About Matt
Matt D.M. Watson, Ph.D., is a researcher and educator whose work examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping human resource decisions and the future of work. He is interested in a deceptively simple question: as algorithms increasingly shape decisions about who gets hired, how performance is judged, and who gets promoted, how will the people inside future organizations interpret, trust, and act on what these systems tell them, and what will that mean for how people experience work, fairness, and authority in the workplace of tomorrow? His research connects human resource development, people analytics, and organizational change, and favors qualitative methods that reveal how managers and HR professionals reason in practice.
He previously taught as an Adjunct in the Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning program at Boise State University, where he led the graduate course in change management and directed the career mentoring program. His scholarship is informed by two decades of organizational practice. He began his career as a forward air controller in the U.S. Air Force, serving with the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq. He then worked at the Bechtel Corporation as an organizational development project manager and training director, and at Hewlett-Packard as a business strategy project manager and director of talent. That practitioner background is a research asset: it keeps his questions grounded in the real decisions organizations face.
He holds a Ph.D. in Global Leadership and Change, an M.A. in Learning Technologies from Pepperdine University, a B.A. in Organizational Leadership from Chapman University, and the PMP and SPHR credentials.