Professor David De Cremer is a globally recognized thought leader and behavioral scientist whose work focuses on leadership, trust, ethics, and organizational transformation in the age of artificial intelligence.

He is currently a chaired professor at KFUPM Business School, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia. He is a founding member of EY’s advisory board for global artificial intelligence initiatives and advisor to several multinationals and start-ups worldwide. He is also a research affiliate at the center for collective intelligence at MIT and at the Justicecollaboratory at Yale Law School.

Before joining KFUPM, Professor De Cremer served as the Dunton Family Dean and professor of the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University in Boston, United States. Previously, he held a Provost’s Chaired professorship at the National University of Singapore Business School where he also founded and directed the Centre on AI Technology for Humankind and was a member of the Scientific Committee of AI Singapore. Earlier in his career, he was the KPMG Endowed Professor at Cambridge Judge Business School and a Fellow of St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge and a visiting professor at Harvard University, London Business School, and New York University.

Professor De Cremer has received numerous career awards in recognition of his scholarly contributions and is regarded as one of the most prolific academics of his generation. He was named the most influential economist in the Netherlands in 2009–2010 and recognized as a Global Thought Leader by Trust Across America–Trust Around the World in 2016. He was also listed among the world’s Top 30 Management Gurus and Speakers in 2020 and selected for the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2021, which highlights 30 global thought leaders to watch. He has also been consistently included among the world’s top 2% of scientists.

His expertise centers on understanding how leaders can successfully guide organizational transformation in a rapidly evolving technological environment. His work examines how organizations can build trust as a strategic business asset and how ethical compliance and effective governance can support human-centered technological transformation.

His research has resulted in several acclaimed books, including Leadership by Algorithm: Who Leads and Who Follows in the AI Era? and The AI-Savvy Leader: 9 Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work, published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2024. Professor De Cremer is also a highly sought-after corporate speaker and consultant, with extensive experience in executive education and advising organizations on leadership, ethics, governance, and artificial intelligence.

 

Ph.D., University of Southampton, UK

 

AI in Business

Organizational Transformation

Leadership

Digital Transformation

Organizational Justice

Behavioral Ethics

Behavioral Economics

Trust and Reconciliation

McGuire, J., Schweitzer, S., De La Mora Bakejejian, X., Menges, J., & De Cremer, D. (in press). Awe and work: An integrative review and path forward for a transformative emotion. Academy of Management Annals.

Schweitzer, S., Narayanan, D., McGuire, J., & De Cremer, D. (2026). A behavioral human-centered approach to adopting AI in organizations. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 42(5), 3363-3374.

De Cremer, D. (2026). Avoiding the urgency trap in AI adoption by leading with purpose. Harvard Business Review.

De Cremer, D., & Kasparov, G. (2026). AI isn’t inevitable, it is a choice! And leaders should start acting like it. California Management Review.

McGuire, J., McAllister, D., Menges, J., & De Cremer, D. (2026). Awe experiences at work: Broadening minds and expanding performance. Academy of Management Review.

McGuire, J., Bastardoz, N., Hentrup L.J., De Cremer, D., & Menges, J. (2025). The backdrop of leadership: How environmental awe influences charisma attributions. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 46(4), 580-602.

Nagpal, M., De Cremer, D., & Van Hiel, A. (2025). Is technology uniquely placed to solve our problems? An examination into technosolutionism, what it entails and what it predicts. Business & Society, 64(5), 933-967.

De Cremer, D., Schweitzer, S., McGuire, J.J., & Narayanan, D. (2025). How behavioral science can improve the return on AI investments. Harvard Business Review.

De Cremer, D., & Esposito, M. (2025). HumanAIzation: The art of embracing AI to become more human. California Management Review.

De Cremer, D. (2025). Employees won’t trust AI if they don’t trust their leaders. Harvard Business Review

De Cremer, D., & Chan, K. (2025). Transforming business education with AI. California Management Review.

Johnson, M., Schminke, M., & De Cremer, D. (2024). Do these jeans make me feel fat? Exploring subjective fatness, its workplace outcomes, and rethinking the role of subjectivity in the stigmatization process. Personnel Psychology, 77(2), 789-818.

Schweitzer, S., & De Cremer, D. (2024). When being managed by technology: Does algorithmic management affect perceptions of workers’ creative capacities? Academy of Management Discoveries, 10(3), 375-392.

De Cremer, D., & Koopman, J. (2024). Using AI at work makes us lonelier and less healthy. Harvard Business Review.

Schweitzer, S., & De Cremer, D. (2024). Employees managed by algorithms are seen as less creative. Harvard Business Review.

De Cremer, D. (2024). AI transformation requires a total team effort: Including rank-and-file employees in AI adoption improves overall performance. Harvard Business Review, May-June, 124-131.

• This article was selected by Harvard Business Review (HBR) editors to be in included in HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026: The definitive management ideas of the year from Harvard Business Review: HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026. 

Narayanan, D., Nagpal, M., McGuire, J., & Schweitzer, S., & De Cremer, D. (2024). Fairness perceptions of artificial intelligence: A review and path forward. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 40(1), 4-23.

De Schutter, L., & De Cremer, D. (2024). How counterfactual fairness modelling in algorithms can promote ethical decision-making. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 40(1), 33-44.

Tang, P.M., Koopman, J., Mai, K.M., De Cremer, D., Zhang, J., Reynders, P., Ng, S., Chen, I-Heng (2023). No person is an island: Unpacking the work and after-work consequences of interacting with Artificial Intelligence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(11), 1766-1789.

Colquitt, J., Hill, E., & De Cremer, D. (2023). Still focused on fairness: 75 years of organizational justice. Personnel Psychology, 76(2), 413-435.

Stollberger, J., Amer, A. A.-A., & De Cremer, D. (2023). Untangling the team social capital-team innovation link: The role of proportional task conflict as well as group-and individual-focused transformational leader behaviors. Human Relations, 76(6), 871-900.

Tang, P.M., Koopman, J., Yam, K.C., De Cremer, D., Zhang, J.H., & Reynders, P. (2023). The self-regulatory consequences of dependence on intelligent machines at work: Evidence from field and experimental studies. Human Resource Management, 62(5),721-744.

De Coster, S., De Schutter, L., Stouten, J., De Cremer, D., & Menges, J. (2023). Does change incite abusive supervision? The role of transformational change and hindrance stress. Human Resource Management Journal, 33(4), 957-976.

Stollberger, J., Shemla, M., De Cremer, D., Yang, Y., & Sanders, K. (2023). Does emotional restraint or exuberance get you the job? How and when enthusiasm intensity is related to perceived job suitability. Human Resource Management, 62(2), 141-158.

De Cremer, D., Bianzino, N.M., & Falk, B. (2023). How Generative AI could disrupt creative work. Harvard Business Review.

Tang, P. M., Koopman, J., McClean, S.T., Zhang, J.H., Li, C. H., De Cremer, D., Lu, Y., & Ng, C.T.S. (2022). When conscientious employees meet intelligent machines: An integrative approach inspired by complementarity theory and role theory. Academy of Management Journal, 65(3), 1019-1054.

De Cremer, D. (2022). Machines are not moral role models. Nature Human Behavior.

De Cremer, D., & Narayanan, D. (2022). A cross-cultural approach to the future of work. Nature Reviews Psychology.

De Cremer, D. & Stollberger, J. (2022). Are people analytics dehumanizing your employees? Harvard Business Review.

Yam, K. C., Bigman, Y. E., Tang, P. M., Ilies, R., De Cremer, D., Soh, H., & Gray, K. (2021). Robots at work: People prefer – and forgive – service robots with perceived feelings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(10), 1557-1572.

Haesevoets, T., De Cremer, D., Dierckx, K., & Van Hiel, A. (2021) Human-algorithm collaboration in managerial decision making. Computers in Human Behavior, 119: 106730

Zheng, M., Schuh, S., van Dijke, M., & De Cremer, D. (2021). Procedural justice enactment as an instrument of position protection: The three-way interaction between leader’s position stability, followers’ character, and followers’ competence. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 42(6), 785-799.

Van Houwelingen, G., van Dijke, M., De Cremer, D., & Van Hiel, A. (2021). Construal level is the cognitive foundation of impartiality in punitive decision making. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 42(6), 726-740.

Brockner, J., De Cremer, D., van Dijke, M., Deschutter, L., Holtz, B., & Van Hiel, A. (2021). Factors affecting supervisors’ enactment of interpersonal fairness: The interactive relationship between their managers’ informational fairness and supervisor’s sense of power matters. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 42(6), 800-813.

Giurge, L., van Dijke, M., Zheng, M., & De Cremer, D. (2021). Does Power Corrupt the Mind? The Distinct Influence of Power on Moral Reasoning and Self-Interested Behavior. The Leadership Quarterly, 32(4).

De Cremer, D., & Kasparov, G. (2021). AI should augment human intelligence, not replace it. Harvard Business Review.

• Reprinted in the Harvard Business Review Special Issue magazine (Winter 2021) on “How AI is changing work” (Winter 2021): De Cremer, D., & Kasparov, G. (2021). AI should augment human intelligence, not replace it. Harvard Business Review, Winter issue, 97-100.