Sunita Sah

Biography

Professor Sunita Sah's research focuses on influence and advice. Specific topics include trust, advisor-advisee relationships, conflicts of interest, institutional corruption, transparency, disclosure, improving decisions, employee voice, burnout, influence, compliance, and defiance. In particular, Sah researches why we comply with bad advice and how disclosure policies can backfire. Using a multi-method approach of laboratory and field experiments as well as qualitative analysis and utilizing large real-world archival data sets, Sah incorporates organizational behavior, psychology, and behavioral economics theory to study different aspects of the advisor-advisee relationship and how difficult it is to speak up in professional and personal situations.

Sah's work has been published in top academic journals in management, science, medicine, law, economics, and psychology, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA Internal Medicine, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Nature Communications, and Psychological Science. Her work has also been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Nature, BBC News, Financial Times, The Guardian, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Boston Globe, and National Public Radio, as well as BBC World Television, CNN, and national radio stations.

Sah served as a commissioner on the National Commission of Forensic Science and on the Human Factors Committee for the National Institute of Science and Technology Forensic Science Standards Board. She is currently on the advisory board of the American College Center for Ethics in Financial Services, the editorial board of the Behavioural Public Policy Journal, the scientific advisory board of the Behavioral Economics in Health Network, and is an Officer at the International Behavioural Public Policy Association.

Sah has won best paper awards from the Academy of Management, Society of Business Ethics, Society of Judgment and Decision-Making, and Society of Personality and Social Psychology, as well as scholar awards from the Russell Sage Foundation, Harvard University, Kellogg School of Management, and the Medical Research Council.

Sah was previously the KPMG Professor of Management Studies at the University of Cambridge in the UK and held academic positions at Georgetown, Duke, and Harvard Universities in the United States. Before entering academia, Sah worked as a medical doctor for the UK's National Health Service, subsequently becoming a senior consultant and European marketing director at IMS Health Consulting and then managing director [CEO] of Organisational Dynamics Ltd.

Sah holds a PhD and MS in organizational behavior from Carnegie Mellon University, an MBA with distinction from London Business School, an MB ChB (UK equivalent to the US MD) in medicine and surgery, and a BSc (Hons) in psychology from the University of Edinburgh.

Selected Publications

• Sah, Sunita. Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes.. Penguin Random House. (2025)
• Sah, Sunita. "Deep Professionalism: Charting a Path for Effective Conflict-of-Interest Management in Medicine"Journal of General Internal Medicine. 39 (2024): 1503-1505
• Sah, Sunita. "The paradox of disclosure: shifting policies from revealing to resolving conflicts of interest"Behavioural Public Policy. (forthcoming).
• Sah, Sunita. "The Professionalism Paradox: A Sense of Professionalism Increases Vulnerability to Conflicts of Interest"Academy of Management Perspectives. 36.3 (2022): 896-918
• Rose, Susannah; Sah, Sunita; Dweik, Raed; Schmidt, Cory; Mercer, MaryBeth; et al. "Patient responses to physician disclosures of industry conflicts of interest: A randomized field experiment"Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 166 (2021): 27-38
• Sah, Sunita. "Conflict of Interest Disclosure as a Reminder of Professional Norms: Clients First!"Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 154 (2019): 62-79
• Jatoi, Ismail; Sah, Sunita. "Clinical Practice Guidelines and the Overuse of Healthcare Services: Need for Reform"Canadian Medical Association Journal. 191.11 (2019): 297-298
• Sah, Sunita; Loewenstein, George; Cain, Daylian. "Insinuation anxiety: Concern that advice rejection will signal distrust after conflict of interest disclosures"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 45.7 (2019): 1099-1112
• Sah, Sunita; Malaviya, Prashant; Thompson, Debora. "Conflict of interest disclosure as an expertise cue: Differential effects of automatic versus deliberative processing"Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 147 (2018): 127-146
• Sah, Sunita; Loewenstein, George; Cain, Daylian. "The Burden of Disclosure: Increased Compliance with Distrusted Advice"Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 104.2 (2013): 289-304

Awards and Honors

• Business Book Gold Medal for "Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demand’s Yes" (2025) Axiom
• Finalist, Best Paper Award, Conflict Management New Directions Award (2024) Academy of Management
• National Bestseller, "Defy" (2025) USA Today

Recent Courses

• NCCY 5050 - Critical and Strategic Thinking
• NCCW 5040 - Managing and Leading in Organizations
• NBAY 6820 - Negotiation Essentials
• NBAE 6660 - Negotiations

Academic Degrees

• PhD Carnegie Mellon University
• MS Carnegie Mellon University
• MBA London Business School
• MBChB (MD) University of Edinburgh
• BS University of Edinburgh

In the News

• March 04, 2025 Letters to the Editor: I lived under Nazi occupation. Yes, it could happen in America too
• March 10, 2025 A New Study Says People Who Make Decisions Like This Wind Up Happier in the End
• January 14, 2025 I’m a hopeless people pleaser. I tried saying ‘no’ for a week