Sophie Leroy

Profile | Curriculum Vitae | Media | Attention Residue

Area Coordinator, Management and Organizations

Professor

Contact Information

sleroy@uw.edu
425-352-5096
UWBB-243

About Dr. Leroy

Dr. Sophie Leroy is a Professor of Management. She received her Ph.D. from NYU, Stern School of Business. She joined the University of Washington Bothell in 2014.

Dr. Leroy has several lines of research and has published her work in top scientific journals. Her primary focus has been to study the effects of interruptions on our ability to have focused attention and reach high performance. Her results help understand how to manage task transitions and interruptions to enhance focus and performance.

In particular, she developed and coined the term attention residue. Attention residue reflects situations in which people find it hard to be fully focused 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. Click here to learn more about attention residue and click here to view her media appearances.

Her other line of research lies at the intersection of leadership, self-regulation, and diversity, exploring how leaders emerge within social system.

Dr. Leroy teaches courses in Leadership, Managing High Performance Teams, Managing Globally, Ethical Decision Making.

She received many teaching awards, including the MBA program Faculty of the Year Teaching Award in 2019, 2018, 2016 and the Undergraduate Program Faculty of the Year Teaching Award in 2017.

She created a leadership lab, that focuses on helping students conduct projects related to leadership, diversity, and inclusivity. Click here to learn more about past projects.

Selected Publications

Leroy, S., Schmidt, A.M., and Madjar, N. (In Press). Working from home during COVID-19: A study of the interruption landscape. Journal of Applied Psychology.

Leroy, S., Schmidt, A.M., and Madjar, N. (2020). Interruptions and task transitions: Understanding their characteristics, processes, and consequences. 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.

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.

See more on Dr. Leroy’s CV…

Selected Awards

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
Finalist for the Undergraduate Faculty of the Year Award, University of Washington Bothell

See more on Dr. Leroy’s CV…

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