Karen Golden-Biddle is an organizational ethnographer, educator, and author of The Untapped Power of Discovery. She is sought after for her voice on discovery, transformation and navigating change.  

Karen’s award-winning research on change revealed a powerful but undeveloped and undervalued leadership capacity: the practice of discovery. Her research finds that at its core, discovery depends on a process of creative inquiry that is shared, and experience based. Karen  is committed to supporting leaders’ efforts to cultivate discovery as a conscious practice. The Untapped Power of Discovery and website stem from that commitment. 

Karen’s seminal academic work, which lays out the scholarly foundation for this book and her work with leaders, appeared in the Academy of Management Journal (2020), Academy of Management Journal (2006), Organization Science (2008) and Organization Science (2011), premier journals in organizational studies. She has also published practice-related articles, including “How to Change an Organization Without Blowing It Up” in Sloan Management Review (2012) and “How Micro-Moves Can Drive Major Health Care Change,” appearing in Harvard Business Review (2013) online. Subsequent to publication,  Karen’s article, “How to Change an Organization …” was included in the Sloan Select Collection, an assembled group of the most read and discussed articles on change management in the Sloan Management Review archive.

Karen received support for this research from the Questrom Professorship at Boston University and earlier grants awarded by The Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research and The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation. 

In recognition of her lifetime contribution to the science and practice of management, in 2018, Karen was inducted as a Fellow into the Academy of Management. Karen has also received Best Paper awards for her research, and awards for her teaching. 

Karen earned her undergraduate degree from Denison University, and PhD and MBA from Case Western Reserve University.  She is Professor of Management and Organizations, emerita and Faculty Fellow of the Human Resources Policy Institute at Questrom School of Business.