dr. Leander de Schutter

Leander De Schutter is an Assistant Professor (Universitair Docent) in the Management & Organisation department at the School of Business and Economics, VU Amsterdam. He holds a PhD in Management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam (2024; cum laude, top 5%) and a MSc in psychology from KU Leuven, Belgium (2015; magna cum laude). Prior to his PhD studies, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Cambridge (2015-2017) and WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management (2017-2018).

Leander's research explores when and why employees collaborate with each other, and how organizational factors influence this. These phenomena range from how employees build trust in professional relationships, how employees help organizations implement and improve on large structural changes, how supervisors become more inclusive, and how supervisors can keep polarization at bay.

Methodologically, he combines field studies (survey-based research) with behavioral experiments, often designing novel experimental paradigms to capture how people make decisions in a controlled environment. He also has methodological expertise in response surface analysis, an advanced technique for studying the effects of (mis)alignment between two variables, and writes on how researchers can improve construct validity.

Industry: Applies broadly across industries where people work together in organizations.

Sector: Private sector, public sector. Leander's research is applicable to any organizational context.

Application domain: Leadership, trust building, power dynamics, change management, team effectiveness, polarization.

Leander teaches across bachelor, master, and executive levels. He is the course coordinator of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior (Human Resource Management en Gedrag in Organisaties) in the bachelor programme in Business Administration (Bedrijfskunde). At the master level, he coordinates the quantitative research track of the Research in Business Administration course, which is a core course in multiple Business Administration master specializations. At the executive level, he supervises and teaches executive PhD candidates. His teaching reflects his research expertise, bridging organizational psychology and management to help students understand the human side of organizations.

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