Dr Ruchi Sinha

Dr Ruchi Sinha is an Associate professor of Organizational Behavior at UniSA Business School. 

Background: Ruchi has a Master's and a PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Michigan State University, USA. Before entering academia, Ruchi was a management consultant & corporate trainer providing advisory and training services related to organisational climate change, leadership, high-performing teams, psychometric profiling for selection and workforce planning. Before joining UniSA, Ruchi was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Indian School of Business (Hyderabad, India). 

Industry Engagement: Dr Sinha is an internationally recognised expert in negotiation skills and managing team leadership. She is passionate about translating psychological and management science research into actionable insights for leaders, employees and organisations. She shares her understanding of the psychology of work in her substack blog titled Psychology@Work. Feel free to follow her work through her LinkedIn profile. Ruchi engages with the industry in the areas of facilitating employee voice, managing power struggles and trust in teams and enabling shared leadership. She is a world-renowned "negotiation skills" facilitator who provides advice and training on this topic to help businesses and institutions. Ruchi is a regular guest on podcasts, TV and radio shows. Ruchi has published several practitioner articles in the Harvard Business Review and other reputed outlets such as the New York Times and The Conversation. Her recent TED talk on Negotiations has over 2.9 million views. She has been invited to give keynotes and talks at global events.

Ruchi has been a recipient of a Society for Human Resource Management Foundation Grant as well as the UniSA Research Themes Investment Scheme funding. Ruchi has attracted competitive industry funding worth over AUD 1 million (between 2016-2023). She has received funding to do research with prominent industry partners, including the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation, Australian State Government Agencies, and the Australian Department of Defence Science and Technology. She is currently working with an SA state department on organisational climate, engagement, well-being/burnout, and mental health projects. She has expertise in workplace flexibility and building trust and has consulted with many public and private organisations globally.

Academic Leadership: Ruchi's work has been published in top-tier journals and presented at several top conferences. She is on the Editorial Reviewer Board and has published in top-tier FT50 A* journals: a) Journal of Applied Psychology and b) Journal of Organizational Behavior. Ruchi was the interim Director of MBA and Dean of Post Graduate programs in the Business School (2022-2023). Ruchi is an active member of the Academy of Management, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Australian Human Resources Institute, and the International Academy of Conflict Management. 

Current Research Areas: Ruchi's current research interests revolve around understanding team dynamics and effectiveness, as well as negotiation success in the work context. In the domain of team research, Ruchi examines how the social network of interpersonal relationships, as well as the personality of members within a team, influences critical work outcomes such as the level of voice, conflicts, information sharing, and power/status struggles. In some of her published works, Ruchi has proposed improved measurement approaches for studying employee behaviour and teamwork. She has demonstrated that nuanced and theoretically aligned measurement can enhance the predictability of team outcomes and can help organisations identify practical levers to manage both employee and team performance. In negotiation research, Ruchi focuses on the role of power and emotions in predicting negotiation effectiveness. Some of her recent work discusses the role of gender in negotiation outcomes and how the leadership development of women leaders needs to focus on the specific development of negotiation skills. 

• Australian Human Resources Institute
• The Academy of Management (AOM)
• International Association of Conflict Management (IACM)
• Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)
• Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP)
• Community of Organizational Sciences in India (COSI - Founding member)
• Australia India Business Council

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philospohy (Psychology) Michigan State University

• Master of Arts in Psychology Michigan State University

• Master of Arts Psychology University of Delhi

• Bachelor of Arts (Honours Course) Applied Psychology University of Delhi

Work history

Human Resource Management Consulting Experience

Consultant, Mantrana, India (A Delhi based Human Resource Consultancy Firm), 2004 - 2005

Key Activities

• Designed and delivered a variety of training programs such as: Interpersonal & Communication Skills, Leadership and Coaching Skills, Team Building Skills, Assertiveness Skills, and Psychometric Testing and Scale Development.
• Developed an “HR Priority Survey” for a corporate MNC
• Developed customized personality tools for selection in the BPO sector.
• Developmed Training Programs for Change Agents: Change Management (Parivartan) project for GAIL India; Change Management workshop at “National Academy of Training and Research in Social Securities.” (NATRASS).

Independent Consultant, In India and United State, 2008 - 2010

• Conducted an “Organizational Justice Audit” on nurses for Burcham Hills (A retirement age care facility in Lansing, MI, USA). 
• Developed a Training Plan and delivered a Training workshop for the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan, USA.
• Competency Mapping for Restaurant General Managers at Pizza Hut (HR, Pizza Hut Devyani Pvt. Ltd.)