Roger Mayer

Bio

Dr. Roger C. Mayer is a Professor of Leadership in the Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at NC State University. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University, Baylor University, Singapore Management University and The University of Akron, where he served four years as department chair. He received a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management from the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University.

Mayer’s research is focused on trust, employee decision making, attitudes and effectiveness. A leading scholar on trust in organizations, his research has been published in many premiere scholarly journals. It has been cited over 50,000 times in the published literature across a wide variety of fields.

He authored a theory of trust with David Schoorman and James Davis which was published in Academy of Management Review (AMR), management’s top theory journal. This paper was recognized in 2004 with the Influential Article Award 1995-1999 by the Conflict Management division of the Academy of Management. In 2006 it was recognized by AMR with the Best of the Second Decade Award for Frame-Breaking, Innovative Theory—at the time, one of only two papers to ever receive this honor. His recent research with colleagues has become increasingly interdisciplinary, in part finding that this theory helps clarify our understanding of such crucial current societal issues as how much a person trusts the federal government, and of how to build police-public trust.

In 2013 Mayer, along with Professor David Schoorman from Purdue University and Professor Hwee-Hoon Tan at Singapore Management University, received a $1.28M multi-year grant to study trust within a global context. He has been involved in interdisciplinary trust and decision making research funded by several grants through NC State’s Laboratory for Analytic Sciences. He serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Management, Journal of Managerial Psychology, and Journal of Trust Research. He served six terms as a member of the Editorial Board of Academy of Management Journal where he was recognized for the quality of his reviews and the breadth of the topics he is able to review. He has served as an organizational consultant to numerous for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. In 1994 he won the Outstanding Teacher Award at the College of Business at the University of Notre Dame.

Mayer has worked in a wide variety of organizations and industries, including firms in finance, research, construction, steel, and offshore oil drilling. His research has been published in such respected journals as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Financial Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Applied Social Psychology and Strategic Management Journal. With Barbara Mayer, he edited A Research Agenda for Trust: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024).

His research has been recently featured in such outlets as Forbes, Psychology Today, NBC News, Fast Company and Medical Education. The research he co-authored with Richard Warr of NC State and Jing Zhao of Portland State University on diversity and innovation published in Financial Management was ranked in 2020 by Financial Times among the top 10 in business school research with social impact. He speaks frequently to business, government, legal, medical and civic groups on such topics as trust, leadership, negotiation, and influencing others.