Russell Hassan, PhD

Russell S. Hassan is a professor at The Ohio State University’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs, where he holds the Milton & Roslyn Wolf Chair in Public Affairs. He is a leading scholar in public management in the United States, with expertise in leadership, organizational behavior, and policing.

Dr. Hassan has conducted extensive research on how leadership practices and perceptions of the work environment shape the motivation, performance, and well-being of frontline government employees—particularly those in law enforcement. Another stream of his work explores how social identity and relational dynamics influence workplace experiences and career outcomes for underrepresented groups in government organizations. He is also actively engaged in research on racial and ethnic disparities in policing and in developing evidence-based strategies for reform.

His work has been published in leading academic journals in public affairs and policing, including the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Public Management Review, Public Administration, Review of Public Personnel Administration, British Journal of Criminology, Policing & Society, Policing, and Journal of Interpersonal Violence, as well as in management journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies. He is a two-time recipient of the Review of Public Personnel Administration (ROPPA) Best Article Award.

Professor Hassan currently serves as a co-editor of the International Public Management Journal and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory and Public Management Review. He previously chaired the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management (2019–2020) and served as Communications Secretary for the International Research Society for Public Management (2014–2020).

He earned his Ph.D. from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs at the State University of New York at Albany. He is affiliated with Ohio State’s Criminal Justice Research Center and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, as well as with Michigan State University’s Police Staffing Research Observatory and the Local Government Workplace Research Initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 2021 to 2023, he was a Visiting Professor at Aarhus University’s School of Business and Social Sciences.