Elizabeth Baily Wolf is an Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD.
Professor Wolf’s research seeks to identify and challenge people's limiting beliefs about who and what can be professional. To be professional means conform the norms of how an "ideal worker" should look and behave. In most traditional American, European, and multinational organizations, people believe that ideal workers should suppress their emotions, avoid close relationships with co-workers, and prioritize their career success above all else. Although emotion regulation, task focus, and work commitment can facilitate worker effectiveness, the beliefs that ideal workers should suppress all emotions, avoid relationships, and exclusively prioritize work limit workers' ability to effectively express themselves, communicate with their colleagues, integrate their work and personal lives, and prioritize their non-work roles. Limiting beliefs about professionalism also lead people to punish or exclude workers who they perceive to be too emotional, relational, or committed to non-work roles to fit the ideal worker image. Although the image of the ideal worker is changing, lingering beliefs about emotion and relationships at work, work-life balance, and the fit between the ideal worker image and stereotypes of out-groups continue to constrain workers and limit the careers of women and minorities. Professor Wolf's research identifies these lingering limiting beliefs, highlights their consequences, and develops interventions to change them.
Professor Wolf has published her work in leading academic journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Her research has received various media mentions, including coverage by Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, Forbes, and NPR.
At INSEAD, Professor Wolf teaches Negotiations in the MBA program and Organisational Behaviour to PhD students. She was selected as the Best Elective Professor in Fontainebleau by the INSEAD 19J and 20J graduating classes and has received the Dean's Commendation for Excellence in MBA Teaching each time she has taught.
Before coming to INSEAD, Professor Wolf completed her PhD in Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. She received her BA summa cum laude with honors from Connecticut College, where she double majored in Psychology and Hispanic Studies and received her CISLA certificate in International Studies. Born to a British father and American mother, Professor Wolf grew up in the United States. She has also spent time living in Spain and Germany.
