Alumni and Friends Directory

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Biography

Judi McLean Parks obtained her PhD from the University of Iowa in organizational behavior in 1990. In 1995, she joined the Organizational Behavior Group at the John M. Olin Business School, Washington University at St. Louis. She teaches negotiation and conflict resolution, international negotiations and is lead faculty for the Missouri Botanical Garden and Washington University Madagascar Initiative. In 1999, she became the first female to receive tenure at the Olin Business School and in 2002 was named the Reuben C. and Anne Carpenter Taylor Professor of Organizational Behavior.

Prior to coming to Washington University, Dr. McLean Parks was an assistant professor in the Industrial Relations Department at the University of Minnesota, where she had been since 1990. She has been a visiting scholar to Cornell University, as well as the Institute d'Administration des Entreprises, Université Jean Moulin III, Lyon, France. She has broad international experience and also has taught short courses in a number of countries, such as China and Saudi Arabia.

Author of numerous publications, Dr. McLean Parks’ research is eclectic, spanning a variety of topics due to her self-ascribed "low threshold for boredom." Her research has focused on the "psychological contract" between employers and employees. It is the intersection of her work on organizational identity and psychological contracts that is the focus of current research on ideological contracts and their implications. In addition, her research has explored the impact of gender, ethnicity and cultural differences on employee attitudes and behaviors. Recent research has examined the impact of incentive systems on employee fraud and theft, as well as rule-breaking and behavioral integrity as predictors of creativity and speaking out in organizations.

As part of her involvement with the Madagascar Initiative, Dr. McLean Parks teaches the course, "Community Development and Entrepreneurial Preservation through Entrepreneurial Collaboration in Rural Subsistence Communities in Madagascar." This course represents a unique partnership between the people of Madagascar, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the university. The course is an attempt to develop and implement a new grassroots community development approach that builds on investments made by NGOs, aid groups and governments. Recognizing that conservation goals were threatened when the resources of the rare forests were needed for survival by rural subsistence communities, the course focuses on tracking and developing projects for sustainable economic development through entrepreneurial activities. A highlight of the course is a two-week trip to Madagascar where students finalize and implement their real-world projects with real-world implications.

Dr. McLean Parks' hobbies include gardening, genealogical research, and travel. Her personal travels have taken her to such wide-ranging places as the Louvre in Paris, traveling by canal through the Netherlands, Palmer Research Station in Antarctica and tracking - with a camera - bears in the Boundary Waters between the U.S. and Canada. She has two children, Jason and Heatheryann, as well as three grandchildren, Julia and Kenan Parks in Seattle, and John Mark Rhinehardt in St. Charles, Missouri. Dr. McLean Parks makes her home in St. Louis with her dog, Denali, an Alaskan Klee Kai.