Denny Gioia, chair of the Department of Management and Organization in the Penn State Smeal College of Business, was honored last month with the 2013 Distinguished Doctoral Alumni Award from the Florida State University (FSU) College of Business.
The Distinguished Doctoral Alumni Award recognizes FSU College of Business graduates who have used their education and their experience to achieve significant levels of success and distinction.
Gioia is the Robert and Judith Klein Professor of Management and the chair of the Department of Management and Organization in the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University. He also is a member of Penn State’s MBA and Executive MBA core faculties.
Gioia is among the most cited authors in the Academy of Management. His work ranges from the philosophical, theoretical and empirical to the methodological, educational and practical, and appears in the top management journals and in numerous book chapters and proceedings.
He is editor of the Journal of Management Inquiry’s “Provocateurs” section and Academy of Management Review’s special issue, “Corruption in Organization.” He has co-edited two books of original contributions, “The Thinking Organization” (1986) and “Creative Action in Organizations” (1995). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management.
Gioia’s primary areas of theory and research focus on organizational identity, image and reputation. He studies sense-making and sense-giving processes during strategic change efforts, knowledge transformation processes, the role of organizational identity and image in attempting to accomplish change, and identity formation and change processes.
Earlier in his career, Gioia worked as an engineer for Boeing Aerospace at Cape Kennedy on the build and launch teams for the Apollo 11, 12 and 13 missions to the moon. He also worked for Ford Motor Company as corporate recall coordinator.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering science, with a concentration on electronics and astronautics, in 1970; his master’s degree in business administration, with a focus on management, in 1972; and his doctorate, with a concentration in management and organizational behavior and a minor in social psychology, in 1979 – all from FSU.