Dr. Claudia Kitz MSc.

Claudia Kitz is an Assistant Professor (Postdoc) at the Institute for Leadership and Strategic Change (ILSC). Before joining WU, she was an Assistant Professor in Organizational Psychology at the University of Groningen (NL), which she initially joined as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Dutch Research Council-funded program “Societal Transition and Behavioral Change.” She earned her PhD in Social Sciences and Economics, specializing in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, at the University of Klagenfurt (AT), where she also completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology. During her doctoral studies, she worked for four years as a university assistant in research and teaching. Her professional experience also includes work with Infineon Technologies AG, the Carinthian Alliance Against Depression and Suicide Prevention Alliance, and the statistical consultancy Statistix.

Research

In her research, Claudia investigates how organizations, leaders, and employees navigate difficult and disruptive transitions, including mass layoffs, denied promotions, career shocks, technological change, and population aging. Her research connects individual-, organizational-, and industry-level perspectives. Methodologically, she combines experimental and natural-experimental research designs with large-scale data collection and computational methods, including web scraping, and machine learning. Across these different approaches, her work seeks to identify how potentially negative organizational events can be managed in ways that enable more constructive outcomes for both organizations and their members. Claudia is also a core member of Societal Transitions and Behavior Change (STAB), an interdisciplinary network concerned with understanding and supporting major societal and behavioral transformations

Claudia is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Organizational Behavior and the Journal of Business and Psychology. She also serves as an ad hoc reviewer for journals including Human Resource Management, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Applied Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Her work has been published in international academic outlets including Nature Human Behavior, Human Resource Management Review, and  the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

• Google Scholar

• ORCID

Teaching

Claudia’s teaching spans bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral education. Her courses cover organizational change and organizational behavior, quantitative and computational research approaches, and human resource management.