Renowned management researcher named UF Foundation Term Professor
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – One of the world’s top scientists in business and management is one of two scholars selected for the University of Florida Foundation Term Professorship Award in 2023.
Mo Wang, University Distinguished Professor, Lanzillotti-McKethan Eminent Scholar Chair and Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Initiatives, is the first Warrington faculty member to be selected for the award that is representative of UF’s commitment to investing in faculty whose work is transforming lives.
“This award is significant to me because it not only represents great recognition of my research achievement, but also signifies the UF community’s appreciation of the impactful research that is carried out at Warrington College of Business,” Wang said.
To date, Wang has published more than 190 peer-reviewed journal articles, 35 book chapters and 5 books. He is known for his research on retirement and older worker employment, occupational health psychology, expatriate and newcomer adjustment, leadership and team processes and advanced quantitative methodologies.
Wang’s work, which has been supported with more than $5 million from the NIH, NSF, CDC and various other research foundations and agencies, includes insights into fairness in AI-assisted hiring systems, why training participation is key to retaining older workers, and how to manage a multi-generational workforce.
As a true scientist-practitioner, Wang is also committed to providing students, workers, employers, and policy makers with evidence-based knowledge. His work has been reported extensively by the popular media, such as NPR, BBC, Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and the Washington Post. In 2015, he conducted a Congressional Debriefing on retirement for the U.S. Congress. He also served as an invited speaker for the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team twice, giving talks on retirement (2015) and job search (2016).
Wang was selected from a pool of UF’s top faculty members who have substantial research assignments and outstanding records of accomplishment.
Wang’s vast research accomplishments started early in his career, earning Early Career Contribution/Achievement Awards from American Psychological Association (2013), Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2013), Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology (2012), Academy of Management’s HR Division (2011) and Research Methods Division (2011), and Society for Occupational Health Psychology (2009).
His work has also earned him the Academy of Management HR Division Scholarly Achievement Award (2008), Careers Division Best Paper Award (2009), European Commission’s Erasmus Mundus Scholarship for Work, Organizational, and Personnel Psychology (2009), Emerald Group’s Outstanding Author Contribution Awards (2013 and 2014), Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology’s William A. Owens Scholarly Achievement Award (2016) and Joyce and Robert Hogan Award (2023), and Journal of Management Scholarly Impact Award (2017). He also received Cummings Scholarly Achievement Award from Academy of Management’s OB Division (2017).
Wang has more than 25,000 citations for his work. His h-index, which is a metric that evaluates the cumulative impact of an author’s scholarly output and performance, is 82. An h-index of 60 or more after 20 years in a research career is “truly exceptional,” according to creator of the h-index Jorge E. Hirsch.
UF Foundation Term Professors are awarded $25,000 to support their research efforts. As part of the award, Wang plans to carry out several promising projects related to future of work, especially addressing challenges associated with remote and virtual work, workforce demographic changes and use of artificial intelligence in the day-to-day work settings.
Wang will be formally recognized with the award in early November at the University of Florida Advancement National Board Assembly.
