Anat Rafaeli


Anat Rafaeli is an Israeli researcher, scholar of Organisational behavior, a professor at the Technion at the faculty of industrial engineering and management. She served as the deputy to the president of the Technion and was the head of the Technion's international center. In 2010 Rafaeli was recognised as a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Biography

Rafaeli studied for her bachelor's degree in Psychology and Mathematics at the University of Haifa. Rafaeli received her doctorate from Ohio State University in 1985 in Organisational Psychology. She went on to do a post-doctorate at the faculty of industrial engineering and management at Stanford University.

Academic career

Rafaeli returned to Israel to teach at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem at the business administration school.
Rafaeli's research spans different aspects of organisational theory. Early in her career she conducted and published studies that invalidated the notion of the utility of graphology in personnel selection processes. She also conducted and published studies of hers which tested and disproved the economic viability of employment advertising. Her works did show that the technique of employment advertising does have other benefits. On top of these Rafaeli worked in the field of quality circles and their positive impact on employees' emotions.
Rafaeli's major field of study is defining emotions in the context of emotional labor as a factor in organisational processes. Working together with Robert I. Sutton, Rafaeli identified mechanisms of recruitment, instruction and rewards to employees which exert emotions that are required as part of their jobs. She has researched the importance of the dress code in the workplace in general and in the service industry in particular. This research was conducted as part of a larger work on symbols and artifacts in the workplace. Rafaeli's research papers have also touched on the world of customer service. She studied the psychology of queues and queue management and the impact of anger of customers towards employees. Rafaeli researched customer service through technology media channels, such as online chat in collaborations with IBM and LivePerson. for which she received an IBM research award.

Public activism

Rafaeli was on the executive board of WomensOwn, an organisation for the economic empowerment of women in Israel. Together with her brother she established a foundation to promote excellence in the instruction of math in Israel. She was on the board of Hillel, an Israeli-nonprofit dedicated to helping young adults who have left the ultra-orthodox world lead successful lives as members of Israeli society, and also on the board of Haifa's Battered Women’s Shelters. She is currently on the board of Haifa's Rape Crisis Center, which is a part of

Published works

Rafaeli's work has been published in scientific journals such as The Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review and the Journal of Applied Psychology. Rafaeli's work has also been referenced in mass media publications such as Forbes, Huffington Post UK and Newsweek.