Wayne Crawford

Wayne Crawford is a Professor of Practice in the Management, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship Department at SMU Cox. He received his PhD in Organizational Behavior from the University of Alabama and his MBA and BA in Management from Southeastern Louisiana University. Prior to joining SMU full-time, Wayne served as a tenure-track Assistant Professor on the faculties in the College of Business at the University of Texas at Arlington and New Mexico State University. He also spent over three years at Amazon as a Senior Research Scientist in People eXperience & Technology, where he applied organizational research and analytics to workforce and business problems.

Professor Crawford has taught numerous courses at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels in organizational behavior, human resource management, leadership, organizational consulting, research methods, structural equation modeling, and people analytics. At SMU Cox, his teaching focuses on organizational behavior, people and organizational analytics, and the application of analytics and artificial intelligence to managerial decision-making. He has also developed new courses in Organizational and Workforce Analytics, Design Thinking for Organizations, and Managing with AI. 

Wayne’s research expertise includes the work-family interface, employee identity, leadership, employee health and performance, organizational reputation, and the experiences and workflows of knowledge workers. He has published more than 20 academic articles and book chapters, which have collectively been cited more than 1,600 times. His research has appeared in leading academic journals including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, and Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. His work has examined topics ranging from work-family dynamics and employee identity to workplace abuse, leadership, impression management, and employee performance. 

Increasingly, his work sits at the intersection of organizations, analytics, technology, and AI. His current research includes projects examining career outcomes in the film industry, reputation and elite status among Michelin-starred restaurants, technical employees working under non-technical managers, the effects of AI-driven tool proliferation on employee productivity, and how teams recover following layoffs and organizational restructuring.

Wayne has received several awards for his research and teaching, including the 2026 SMU Cox C. Jackson Grayson Endowed Faculty Innovation Award for excellence and creativity in teaching. His research has also received both the Best Overall Conference Paper and Best Paper in Human Resources/Research Methods awards from the Southern Management Association. Wayne has also received awards for his academic conference reviewing. He serves on SMU’s AI Academic Integrity Committee and the Cox School of Business IT Committee and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management and Journal of Managerial Psychology. He has also served as an ad-hoc reviewer for numerous journals including Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and Journal of Vocational Behavior among others.

In addition to his academic work, Wayne has provided consulting services to organizations including Frito-Lay, Pioneer Natural Resources, Urology Austin, the City of Tuscaloosa, and the Gladney Center for Adoption.