'Father of Modern HR' Named 2020 Losey Award Winner

Dave Ulrich is the winner of the 2020 Michael R. Losey Excellence in Human Resource Research Award. Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, president and chief executive officer of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), announced the news at SHRM's Volunteer Leaders' Business Meeting on Nov. 20. 

The award honors lifetime achievement in human resource research, recognizing significant past and ongoing research contributions that impact the HR management field. Nominations are encouraged for scholars with a significant body of work in the HR field. 

The SHRM Foundation sponsors the annual award, which includes a $50,000 stipend. It is named in honor of Michael R. Losey, who served the HR profession for more than 45 years, retired as president and CEO of SHRM in 2000, and is the author of Touching People's Lives: Leaders' Sorrow or Joy (SHRM, 2017).

Taylor praised Ulrich for his contributions in shaping HR into a leadership position.

"He has made a career of introducing fresh new ideas to leading people and organizations—including connecting leadership with customers, measuring leadership effectiveness and showing how it shapes investor expectations," Taylor said during his State of the Society address on Nov. 20.

Ulrich, who has been called "the father of modern HR," is the Rensis Likert Professor in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm in Provo, Utah.

"I am honored and humbled to receive the Michael Losey award," Ulrich told SHRM Online. "I have deep respect for Mike's contributions to the HR profession and for the previous winners of this award whose ideas and research I so highly value. The unprecedented social, physical, economic and personal crises of our times place ever more demands on HR.

"The good news is that HR professionals worldwide are rising to the challenges and discovering innovative opportunities. The best is yet ahead."

Ulrich has received a number of lifetime achievement awards. This year, he was singled out as the "Most Influential Global HR Leader, 2020" by PeopleFirst and the HRD Forum, and became a Distinguished Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources.

He was named one of the 20 most influential business professors in the world in 2018 by Top Business Degrees. In 2017, he was named to the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame after being ranked numerous times by that group as among the world's most prestigious business management thought leaders. Two years earlier, he was named one of the 10 "most influential HR thinkers of the decade"  by the United Kingdom's HR Magazine.

Ulrich has published more than 30 books, including co-writing with his wife Wendy Ulrich the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-seller The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win (McGraw-Hill Education, 2010). He has written more than 200 articles and book chapters, edited Human Resource Management from 1990 to 1999, and has presented workshops for more than half of the Fortune 200 companies.

He received his bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he graduated summa cum laude. He did master's work in organizational behavior there and received his doctorate in organizations theory from the University of California, Los Angeles.

He and his wife live in Alpine, Utah, and have three children and 10 grandchildren.