Kevin Kniffin
Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business, Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management
“From day one, I could tell not only that Dr. Kniffin was one of the most insightful, intelligent professors I had ever had the pleasure of interacting with, but that he would do everything in his power to foster an environment in which students could reach their fullest academic and professional potential. Keeping a 20-year-old’s attention for 75 minutes is by no means an envious task, yet Dr. Kniffin did it with ease, presenting material in an interesting manner and encouraging students to share their own related experiences in order to allow us to better understand and connect with the course content.” – Student evaluation
Kevin Kniffin is Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.
Kniffin leads active streams of research that focus on teamwork, leadership, management and interdisciplinarians. He has contributed original research to publications including American Psychologist, Academy of Management Discoveries, and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Kniffin’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and his work has been featured by popular outlets including Harvard Business Review and The New York Times.
Kniffin won the Established Researcher Award in 2019 from the Institute for Research on Innovation & Science (IRIS) and is an editorial board member for Academy of Management Discoveries. For work he contributed to the MIT Sloan Management Review in 2022, Kniffin won the Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in Organizational Behavior in 2023 from the Academy of Management.
In the classroom, Kniffin enjoys “meeting students where they are” by engaging students’ experiences in the pursuit of studying evidence-based principles of individual and organizational behavior. Winner of the Innovative Teacher Award from the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 2020, Kniffin employs an interdisciplinary approach to both organizational behavior and leadership and management in sports. He presented “Ten Bottom-Line Lessons from the Big Leagues” as the university’s faculty Homecoming speaker in 2016, and he speaks regularly for alumni, governmental, and business organizations.
BACKGROUND
At current institution since what year? Since 2010.
Education: BA, Anthropology, Lehigh University; PhD, Anthropology, SUNY Binghamton
List of Undergraduate courses you teach: Organizational Behavior, Leadership and Management in Sports
TELL US ABOUT LIFE AS A BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR
I knew I wanted to be a business school professor when … after spending years studying “why” people do and don’t cooperate, I developed more interest in “how” people cooperate – a focus that’s more practical and impactful than debates on “why,” which is a question that can go around and around too often, especially among theorists who study the evolution of cooperation.
What are you currently researching and what is the most significant discovery you’ve made from it? Among other projects, I have a set of collaborative papers where we are examining – with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) – how doctoral graduates who take on the challenge of boundary-spanning interdisciplinary work tend to fare in the labor market. There are lots of high-profile calls for researchers to take on that kind of work since it is often the kind of focus that helps to address emergent “grand challenges” but our work highlights important situations where it seems like institutions are often not “walking the talk” of those high-level calls. For example, in this paper, we show that there are substantial differences among disciplines with respect to whether (and how much) interdisciplinarians tend to experience the post-PhD labor market differently than people who study a single discipline.
If I weren’t a business school professor, I’d be …likely mistaken about the kinds of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are taught and encouraged in business schools.
What do you think makes you stand out as a professor? Being part of the Dyson School faculty means being part of a stand-out faculty community that is committed to connecting dots between research, service, and teaching – and, it seems that students appreciate that approach.
One word that describes my first time teaching: adventure
Here’s what I wish someone would’ve told me about being a business school professor: Fortunately, I was told lots on this question by senior faculty members within each of Cornell’s business schools and all of the mentoring was helpful. Most generally, the idea of making it a regular practice to request student feedback and facilitate student participation has proven very helpful and effective.
Professor I most admire and why: There is a long list of Cornell faculty – past and present – who have provided critical advice and role-modeling. Going back farther, though, my undergraduate advisor at Lehigh – John Gatewood – increasingly impresses me (many years after being in his classroom and office) given the generosity that he provided through the careful writing-intensive courses that he taught as well as the three semesters that he spent advising me on an undergraduate honors thesis.
TEACHING BUSINESS SCHOOL STUDENTS
What do you enjoy most about teaching business students?
Business programs in general appear to draw relatively proportional interest and enrollment from students across socioeconomic backgrounds and, it seems, political viewpoints – and those mixes help to ensure lively classrooms.
What is most challenging?
Technology-enabling distractions can draw on everyone’s attention. In my case, I have fun offering students old-fashioned notebooks at the start of each semester as a trade for keeping laptops down and the offer seems to be effective.
In one word, describe your favorite type of student:
Curious.
In one word, describe your least favorite type of student:
Absent-without-excuse
When it comes to grading, I think students would describe me as …
Fair
LIFE OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM
What are your hobbies? There are a surprising number of faculty and staff in the Dyson School and, more broadly, the SC Johnson College of Business who have varying degrees of skill playing ice hockey. I’m among the adult-learners who started playing after my kids started playing and it’s a great challenge. Good exercise and lots of literal moving parts that require full attention for the brief windows that you’re playing. We have an annual faculty-and-staff game against the MBA student team and, in the most recent game, it was good fun to welcome a former student who had played for Cornell’s Division 1 team onto our team as an alum.
How will you spend your summer? The Academy of Management Annual Meeting is a big part of summer for many business school faculty. There are lots of smaller conferences, though, that I’ve been able to join in periodic summers depending on the logistics of a given year. For research on teamwork, the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research – also known as INGRoup – is great and the International Network for Science of Team Science (INSciTS) integrates a high fraction of people specializing in medical research teams. For research on leadership, the New Directions in Leadership Research (NDLR) community is excellent. Last, for research on the experience of interdisciplinarian, there are great options in the International Conference for the Science of Science and Innovation (ICCSI), the International Conference for Computation Social Science (IC2S2), and the Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy.
Favorite place(s) to vacation: Anywhere with my family.
Favorite book(s): It would be easier to answer with a list of favorite journal articles and journals.
What is currently your favorite movie and/or show and what is it about the film or program that you enjoy so much? Sports franchises are much like “movie franchises” and, in that vein, I’m a native Philadelphian who has a lifelong appreciation for Philly-based teams (and related dramas and comedies). Seeing people overcome challenges and periodically succeed is good fun.
What is your favorite type of music or artist(s) and why? I’m more of a talk radio listener.
THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS
If I had my way, the business school of the future would have much more of this …
Two things. First, more focus on advancing robust evidence-based approaches to student learning. I am part of a consortium focused specifically on Leader Development training and we lay out – in this article for the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies – ways in which leadership development programs can be advanced with the benefit of more systematic thinking and findings.
Second, more prioritization of support for creative solutions that offer maximum stakeholder benefits – in contrast with a recent working paper (using data from graduates of other schools) that showed business graduates were more likely to implement zero-sum solutions than non-business graduates.
I’m a fan of the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and definitely support the position that more focus on creating solutions that offer socially responsible outcomes is vitally important.
In my opinion, companies and organizations today need to do a better job at …
Investing in evidence-based approaches to developing people’s potential.
I’m grateful for …
Lots and lots. In relation to working within the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management within the broader SC Johnson College of Business within Cornell University, I’m grateful for the tradition and culture that has provided long-term support for interdisciplinary scholarship that serves the full mix of research, service, and teaching missions.
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