dr. Steven Poelmans

About Steven Poelmans

Dr. Steven Poelmans holds a Master in Organisational Psychology (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium), a Master in Marketing Management (Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School / University of Gent, Belgium) and a Ph.D. in Management / Organisational Behaviour (IESE Business School / University of Navarra, Spain). He graduated magna cum laude from the Ph.D. program at IESE Business School with the dissertation: “A multi-level, multi-method study of work-family conflict. A managerial perspective”.

Dr. Steven Poelmans is Assistant Professor at the Managing People in Organizations Department of IESE Business School, Barcelona. He currently teaches organizational behaviour, managerial communication, and self-management to MBA students and experienced executives. He is co-founder and Academic Director of the International Centre of Work and Family (ICWF) at the IESE Business School, a centre especially dedicated to his main field of research, sponsored by Vodafone, Banco Pastor, Alares, and Randstad, and organizer of the bi-annual International Conference of Work & Family in Barcelona.

His research, teaching and consulting mainly focuses on work-family conflict, managerial stress, work life policies, cultural intelligence and coaching, mostly with a cross-cultural perspective. This has resulted in publications in journals like the Human Resource Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Applied Psychology, an International Review, the International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, and Personnel Psychology. He was invited as a professor to Tunis (Mediterranean School of Business), Peru (PAD), Mexico (ITESM / “Tec de Monterrey”) and New Zealand (Waikato University).

Before entering in academia he worked in a wide variety of organisations (profit and not-for-profit; government and business schools). He applied his insights on cross-cultural psychology and cognition in strategy in several consulting assignments for Peace Islands, an NGO with projects in Belgium, South-America, Africa, and Asia, helping them developing a global strategy and communication platform in multi-cultural workshops in Nicaragua and Benin. He has trained executives in multinationals such as Alcatel Telecom, DSM, Westinghouse Energy Systems, SWIFT (in Belgium) Nestlé, Henkel, Randstad, Nike, and Roche Diagnostics (in Spain). He has coached over 100 MBAstudents and executives of Sun Microsystems, Abbott, and participants in the Global MBA and Advanced Management Program of the IESE Business School. He is currently the external consultant of Roche Diagnostics and Nike Iberia in Spain for management development and work-life balance respectively.

He is co-author and editor of the academic volumes ‘Work and Family. An International Research Perspective’ (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) and ‘Harmonizing Work, Family, and Personal Life: From Policy to Practice’ (Cambridge University Press). He published over a dozen peer reviewed journal articles and chapters in academic volumes. He is book review editor and guest-editor of the International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management (Sage Publications). He is a founding member of the European Academy of Management and international affiliate of the Academy of Management and the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

He published the book titled ‘Quality Time’, translated in Dutch (Lannoo; Belgium, the Netherlands; summer 2004) and Spanish (McGraw-Hill Interamericana; Spain, Latin-America; February 2005), divulgating his research to a broad audience. He experiences daily cross-cultural transitions between his family, his Spanish colleagues, and his international students at IESE from more than 40 countries around the globe. He practices four languages on a daily basis.