

Professional Experience & Certification

  • 2000-2002: Raytheon Corp.: Evaluation of Service Technical College Training Program for GM Technicians (with Fried, Baltes, and Naughton)

Publications & Presentations

  • "Race Differences in Termination at Work: The Role of Educational Inequality" (with Hargis, Baltes, and Fried), 2006, Journal of Business and Psychology.
  • "Persistence in a career goal hierarchy across time as a function of advancement probability, locus of control, and future orientation: an exploratory study" (with Fried, Slowik, Das, and Cerdin), 2005, paper presented at the National Academy of Management Meeting, Honolulu, HI.
  • "Contextualizing organizational citizenship behavior: A conceptual analysis" (with Fried and Drori), 2005, paper presented at the National Academy of Management Meeting, Honolulu, HI.
  • "The effects of organizational framing of affirmative action on program acceptance among nonbeneficiaries: A contingency model" (with Fried), 2005, paper presented at the conference, "Diversity as a competitive advantage in the global economy," Syracuse, NY.
  • "Race differences in reactions to affirmative action practices: A referent cognitions perspective" (with Fried), 2002, paper presented at the National Academy of Management Meeting, Denver, CO.
  • "The Relation Between Political Ideology and Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action Among African-Americans: The Moderating Effects of Racial Discrimination in the Workplace" (with Billings and Fried), 2001, Human Relations.
  • "Inflation of Subordinates? Performance Ratings: Main and Interactive Effects of Rater Negative Affectivity, Documentation of Work Behavior, and Appraisal Visibility" (with Fried, Ben-David, and Tiegs), 1999, Journal of Organizational Behavior.
  • "A Cross-Cultural Exploration of the Reference Dependence of Crucial Group Decisions Under Risk: Japan?s 1941 Decision for War" (with Whyte), 1997, Journal of Conflict Resolution.
  • "The Origins and Function of the Reference Point in Risky Group Decision Making: The Case of the Cuban Missile Crisis" (with Whyte), 1994, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
  • "Breadth, focus and content in leader priority-setting: Effects on decision quality and perceived leader performance" (with Mainstone), 1992, in K. Clark, M. Clark, & D. P. Campbell (Eds.), The Impact of Leadership. Greensboro, N.C.: Center for Creative Leadership.
  • "Use of the availability heuristic in probability estimates of future events: The effects of imagining outcomes versus imagining reasons" (with Pryor), 1987, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
  • "Decision making and decision theory" (with Abelson), 1985, Handbook of Social Psychology (3rd Edition).

Professional Memberships

  • Academy of Management
  • American Psychological Association
  • Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology
  • Decision Sciences Institute