Patricia T. Naya, PhD

Organizational change; power & inequality; organizational identity, sensemaking; paradox of embodiment; qualitative & process methods.

I study what happens when organizations promise change. I examine how those promises are interpreted, experienced, enacted, contested, and managed over time, and what these processes reveal about power and the reproduction of inequality.

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AAUW International Fellow Commonwealth Shared Scholar AOM Early Career Award 2024 PhD — UMass Boston, May 2026 UCL MSc Distinction

Dr. Patricia T. Naya UMass Boston · 2026

About

Scholarship at the intersection of
power, justice, and organizational life

Dr. Patricia Tiimah Naya is an organizational scholar studying what happens when organizations promise justice — how those promises are interpreted, experienced, and managed over time, and what these processes reveal about power and the reproduction of inequality.

An AAUW International Fellow and Commonwealth Shared Scholar, she holds a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts Boston and an MSc with Distinction from University College London (UCL). Her scholarship has appeared in the Academy of Management Learning & Education (A*), Organization (A), and Edward Elgar Publishing, and has been recognized with the AOM Critical Management Studies Division's Most Promising Early Career Paper Award (2024). Beyond the academy, she leads Dream Alliance, a social impact organization.

CMS Division's Most Promising Early Career Paper Award — Academy of Management, 2024
AAUW International Fellowship
Commonwealth Shared Scholarship — University College London
UMass Boston Dean Fellowship Award
MSc with Distinction & Best Dissertation Award — UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, 2021
PhD Award for Academic Distinction in Organizations & Social Change — UMass Boston, 2023
Beacon Emerging Leader Award — UMass Boston, 2023
Best Graduating Student — University for Development Studies, Ghana, 2019