Neal M. Ashkanasy OAM, PhD is an Emeritus Professor of Management at the UQ Business School at the University of Queensland in Australia. He came to academe in after an 18-year career in water resources engineering. He received his PhD in social/organizational psychology from the same university. His research is in leadership, organizational culture, ethics, and emotions in organizations, and his work has been published in leading journals including the Academy of Management Journal and Review, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and the Journal of Applied Psychology. He is Associate Editor for Emotion Review and Series Co-Editor of Research on Emotion in Organizations. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Organizational Behavior and Associate Editor for the Academy of Management Review and Academy of Management Learning and Education. Prof. Ashkanasy is a Fellow of the Academy for the Social Sciences in the UK (AcSS) and Australia (ASSA); the Association for Psychological Science (APS); the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP); Southern Management Association (SMA), and the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences (QAAS). In 2017, he was awarded a Medal in the Order of Australia.
Professor Pitsis is a globally renowned expert in the strategic design and management of complex and high-risk projects. These projects range from Olympic infrastructure, deep tech quantum computing, and, most recently, AI adoption and its role in decision-making under extreme conditions. He is an ideal person to speak on making the impossible possible, and the strategic and managerial constraints of opportunities of engaging and investing in high-risk, but high-reward, projects.
He is the recipient of several awards for his research, including the Emerald Science Citation of Excellence and, Sage Paper of the Year award for Human Relations. Most recently, he and his co-authors were Finalists for the 2025 Responsible Research in Management Award, co-sponsored by the Academy of Management Fellows Group and the Community for Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) at The Academy of Management Annual Conference for their research on ColaLife, a temporary organisation that successfully eradicated childhood mortality due to diarrhoea in Zambia.
He has published in several FT50 and other highly regarded academic and practitioner journals (including Academy of Management Learning and Education, Organization Science, Organization Studies, Long Range Planning, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, California Management Review, amongst others. He is also a co-author of critically acclaimed and best-selling texts in management and innovation.
He has appeared on radio (ABC) and television (BBC), in addition to podcasts. He has also provided strategic advice and leadership development for several major projects and organisations, including the Royal Air Force (Plan Astra), Royal Australian Air Force (Air Force Improvement Program), Reserve Bank of Australia, Reserve Bank of India, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, BorgWarner (Sevcon), TNT, KONNE, just to name a few.
