Sophie Leroy
Professor and Associate Dean of Administration
UW Bothell School of Business
sleroy@uw.edu
425-352-5096
UWBB-243
About Dr. Leroy
Dr. Sophie Leroy is a Professor of Management and Associate Dean of Administration. She received her Ph.D. from NYU, Stern School of Business. Prior to joining the University of Washington Bothell, she was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management.
Dr. Leroy is an accomplished and internationally recognized scholar, having published her research in the top scientific journals in her field. She was the recipient of 2024 University-wide Distinguished Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Award, from the University of Washington Bothell and was on many prestigious editorial boards (i.e. Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, etc.).
In her research, Dr. Leroy studies the effects of interruptions on the ability to have focused attention and reach high performance at work. Her results help understand how to manage task transitions and interruptions to enhance focus and performance, how to manage distractions, and more generally, how to regulate attention. She also studies how people manage and allocate time among their responsibilities and how people differ in their preference for synchrony with others.
She developed and coined the term Attention Residue. Attention residue reflects situations in which people find it hard to focus fully on the task at hand and instead find their attention shifting to other, unrelated tasks. Dr. Leroy’s research explores when and why attention residue occurs, how it affects performance, and how to prevent it when the effects are detrimental. She has appeared in many news outlets Click here to learn more about attention residue and click here to view her media appearances.
Dr. Leroy teaches courses in Leadership, Managing High Performance Teams, Managing Globally, Ethical Decision Making.
Since joining UW Bothell in 2014, Dr. Leroy received 8 teaching awards spanning from six times recipient of the MBA Faculty of the Year Award (often across both cohorts), the Undergraduate Program Teaching Award, and the Executive Education Distinguished Professor of the Year Award.
Selected Publications
Manchester, C., Leroy, S., Dahm, P., Glomb, T. (2023). Amplifying the gender gap in academia: The Covid-19 pandemic and differences in career success by gender. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society.
Leroy, S., Schmidt, M.A., Madjar,N. (2021). Working from home during COVID-19: A study of the interruption landscape. Journal of Applied Psychology. 106 (10), 1448–1465.
Leroy, S., Schmidt, M.A., Madjar,N. (2020) Interruptions and task transitions: Understanding their characteristics, processes, and consequences. Academy of Management Annals.14(2), 661-694.
Finalist for the Best Paper of the Year (one in five), 2021 Publication Award, Academy of Management Annals.
Leroy, S. and Glomb, T. (2018). Tasks interrupted: How anticipating time pressure upon return to an interrupted task leads to attention residue and low performance on interrupting tasks and how a “ready-to-resume” plan mitigates those effects. Organization Science.
Leroy, S. and Schmidt, A.M. (2016). The effect of regulatory focus on attention residue and performance during interruptions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process.
Leroy, Shipp, Blount and Licht (2015). Synchrony Preference: Why some people go with the flow and some don’t. Personnel Psychology.
Dahm, P., Glomb, T., Manchester, C., and Leroy, S., (2015). Work-Family Conflict, Ego Depletion, and Self-Discrepant Time Allocation at Work. Journal of Applied Psychology.
Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 109. pp. 168-181.
Best Paper Award, Academy of Management, MOC division.
Blount, S. and Leroy, S. (2007). Individual temporality in the workplace: How individuals perceive and value time at work. In Beth Rubin (Ed.), Research in the Sociology of Work (Vol. 17) – Work Place Temporalities.
Selected Awards
2024: MBA faculty of the Year Teaching Award
Recipient of University-wide Distinguished Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Award, University of Washington Bothell
2023: MBA faculty of the Year Teaching Award
2022: Distinguished Professor of the Year Award, Executive Education, Mini-MBA Program
2021 Finalist for Best Paper of the Year (One in Five) – 2021 Academy of Management Annals Publication Award
SRCP Seed Grant Award – UW Bothell competitive seed grant program
2020: MBA faculty of the Year teaching Award
2019: MBA Faculty of the Year Teaching Award, University of Washington Bothell
2018: MBA Faculty of the Year Teaching Award, University of Washington Bothell
2017: Undergraduate Faculty of the Year Teaching Award, University of Washington Bothell
2016: MBA Faculty of the Year Teaching Award, University of Washington Bothell
Selected Media Appearances
Harvard Business Review
King 5
NBC News
The Economist
TIME Magazine
See more media coverage of Dr. Leroy’s work…
Latest News
Invited to be on the Editorial Board of the Academy of Management Journal
Read More About Her Work
Management Is All in the Timing, strategy+business