John Antonakis (born March 29, 1969) is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

of organizational behavior at the Faculty of Business and Economics of the

University of Lausanne The University of Lausanne (UNIL; french: links=no, Université de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of Protestant theology, before being made a university in 1890. The university is the second oldest in Switzer ...

and current editor-in-chief of '' The Leadership Quarterly''.

Life

He was born and raised in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

parents (Paul Antonakis and Irene Bardi) and is Swiss naturalized. He received his Ph.D. in applied management and decision sciences (

Walden University Walden University is a private online for-profit university headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It offers Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, Master of Business Administration, Master of Public Administration, Master of Public Healt ...

) with a focus on leadership measurement and

psychometrics Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and ...

, and was a post-doc in cognitive psychology (

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

); he did undergraduate work at the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( or ). The university ...

(Wits) in business and economics, and received his Bachelor and master's degrees at Johnson and Wales University in business administration.

Specialty: leadership

He specializes in

leadership Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets vi ...

and charismatic leadership in particular. He has communicated his work on leadership to a wide audiences, including work in applied statistics on endogeneity and causality, and general problems in science. His article "Predicting Elections: Child's Play" published in the prestigious journal

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

engendered a lot of interest because it showed that little children were able to predict results of election outcomes merely by rating the faces of the politician candidates; refer to his podcast for further information. Lately, he has been working with Philippe Jacquart in predicting the U.S. presidential elections; their model predicted that Obama would win (refer to Antonakis's YouTube video on the Obama-Romney election race). He predicted a victory for Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections. A summary of his latest work on charisma is available in a recent talk he gave at TEDx.

Scientific positions

Antonakis has written broadly on topics germane to organizational behavior, including on leadership,

social cognition Social cognition is a sub-topic of various branches of psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interacti ...

individual differences Differential psychology studies the ways in which individuals differ in their behavior and the processes that underlie it. This is a discipline that develops classifications (taxonomies) of psychological individual differences. This is distingui ...

and

methodology In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for br ...

(

and applied

econometrics Econometrics is the application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships. M. Hashem Pesaran (1987). "Econometrics," '' The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'', v. 2, p. 8 p. 8 ...

). A common thread in his research is correct measurement, as well as correct causal specification, design, and analysis. For instance, he has been critical of the concept of

emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence (EI) is most often defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can emotion recognition, recognize their own emotions and those of others, use em ...

particularly self-measures; his research suggests that emotional intelligence measures are not developed enough to be used for clinical purposes or in work-related or educational settings, and that emotional intelligence is not needed for leadership. As proponent of consistent estimators and causally identified models using

and structural equation modeling techniques, he has also written critiques of

Partial least squares path modeling The partial least squares path modeling or partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-PM, PLS-SEM) is a method for structural equation modeling that allows estimation of complex cause-effect relationships in path models with latent vari ...

, which he states should be abandoned. He has also shown that, because of endogeneity issues, much of the research done in management and applied psychology is devoid of causal interpretation.

References

External links

Let's face it: Charisma matters

Podcast on "Endogeneity: An inconvenient truth
{{DEFAULTSORT:Antonakis, John 1969 births Living people Academic staff of the University of Lausanne Place of birth missing (living people) Walden University alumni Yale University alumni University of the Witwatersrand alumni Johnson & Wales University alumni South African people of Greek descent Swiss people of Greek descent Naturalised citizens of Switzerland