From July 25 to 29, 2025, Associate Professor Guo Yirong went to Copenhagen, Denmark to attend the 85th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM). Hosted by the Academy of Management (based in the United States), the AOM Annual Meeting is the world’s oldest and largest top-tier academic conference in the field of management. Journals sponsored by AOM, such as Academy of Management Journal and Academy of Management Review, are internationally recognized as authoritative publications in the management discipline. This year’s meeting brought together the most cutting-edge research findings worldwide and attracted over 12,000 scholars and young researchers in the field of management from more than 120 countries.
On the morning of July 27, 2025 (local time), Associate Professor Guo Yirong and her collaborators—Chen Limei, a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong, and Professor Song Jiwen from the University of Leeds, UK—delivered a presentation titled "Mitigating the Damaging Ripple Effect of Patients' Incivility: The Role of Servant Leadership" at the "Leadership and Mistreatment" panel session.
By exploring the impact of patients' uncivil behaviors on the psychology and behaviors of healthcare workers, the presentation provided a new perspective for subsequent research on how uncivil behaviors exert cross-domain influences on workplace health and family life. Additionally, it proposed that servant leadership can serve as an intervention to slow down the spread of negative impacts. To alleviate these issues, organizations can foster the practices of servant leadership to improve employees' work environments, thereby reducing the stress and negative emotions caused by patients' incivility.
Through the presentation at the AOM Annual Meeting, the research findings of Associate Professor Guo Yirong and her team have garnered widespread attention from the international academic community. They also engaged in in-depth exchanges with management scholars from around the world, which helped raise awareness of the negative impacts of patients' uncivil behaviors on healthcare workers.
By collaborating and discussing with international peers, the team gained valuable feedback and research insights. This will further promote cross-border academic cooperation and knowledge sharing, advance research exchanges and collaboration in relevant fields both domestically and internationally, and make positive contributions to the interdisciplinary research in management and education at Xiamen University.
