Kathleen L. McGinn

Kathleen L. McGinn is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Chair of Harvard Business School's Doctoral Programs. Professor McGinn studies the role of interpersonal relationships and gender at work and in negotiations using both laboratory and field methodologies. Her current field research investigates these issues in U.S. professional service firms, among self-employed women in India, and in relation to health and welfare outcomes for young women in Zambia.

With Deborah Kolb (Simmons College) and Lakshmi Ramarajan (HBS), Professor McGinn is investigating the process through which an organization incorporates changes in workforce composition and changing understandings of gender into its own evolving mission, structure, and practices over a twenty-year period. With Beth Humberd (Boston College), Rachel Arnett (HBS), and Judy Clair (Boston College), she is investigating professional and personal transitions in the careers of women leaders. Professor McGinn and Mukti Khaire (HBS) are investigating how women's work in India in the last three decades has affected and been affected by gender, community, and family. With Nava Ashraf (HBS) and Corinne Low (Columbia University), Professor McGinn is carrying out a field experiment testing the efficacy of information only versus information plus negotiation skills in affecting health and welfare outcomes among teenage girls in Zambia. She is also engaged in laboratory experiments exploring gender and negotiations with Pinar Fletcher (HBS) and Iris Bohnet (Harvard Kennedy School). Professor McGinn's research is published in academic journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Games and Economic Behavior, as well as numerous book chapters and practitioner outlets.

Professor McGinn advises firms and not-for-profit organizations in the areas of negotiation, gender and talent, and employment relations. Before coming to Harvard, Professor McGinn taught at Cornell University's Johnson School and Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. She received her Ph.D. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Prior to her academic career, Professor McGinn was a director of labor relations in the public sector.