Professor Fabiola H. Gerpott

Professor Dr. Fabiola H. Gerpott holds the Chair of Leadership at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. She is also a Group Speaker of the WHU Management Group that consists of one institute, five chairs, six assistant professors, and two centers.

As an expert on leader- and followership, Professor Dr. Gerpott’s research focuses on emergent leadership and leader-follower dynamics, leader communication as well as diversity and knowledge management within organizations. Professor Dr. Gerpott’s work has been published in leading research journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Human Relations, or The Leadership Quarterly.

Professor Dr. Gerpott teaches participants of the FTMBA as well as Bachelor and Master students at WHU and develops as well as implements courses for the Customized Master in Management and Entrepreneurship at WHU. To collect experiences with a wide variety of target groups, she has been a lecturer in programs at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (NL), the Rotterdam School of Management (NL), the Technical University in Berlin (GER), the GSOM University Saint Petersburg (RUS) as well as the University of Goa (IND). Being an international scholar who aims to keep her knowledge up-to-date, Professor Dr. Gerpott also regularly conducts research stays at Aston Business School (UK), Singapore Management University (SMU), and the University of Western Australia (AUS), among others.

In her research, Professor Dr. Gerpott closely collaborates with corporate partners and often conducts her data collection in companies to help them improve practices. Among others, she studies how project teams deal with new forms of agile leadership, through which measures companies can support a diverse workforce including more diverse leadership teams, and how the day-to-day communication between leaders and employees can be improved. In her research and teaching, she promotes an inclusive mindset and encouragement of diverse perspectives to successfully tackle management challenges.