Hui Liao

Dr. Hui Liao is the endowed Smith Dean’s Professor in Leadership and Management at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Before joining Maryland, she was on the faculties of the Rutgers University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D. with concentrations in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, and her BA in International Economics from the Renmin University of China.

Professor Liao’s current research interests include leadership, service quality, high performance work systems, and organizational justice and inclusion. She has conducted field research in various cultural settings including the United States, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Europe, Singapore, South Korea, the UAE, and other cultural contexts, involving both small business and multinational companies’ worldwide operations. Her work received the Academy of Management's Dorothy Harlow Distinguished Paper Award, was featured in the American Psychological Association's Press Releases, and has appeared in the field’s top journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organization Science, and Personnel Psychology.

Professor Liao was honored with the 2012 Cummings Scholarly Achievement Award. The prestigious award is one of the highest professional honors in the field of organizational behavior, given annually by the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management to recognize outstanding early- to mid-career scholarly achievement. In addition, in 2010, she won the Scholarly Achievement Award from the Academy of Management’s Human Resources Division, and in 2009 she was recognized with the Distinguished Early Career Contributions Award from the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology, and the Early Career Achievement Award from the Academy of Management’s Human Resources Division.

In addition to her research accomplishments, Professor Liao has also been consistently recognized for her exemplary teaching at the PhD, MBA/EMBA, and undergraduate levels. Professor Liao was a recipient of multiple teaching awards, and served as the Advisor for the OBHR PhD program at the Department of Management and Organization.

Primary Research Areas

• Leadership
• Service Behavior/Quality
• Diversity and Inclusion
• Creativity and Proactivity
• Strategic Human Resource Management
• Cross-Cultural Management