Jin Nam Choi

Jin Nam Choi is a Korean organizational psychologist, researcher, author, and academic. He is a professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the Graduate School of Business of Seoul National University.

Choi's research interest spans the field of organizational behavior with a particular interest in the implementation of innovation in firms, the effectiveness of team processes, individual and team creativity, as well as organizational citizenship behavior. He has authored several books in English and Korean, including Smart Management and Smart Organizational Behavior and has published over 110 articles. He has been the recipient of Mirae-Asset Distinguished Management Scholar Award and Gallup Academic Research Award.

Choi serves an Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Group & Organization Management, and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

Education and early career
Choi obtained his baccalaureate degree in Psychology from Seoul National University in 1990 and went on to complete a master's degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the same institute in 1992. In 1995, he was appointed as a Research Associate at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he earned his doctoral degree in Organizational Psychology in 2000. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Microprocesses in Implementing Innovations: The Role of Person-innovation Fit".

Career
Following his Ph.D., in 2000, Choi began his academic career as an assistant professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at McGill University in Canada. In 2006, he was appointed as an associate professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at Seoul National University. He was promoted to professor in 2012.

Research
Choi's work is focused on exploring the dynamics of innovation implementation, knowledge management, team processes, creativity, and citizenship behavior within the context of organizations, highlighting the multifaceted factors that shape the modern workplace.

Creativity
Choi has worked in the fields of organizational behavior, including its impact on the creativity of an individual or a team. He emphasized the importance of carefully weighing the mixed impacts of task complexity and routinization on employee creativity, while also calling for additional research into the factors that influence these effects. Through collaborative research efforts, he elaborated on the significance of feedback and various motivational processes in shaping distinct forms of creativity development. Additionally, generated practical and theoretical insights into how the combined impact of status conflict and gender diversity influences both team psychological safety and team creativity. He examined the influence of ethical leadership on team creativity and elucidated the interactive effects of leader status behaviors and team status conflict that resulted in unique collective group processes and team creative outcomes.

Innovation implementation
Choi highlighted the significance of emotions within the context of innovation implementation and demonstrated the necessity for increased focus on emotional processes when scrutinizing organizational innovations. He explored how institutional factors and employee collective processes impact the effectiveness of implementing E-Government innovations in Korean Government agencies and ministries. Along with Sun Young Sung, he explained how an organization's investment in its employees contributes to improving its innovative performance and provided a comprehensive insight into the interconnected framework of firm-level knowledge management improved by effective HRM practices. In addition, he investigated the impact of training and development on firm innovation as well as the roles of internal and external team behaviors on innovation implementation. He also discussed the organizational factors and employees' perceptions of past innovations, including their intensity and success, impact innovation-targeted burnout and fatigue, and subsequent employee innovative behavior in a dynamic business environment.

Proactive and citizenship behavior
Choi examined the proactive, dynamics of citizenship behavior of employees, and corporate ethics to interpret its impact on firm performance and discuss how organizational factors like vision and innovation, influence employees' proactive suggestions for constructive changes at work. In a related study, he analyzed how demographic faultlines in small work groups relate to task and relationship conflict, influencing group-level Organizational Citizenship Behavior (GOCB) and performance across various industries. He also discussed how employees' goal-pursuit processes, including prevention and promotion foci, influence their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in South Korean firms, highlighting the role of leader prevention focus in shaping maintenance OCB. Moreover, his study in Chinese organizations showed that "middle-way thinking" among followers amplifies the positive influence of visionary leadership on organizational citizenship behavior, emphasizing its importance over traditional power distance orientation.

Active procrastination
Choi developed a new measure of active procrastination that assesses its four dimensions and examines its nomological network. He suggested that active procrastinators, who work under pressure and make deliberate decisions to procrastinate, have positive attitudes and better performance compared to passive procrastinators.

Awards and honors

 * 2009 – Excellent Reviewer Award, Journal of Organizational Behavior
 * 2010 – Gallup Academic Research Award, Gallup Korea
 * 2015 – Distinguished International Scholarship Award, Korean Academy of Management
 * 2015 – Gallup Best Academic Research Award, Gallup Korea
 * 2017 – Mirae-Asset Distinguished Management Scholar Award, Korean Academic Society of Business Administration
 * 2018 – Top 50 Government-Sponsored Research Award, Ministry of Education

Selected books

 * Smart Organizational Behavior (2021) ISBN 979-1186689394
 * Smart Management (2023) ISBN 979-1186689509

Selected articles

 * Price, R. H., Choi, J. N., & Vinokur, A. D. (2002). Links in the chain of adversity following job loss: how financial strain and loss of personal control lead to depression, impaired functioning, and poor health. Journal of occupational health psychology, 7(4), 302.
 * Choi, J. N. (2004). Individual and contextual predictors of creative performance: The mediating role of psychological processes. Creativity research journal, 16(2–3), 187–199.
 * Chun Chu, A. H., & Choi, J. N. (2005). Rethinking procrastination: Positive effects of" active" procrastination behavior on attitudes and performance. The Journal of social psychology, 145(3), 245–264.
 * Choi, J. N. (2007). Change‐oriented organizational citizenship behavior: effects of work environment characteristics and intervening psychological processes. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 28(4), 467–484.
 * Chun, J. S., Shin, Y., Choi, J. N., & Kim, M. S. (2013). How does corporate ethics contribute to firm financial performance? The mediating role of collective organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of management, 39(4), 853–877.
 * Sung, S. Y., & Choi, J. N. (2014). Do organizations spend wisely on employees? Effects of training and development investments on learning and innovation in organizations. Journal of organizational behavior, 35(3), 393–412.