Rate My Professor Maria Kakarika

Maria Kakarika is Professor of Organizational Behaviour & Leadership in the Department of Management & Marketing at Durham University Business School. She holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior from IE Business School, an MSc in Industrial Relations & Personnel Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BSc in Economics & Business Administration from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Inspired by an Organizational Behaviour course during her MSc, she pursued a PhD in Spain, during which she held a visiting position at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. Following her doctorate, she spent more than ten years in academic positions in France. Before entering academia, she worked in the banking industry and in human resources training and development roles. She joined Durham University Business School as Associate Professor in October 2022.

Her research interests include leadership, gender, identity, sexualization, physical activity, and social perceptions, with particular emphasis on gendered social perceptions and issues affecting women in the workplace. Notable studies address the sexualization spillover effect on female job candidates, morality- and gender-based reactions to negative workplace gossip, entrepreneurial passion and role identity management, deep-level dissimilarity in leader-member exchange quality, organizational behaviour during COVID-19, metatheoretical frameworks of diversity in teams, psychological contract perspectives on responses to bullying, and alignment of leadership self-image with peer feedback. Key publications comprise Guillén, L., Kakarika, M., & Heflick, N. (2024), Sexualize one, objectify all? The sexualization spillover effect on female job candidates, Journal of Organizational Behavior; Kakarika, M., Taghavi, S., & González-Gómez, H. (2024), Don’t Shoot the Messenger? A Morality- and Gender-Based Model of Reactions to Negative Workplace Gossip, Journal of Business Ethics; Kakarika, M., Biniari, M., Guillén, L., & Mayo, M. (2022), Where does the heart lie? A multistage process model of entrepreneurial passion and role identity management, Journal of Organizational Behavior; Mayo, M., Kakarika, M., Pastor, J. C., & Brutus, S. (2012), Aligning or Inflating Your Leadership Self-Image?, Academy of Management Learning & Education; and Hamori, M., & Kakarika, M. (2009), External labor market strategy and career success, Human Resource Management. She is Director of the Durham DBA programme, Associate Editor at Group & Organization Management, and a core member of the Centre for Leadership and Followership.