Karen Harlos is a Professor and past Inaugural Chair of the Department of Business and Administration at the University of Winnipeg. She is lead of IDEA's Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility Activity Area .

Prior to joining the University of Winnipeg, Harlos was a member of the faculty at McGill University and the University of Otago (in New Zealand). She has held adjunct appointments at the University of Northern British Columbia and McGill University.

Harlos’s expertise is in organizational behaviour, organizational psychology, psychometrics and human resources. Her research focuses on workplace bullying and mistreatment, employee silence and voice in the face of mistreatment, and workplace issues in healthcare. She was Project Director of the Workplace Bullying and Mistreatment Partnership for Prevention research initiative (2015-2019), leading interdisciplinary researchers and three provincial organizations in Canada to produce large-scale evidence for practice, policy and decision support. Currently, besides IDEA, she is also a co-investigator on projects studying workplace accessibility and remote work for persons with disabilities and on integrated knowledge translation for effective practice, programs and policy in healthcare.

Harlos has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Management and the Journal of Management Inquiry, on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Conflict Management and of the Western Academy of Management (elected), and as a reserve Board of Directors member for the International Association for Workplace Bullying and Harassment (elected). She was on the Board of Directors for the Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence and the Manitoba Workplace Psychological Health and Safety Advisory Board, contributing to cross-sector collaboration to develop SAFE Work Manitoba’s first Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace Strategy.

Harlos co-authored a teaching case on workplace mistreatment that won the Outstanding Compact Case Competition Winner at the international 2022 Case Centre Awards. (Case Centre, established in the U.K. in 1973, is an international not-for-profit that promotes “the case method” as an essential part of management education in business schools.)

Harlos has a PhD in organizational behaviour, an MA in organizational/industrial psychology and a BA in clinical psychology, all from the University of British Columbia.

“It is gratifying to work closely with organizational leaders, decision-makers, managers and policymakers who share a deep commitment to helping employees and organizations thrive in just and humane ways. For persons with disabilities, who are both contributors to and beneficiaries of this research, evidence to support employment that is stable, rewarding and satisfying is bolstered through systems-level and organizational perspectives. Many employers wish to provide more inclusive and responsive work environments but may not have access to evidence-based practice knowledge or may question its relevance to their context or sector. The IDEA project is a comprehensive, unique approach to building employer capacity, and I am delighted to contribute.”