(519) 885-1211 – voice; (519) 741-8631 – fax
jmichela@uwaterloo.ca
John Michela provides consultation services and conducts university research on a variety of topics concerning
organizational culture and climate; leadership and supervision; employee motivation, commitment, and performance; and
various human resource management aspects of innovation, quality, motivation, and productivity.
At the University of Waterloo, John holds the position of tenured associate professor and head of the graduate training
program in Personnel and Organizational Psychology. His roles in the program include teaching of various topics in
organizational behaviour; personnel and human resources; organization development and change consultation; and
research methods and statistics. John's own training includes his doctoral studies at the University of California (Los
Angeles) in Social Psychology, and his completion of entry-level and advanced-level training programs on organization
development and change consultation, co-sponsored by Columbia University and the University of Michigan.
John previously was a tenured faculty member at Columbia University in New York City, where he worked with one of the
founders of the field of Organization Development, W. Warner Burke. Through involvement with Burke Associates, John
helped to support culture-based organizational change efforts at Hewlett Packard and British Airways. He also participated
in an evaluation of training efforts by one of Canada's largest banks. Since relocating to Canada, John has served as
consultant to AT&T on specific uses of its global employee survey data base, and to several Canadian firms on use of
employee surveys for promotion of greater quality in manufacturing and enhanced customer satisfaction in the service
sector. John's other projects have included development of a specialized survey data collection and analysis process for a
human resources consulting firm with operations in Canada and several other countries. He recently worked with a
fast-growing firm with Canadian and European operations, to assess whether its leaders are managing the organizational
culture in ways to promote behaviours necessary for the firm's success in its dynamic industry.
John is author or co-author on more than 25 publications (articles in academic journals and chapters in edited books); 40
presentations at professional conferences; and 6 technical reports. Citations include:
Michela, J. L., & Burke, W. W. Organizational culture and climate in transformations for quality and innovation.
In N. Ashkanasy, C. Wilderom & M. Peterson (Eds.), International handbook of organizational culture and climate.
Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage Publications, 2000.
Michela, J. L., Jha, S. J., Noori, H., Weiss, A, & Davey, L. M. Some whos, hows, and whys of employee-generated
innovation for continuous improvement: Linear and configural views of antecedents, practices, and outcomes.
In D. B. Fedor & S. Ghosh (Eds.), Advances in the management of organizational quality, Vol. 5. Greenwich, CT.: JAI
Press, 2000.
Michela, J. L. Mapping one route to an organizational culture for quality. Human Resources Professional (the
magazine of the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario), 1998, 15 (3, June/July): 41-45.
John's recent research projects include a national sample survey of best practices in human resources and operations for
continuous improvement in manufacturing and production (supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, and co-designed with H. Noori and S. Jha of the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier
University). Another of John's projects concerns organizational conditions and project management or team management
practices that promote innovation in product development and process improvement. Some of these projects aim to
advance the state of the art in measurement and statistical methods for human resource management research and
practice.
John lives in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, with his wife and two children.
