Andreas Richter

Professor of Organisational Behaviour

BSc, MSc (Giessen University), PhD (Aston University)

My research interests include creativity and innovation in teams, team processes and dynamics. I’ve cooperated with, or consulted for, various public and private organisations in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors, focusing on team-working effectiveness, self-management training, and leadership development.

I’m a member of the Organisational Behaviour subject group at Cambridge Judge Business School, which aspires to promote our understanding of behaviour within organisations and translate our scientific research into practical applications.

Professional experience

Andreas cooperated with, or consulted for, various public and private organisations in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors, focusing on team-working effectiveness, the stimulation of creativity and innovation, self-management training, and leadership development. He has led or contributed to executive education programmes in many organisations, including TomTom, Australian National University, UNICEF, Commercial Bank Qatar, Ministry for Internal Affairs United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi Police Force, the Indian Administration Service, Dell, and Barclays, among others. Andreas is a trained psychologist who specialised in Industrial and Organisational Psychology, holds a PhD in management, and is a certified client-centred counsellor (occupational and clinical settings). He serves on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Journal, is a Consulting Editor at the Journal of Applied Psychology, and previously was Associate Editor for Applied Psychology: an International Review.

Previous appointments

Prior to joining Cambridge Judge Business School, Andreas was Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Instituto de Empresa Business School, and a post-doctoral research fellow at Aston Business School.

Publications

Selected publications

Journal articles

  • West, M.A., Hirst, G., Richter, A. and Shipton, H. (2004) “12 steps to heaven: successfully managing change through developing innovative teams.” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 13(2): 269-299
  • West, M.A., Brodbeck, F.C. and Richter, A.W. (2004) “Does the “romance of teams” exist? The effectiveness of teams in experimental and field settings (Commentary).” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77(4): 467-473
  • Hirst, G., Mann, L., Bain, P., Pirola-Merlo, A. and Richter, A. (2004) “Learning to lead: the development and testing of a model of leadership learning.” The Leadership Quarterly, 15(3): 311-327
  • Richter, A.W., Scully, J. and West, M.A. (2005) “Intergroup conflict and intergroup effectiveness in organizations: theory and scale development.” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 14(2): 177-203
  • Richter, A.W., West, M.A., van Dick, R. and Dawson, J.F. (2006) “Boundary spanners’ identification, intergroup contact and effective intergroup relations.” Academy of Management Journal, 49(6): 1252-1269 (short version published in Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings 2004)
  • Dawson, J.F. and Richter, A.W. (2006) “Probing three-way interactions in moderated multiple regression analysis: development and application of a slope difference test.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(4): 917-926
  • Richter, A.W., Dawson, J.F. and West, M.A. (2011) “The effectiveness of teams in organizations: a meta-analysis.” International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(13): 2749-2769 (DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2011.573971)
  • Richter, A.W., Hirst, G., van Knippenberg, D. and Baer, M. (2012) “Creative self-efficacy and individual creativity in team contexts: cross-level interactions with team informational resources.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(6): 1282–1290 (DOI: 10.1037/a0029359)
  • Venkataramani, V., Richter, A.W. and Clarke, R. (2014) “Creative benefits from well-connected leaders: leader social network ties as facilitators of employee radical creativity.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(5): 966-375 (DOI: 10.1037/a0037088) (short version published in Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings 2013)
  • González-Gómez, H.V. and Richter, A.W. (2015) “Turning shame into creativity: the importance of exposure to creative team environments.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 126: 142-161 (DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2014.09.004)
  • Wilhelm, H., Richter, A.W.* and Semrau, T.* (2019) “Employee learning from failure: a team-as-resource perspective.” Organization Science, 30(4): 694-714 (*equal authorship) (DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2018.1255) (short version published in Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings 2014)
  • Tang, S., Richter, A.W. and Nadkarni, S. (2020) “Subjective time in organizations: conceptual clarification, integration, and implications for future research.” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 41(2): 210-234 (DOI: 10.1002/job.2421)
  • Clarke, R.*, Richter, A.W.* and Kilduff, M. (2022) “One tie to capture advice and friendship: leader multiplex centrality effects on team performance change.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(6): 968-986 (*equal authorship) (DOI: 10.1037/apl0000979)

Awards and honours

  • Cambridge Judge Business School Teaching Award, 2017
  • Best Competitive Paper Award (Division Organizational Behavior), Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Orlando: Venkataramani, V., Richter, A. W., & Clarke, R. (2013). Creative benefits from influential leaders? The importance of leader social network ties for employee creativity, 2013
  • Best Conference Paper Award, 7th Annual INGRoup Conference, Atlanta, GA: Wilhelm, H., Richter, A. W., & Semrau, T. When does creative failure turn into creative effort? The moderating effect of team psychological safety and transactive memory system, 2013
  • Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award Winner (Division Leadership & Organization Development), 2007
  • “Aston Key Studies 2007” (PhD Award), Aston Business School, Aston University, UK, 2007
  • Best Student Paper Award Division Conflict Management, Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, New Orleans: Richter, A., van Dick, R., & West, M. A. (2004). The relationship between group and organizational identification and effective intergroup relations, 2004

News and insights

Insight

Reputation

A summary of recent research and other initiatives from Cambridge Judge Business School.

As the COVID-19 emergency continues, our faculty keeps finding innovative ways to make a difference and to share their knowledge with those who might need it to become more resilient in an unpredictable world.

Employees can learn from failure if their teams offer psychological safety and provide informational resources, says study co-authored by Dr Andreas Richter of Cambridge Judge Business School. Perhaps all employees, at some point, fail in ways large and small – from flubbing an entire project to misspelling a name. But how can employees learn from failure, and what environment should companies provide to help workers do so? Previous studies reach mixed conclusions as to whether employees learn from their failure experiences at all, because many people who fail at work lose self-esteem and retreat into defensive reactions that stifle such learning. A study forthcoming in the journal Organization Science offers a new route to learning from failure: it concludes that employees are more likely to learn from failure if they work within teams that offer psychological safety, and such learning is further enhanced if teams harbour distributed knowledge and expertise – known as a "transactive memory system" – in which group knowledge is stored and coded so team members serve as "expert memory aids" to one another. The combination of a psychologically safe environment and such a workplace learning system can "help individuals seize the learning opportunities inherent in failure"…

Media coverage

Executive Courses | 10 November 2021

Executive Education courses in positive leadership

Companies want leaders with a human touch. “There is research suggesting that employees are expecting this from managers, but also that managers who lead with empathy are effective. The flip side is that managers high on dark triad personality characteristics also show negative effects on employees,” says Andreas Richter, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cambridge Judge Business School.

IEDP | 24 August 2016

From shame to creativity

Research co-authored by Dr Andreas Richter, University Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School, concludes that employees can help channel workplace shame into creativity if the situation is handled skillfully and sensitively. “People naturally want to overcome their workplace shame by demonstrating their value to the organisation, and one way of doing this is to show creativity. “The study finds that managers can facilitate this by providing an appropriate environment,” Andreas said.

Cambridge Network | 14 January 2015

Turning workplace shame into creativity

Research co-authored by Dr Andreas Richter, University Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School, concludes that employees can help channel workplace shame into creativity if the situation is handled skillfully and sensitively.

Cambridge Business Magazine, 1 January 2015
It’s such a shame

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