About

Laura Morgan Roberts is the Frank M. Sands Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Her research and consulting focus on the science of maximizing human potential in diverse organizations and communities. She has published over fifty research articles, teaching cases, and practitioner-oriented tools for strategically activating best selves through strength-based development. Roberts has edited three books: Race, Work and Leadership; Positive Organizing in a Global Society; and Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations. Her influential publications on diversity, authenticity, and leadership development have been featured in Harvard Business Review and several other global media outlets. She earned a BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia, and an MA and Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan. She has served on the faculties of Harvard Business School, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, and Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change, and has taught courses in organizational behavior, psychology, negotiations, group dynamics, diversity, leadership, and career development at various institutions.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social Science
• Computer Science
• Aesthetics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social psychology
• Epistemology
• Engineering
• Philosophy
• Art
• Business
• Engineering ethics
• Cognitive science
• Knowledge management

Selected publications

• Building Capacity in Organizations and Individuals to Leverage Marginalized Identities at Work

  Palgrave studies in equity, diversity, inclusion, and indigenization in business · 2025-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Editorial: Voices from the academy: a response to President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies

  Equality Diversity and Inclusion An International Journal · 2025-04-09 · 15 citations

  editorialOpen access

  Author's extract from the editorial published by Emerald Publishing Ltd on 10 April 2025: Aguinis, H., Ashcraft, K., Benschop, Y., Blancero, D.M., Cheng, C., Cornelius, N., Davidson, M., Ford, D., Hebl, M., King, E., Stone, D., Hennekam, S., Holmes IV, O., Konrad, A.M., Kossek, E.E., Ozbilgin, M., Powell, G.N., Pullen, A., Morgan Roberts, L.M., Roberson, Q., Stone, D., Syed, J., Williams, J., Williamson, I.O. and Zanoni, P. (2025), "Editorial: Voices from the academy: a response to President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 44 No. 2, pp. 151-157. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-03-2025-550.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fostering True Self-Expression in Organizations

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-02-22

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract Authenticity, which has been conceptualized as both a trait and a state influenced by the context, is crucial for understanding individual differences in organizations. This chapter begins by exploring the meaning of authenticity, its relevance to individual differences in organizations, and the relationship between trait and state authenticity. It then summarizes key findings from empirical research on authenticity, which highlights the difficulty of expressing one’s whole self —including one’s distinctive attributes—in organizations. It also reveals the need for research on tensions or trade-offs associated with authenticity. Addressing this gap, the chapter develops a conceptual framework of leader authenticity tensions—challenges that leaders face when they seek to foster their own and other people’s authenticity in the workplace. The framework includes metaphors to help illuminate this complex phenomenon. The chapter also identifies strategies that may help leaders to navigate the tensions successfully and suggests directions for future research on authenticity in organizations.

  PublisherDOI

• Positive Identity Construction in Diverse Organizations

  Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior · 2024-10-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Our desire to cultivate and sustain positive identities has a powerful influence on workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dynamics. While sometimes the quest for positive identities promotes celebration of diversity and uniqueness, in many other circumstances our inherent motivation to strive toward building more positive identities can have unintended consequences for DEI in organizations. In this review, we organize research on positive identities at work to better understand the experiences of the diverse set of individuals that compose our work organizations today. We invite a critical examination of how individuals with underrepresented and dominant identities deal with identity demands in diverse workplaces in both helpful and harmful ways. We conclude with directions for future research on interventions that mitigate identity threat and promote inclusion.

  PublisherDOI

• Evaluation of the Impact of a 90-day Mortality Prediction Model Integrated in the EHR for Advanced Care Planning ^*

  medRxiv · 2024-10-10

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Medical centers have begun to integrate AI models for mortality prediction in their electronic health records (EHR) systems to support advance care planning. 1 There is evidence that advance care planning can reduce suffering and unwanted, costly treatment near the end of life. 2 To better target patients at a risk of death with advance directive (AD) capture and goals of care (GOC) conversations at our comprehensive cancer center, we developed and integrated a 90-day mortality prediction model in the EHR. The model has been live since February, 2021. Performance in production has matched very closely pre-production pilots, achieving an 85% AUROC (AI Showcase Stage I). We implemented 4 clinical decision support (CDS) tools driven by the model to promote goal concordant care in inpatient and outpatient encounters (AI Showcase Stage II). 3 In this document, we analyze the impact of one of the aforementioned CDS applications, implemented as an inter-ruptive alert for the clinical social workers (CSWs) to facilitate advance directive (AD) completion in the inpatient setting. We also present preliminary results on volumes of GOC conversations prompted by one of the model-driven alerts. Our analysis is based on 12 months of data, collected between March 1, 2021 and February 28, 2022. The challenges for our assessment included inconsistent EHR documentation practices, coexistence with (traditional) non-AI driven processes tasked for similar goals and many external factors that can affect target outcomes. We believe such challenges to be rather common across healthcare organizations integrating AI in their workflows.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Navigating marginalized identities in diverse organizations

  Current Opinion in Psychology · 2024-12-24 · 6 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Design, EHR Integration and Evaluation of Clinical Decision Support Workflows Driven by a Mortality Prediction Model to Promote Goal Concordant Care ^*

  medRxiv · 2023-02-15 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access1st author

  Abstract We present a clinical decision support (CDS) framework to promote goal-concordant care for cancer patients nearing end of life, enabled by a 90-day mortality prediction model. Design, workflow, and deployment for four model driven CDS tools are described alongside utilization patterns and detailed performance analysis of the first of such tools integrated into clinical practice: an alert promoting advance directive completion. The alert achieved a precision of 44.1% (95% CI: 39.6 - 48.8%) and a recall of 34% (95% CI: 30.3 - 37.4%) with 9.8% 90-day mortality prevalence over a period of 8 months. Our analysis shows that both precision and recall of the alert were significantly impacted by the underlying clinical workflows. Based on feedback, clinicians have accepted model-driven CDS as a legitimate means to prioritize patients for advance care planning interventions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Revaluing Ordinary Moments: Disrupting Gendered Positive Self-Concepts through a Narrative Feedback Intervention

  Academy of Management Discoveries · 2023-05-19 · 4 citations

  article

  How do people craft a positive self-concept? How does the content of positive self-concepts change in response to feedback? Our research seeks to answer these questions by analyzing data gathered from two different samples before and after a positive feedback intervention. Collectively, our findings identify three narrative themes that people use to articulate how they add value to their workplace and communities: Mobilizing, Connecting, and Task Engaging. Further, we found that while our participants’ initial positive self-concepts showed gendered patterns, these patterns were largely diminished after the positive feedback intervention. Also, after the intervention, the content of participants’ positive self-concepts were broadened and enriched. In post-hoc analyses we explored possible mechanisms underlying these patterns of change. We then theorize that non-comparative, positive narrative feedback from significant others across multiple domains provides people with the opportunity to re-value ordinary actions and build a more integrated understanding of their value. We discuss the implications of these findings on strength-based research, positive identities, and gender identity construction.

  PublisherDOI

• Being Real By Myself? The Dynamic Relationality of Authenticity

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022-07-06 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• David Reyes

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jane E. Dutton

  18 shared

• E. Sandra

  Brandeis University

  13 shared

• Stephanie J. Creary

  University of Pennsylvania

  11 shared

• Jeffrey Bednar

  Brigham Young University

  11 shared

• Emily Heaphy

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  9 shared

• Gretchen M. Spreitzer

  9 shared

• Elise Bair Jones

  United States Coast Guard Academy

  9 shared

• Sheryl Sorby

  Purdue University System

  8 shared