Timothy Vogus
Assistant Professor of Management
Subject Area(s):
Organization Studies, Health Care
Biography:
Tim Vogus, Assistant Professor of Management, has been on the faculty of the Owen Graduate School of Management since 2004. He currently teaches a course in the MBA core curriculum on Leading Teams and Organizations (MGT 342) as well as an elective MBA course on Negotiation (MGT 448). He received the James A. Webb Jr. Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2007. He was also a finalist for the Webb Award in 2006, 2008, and 2009. He previously taught Organizational Behavior at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and in 2002-2003 he received the Gerald and Lillian Dykstra Fellowship for Teaching Excellence.
Professor Vogus' current research focuses on understanding and improving processes through which organizations build capabilities for learning and resilience. Although there is widespread agreement in the research and managerial literatures that an organization's human resource (HR) practices play a key role in developing capabilities and creating competitive advantage, less attention has been paid to the behaviors and processes through which capabilities are built and nourished. Understanding how and under what conditions capabilities for learning and resilience are built is an important part of explaining why some organizations perform so much better than others. He is especially interested in these dynamics in health care settings and their effects on the incidence of medical error at the point of care delivery. Through a field study of 1,685 registered nurses (RNs) in 125 nursing units in 13 hospitals, Vogus has investigated how HR practices affect RN communication, a capability for rapid error detection and correction he refers to as mindful organizing, and patient safety. He notes that HR practices help enable the development mindful organizing through signaling climates of trust and psychological safety that enable RNs to have more respectful interactions, which, in turn, substantially reduces medical errors. His research is currently under review for publication at medical and organizational journals. His earlier research has been published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Medical Care, and Positive Organizational Scholarship. Before his academic career, Professor Vogus worked with the Ford Motor Company in the area of Human Resources and Healthcare Management. Prior to that he was a business process analyst for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), where worked on competitive intelligence systems in the chemical industry and multiple system implementations in the utilities industry. He has also previously worked as a research assistant for the Cornell University Program for Employment and Workplace Systems and Public Sector Consultants, Inc. in Lansing, Michigan. He received his PhD in Management and Organizations from the University of Michigan and his BA in Political Economy and Spanish from Michigan State University. He lives in Brentwood with his wife Jen, son Aidan,and dog Harley .
Education:
B.A., Michigan State University, 1995
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2004
Course(s) Taught:
- MGT 342: Leading Teams and Organizations
- MGT 448: Negotiation
Research Interest(s):
Mindful organizing/Organizing for high reliability,
Sensemaking,
Individual and collective resilience,
Medical error,
Health care delivery and health care organizations
Article(s):
Vogus, T. J., & Sutcliffe, K. M. 2007. The Safety Organizing Scale: Development and Validation of a Behavioral Measure of Safety Culture in Hospital Nursing Units. Medical Care, 45: 46-54.
Vogus, T. J., & Sutcliffe, K. M. 2007. The Impact of Safety Organizing, Trusted Leadership, and Care Pathways on Reported Medication Errors in Hospital Nursing Units. Medical Care, 45: 997-1002.
Vogus, T. J., & Welbourne, T. M. 2003. Structuring for High Reliability: HR Practices and Mindful Processes in Reliability-Seeking Organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24: 877-903.
Chapter(s):
Vogus, T. J., & Davis, G. F. 2005. Elite Mobilizations for Antitakeover Legislation: 1982-1990. In Davis, G.F., McAdam, D., Scott, W.R., and Zald, M.N. (Eds.), Social Movements and Organization Theory: 96-121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sutcliffe, K.M., Vogus, T. J. 2003. Organizing for Resilience. In Cameron, K., Dutton, J.E., and Quinn, R.E. (Eds.), Positive Organizational Scholarship: 94-110. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
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