Quick Facts
Biography
Anat Rafaeli (Hebrew: ענת רפאלי, born July 31, 1954) is an Israeli researcher, scholar of Organisational behavior, a professor at the Technion at the faculty of industrial engineering and management. She served as the deputy to the president of the Technion and was the head of the Technion's international school. In 2010 Rafaeli was recognised as a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
Rafaeli's works have been published in many scientific journals such as The Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review and the Journal of Applied Psychology. Rafaeli's work has also been referenced in mass media publications such as Forbes, Huffington Post UK and Newsweek.
Biography
Born in Haifa, Israel to Shmuel, a professor of math instruction, and Bracha Avital a secretary at Oil Refineries Ltd. She spent a part of her childhood in Toronto, Canada due to her father's work transfer. Rafaeli attended high school at the Hebrew Reali School, the first school to instruct in Hebrew in modern times. As a girl she was active in the local branch of Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist youth movement. At 18, Rafaeli enlisted into the IDF due to mandatory conscription of females in Israel and served as a radar operator near Sharam el Sheikh, in the Sinai peninsula. Several of Rafaeli's unit members were killed in the Six Day War.
Upon completion of her service in the IDF, Rafaeli studied for her bachelor's degree in Psychology and Mathematics at the University of Haifa. Rafaeli received her doctorate from Ohio State University in 1985 in Organisational Psychology. She went on to do a post-doctorate at the faculty of industrial engineering and management at Stanford University. She returned to Israel upon accepting an offer from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to join as a faculty member at the business administration school.
Rafaeli's research spans many aspects of organisational theory. Early in her career she conducted and published studies that invalidated the notion of the utility of graphology in recruitment processes. She also conducted and published studies of hers which tested and disproved the economic viability of employment
advertising. Her works did show that the technique of employment advertising does have other benefits. On top of these Rafaeli worked in the field of quality circles and their positive impact on employees' emotions.
The pinnacle of Rafaeli's research is in defining emotions. Her work on this has been in the context of emotional labor being a major factor in organisational processes. She developed the topic of emotional labor as a main driving force in organisational behaviour. Her research in this field was done together with Robert I. Sutton, Rafaeli identified mechanisms of recruitment, instruction and renumeration to employees which exert emotions that are required to perform their jobs. She has researched the importance of the dress code in the workplace in general and in the service industry in particular. This research was conducted as part of a larger work of hers on symbols and artifacts in the workplace. Rafaeli's research papers are have also touched on the world of customer service. She studied the psychology of queues and queue management and the impact of anger of customers towards employees. Recently Rafaeli researched customer service through technology media channels, such as online chat. She has done this in collaborations with private technological firms such as IBM and LivePerson. In 2015 she received an IBM research award.
Rafaeli is a feminist and an activist. She has sat on the executive board of WomensOwn, an organisation for the economic empowerment of women in Israel. She started, together with her brother, a foundation in the namesake of her parents to support the excellence in the instruction of math in Israel. She currently sits on the board of Hillel - The Right to Choose, an Israeli-nonprofit dedicated to helping young adults who have left the ultra-orthodox world lead successful lives as members of Israeli society.
Rafaeli is married to Sheizaf Rafaeli, has three sons and lives in Haifa, Israel.