Sunny (Sun Young) Lee

I joined the UCL School of Management in 2014 and am an associate professor of organizational behavior (OB). 

I have taught negotiation courses to our masters’ students as well as to a broad audience including senior police officers at the MET, executive MBAs in Peking University, and MBAs/MIFs at the London Business School. Since 2019, I have also served as Athena SWAN lead and the head of our Diversity unit, trying to make our School a diverse and more positive place where talents can thrive, and people feel happy and included.

Prior to entering academia, I worked at Accenture (business analyst), LG (senior marketing researcher), and Hewlett Packard (marketing manager) for about 5 years. I also worked as research associate (part-time) for APEC Investment Experts Group during my university.

I earned a B.A. in English Literature from the Seoul National University, a M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in OB from the London Business School.

Research

My research focuses largely on two topics: gender differences in the workplace; and biases in organizational decision making. I hope to contribute the ethos of diversity and fairness through my research.

First, I have examined whether and why men and women react differently to the same work events such as workplace competition, failures, rejections, and networking.

For the second stream of my research, I have mainly looked at how evaluators’ stereotypical beliefs and selfish motives can bias their recruitment or promotion decisions. 

My work has been published in international academic journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, etc.

Research Projects

Interdependence and organizational decisions

How and why do organizational decision makers, in personnel decisions, differently evaluate candidates from different social groups?