Jacob Brown

Assistant Professor of Management

Assistant Professor, Management

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Bio

Jacob Brown is an assistant professor of management at The University of Texas at San Antonio Carlos Alvarez College of Business. He joined UT San Antonio in August 2026 after postdoctoral work at the Gies School of Business at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has a PhD and MS in Organizational Studies from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, and a MS in Instructional Psychology and Technology and BS in Psychology from Brigham Young University. Prior to his academic career, Brown worked as an instructional designer, stage performer, jazz musician and about a dozen other jobs.

His research is strongly influenced by Positive Organizational Scholarship, in that he explores how people and organizations succeed despite real and significant challenges. The primary topic that he studies is authenticity, or how pursuing the “true self” or real organizational priorities is an elusive but worthwhile endeavor, particularly in contexts of personal relationships and organizational change. The second topic relates to positive leadership, exploring the tensions and issues that leaders manage related to values, social perception and change.

Brown’s approach to teaching is informed by an experiential learning approach, where students learn by doing. He has taught courses on Leadership, Team Consultation and Organizational Behavior, and he enjoys working with a variety of students. He is a first-generation college student and is invested in helping students who are new to a university setting find success.

A husband and father, he served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Curitiba, Brazil, and he speaks Portuguese and some Spanish. He enjoys travel, movie night with the family and exercise.

Teaching

  • Leadership (Undergraduate)
  • Team Consultation (Undergraduate)
  • Organizational Behavior (Undergraduate)
  • Qualitative Methods (PhD)

Research Interests

  • Authenticity
  • Positive leadership
  • Values

Degrees

  • PhD, Boston College
  • MS, Boston College
  • MS, Brigham Young University
  • BS, Brigham Young University

Publications

  • “Revisiting Humility as a Leadership Attribute in the Army Swain,” with C. J. E., Grizzle, M. C., Ordiway, M. B., & Brown, J. A. Military Review. 2025.
  • “Organizational Ghosts: How “Ghostly Encounters” Enable Former Leaders to Influence Current Organizational Members,” with Bednar, J. S., & Brown, J. A. Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 67, No. 3, 2024, pp. 737-766.
  • “Humility Harmonized? Exploring Whether and How Leader and Employee Humility (In) Congruence Influences Employee Citizenship and Deviance Behaviors,” with Qin, X., Liu, X., Brown, J. A., Zheng, X., & Owens, B. P. Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 170, No. 1, 2021, pp. 147-165.
  • “Why Corporate Purpose Statements Often Miss Their Mark,” with Michaelson, C., Lepisto, D. A., Pratt, M. G., Hedden, L. N., & Brown, J. A. Strategy + Business, 2020.
  • “Growing Followers: Exploring the Effects of Leader Humility on Follower Self‐Expansion, Self‐efficacy, and Performance,” with Mao, J., Chiu, C. Y., Owens, B. P., Brown, J. A., & Liao, J. Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2, 2019, pp. 343-371.