Dr. Kelly Manix is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University. Dr. Manix earned her B.S. in Music Business Management and her M.B.A. from MTSU. She has taught at the collegiate level for the past nine years and completed her Ph.D. in Management at the University of South Alabama in 2022.

Her research focuses primarily on humility, ethics, and moral leadership and influence. Through her work, she seeks to enhance individual virtue and well-being in organizational and societal contexts. She has been published in American Business Review, Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, and Journal of Individual Differences. In 2021, her research won Best Doctoral Student Ethics Paper and Best Doctoral Student Innovative Teaching Paper at the annual Southern Management Association conference. Before her academic career, she held several management roles in the recording industry and food service/retail industries and ran two small businesses.

Kelly has been married to her best friend, Matt, a live broadcast engineer, for 16 years, and they have an 12-year-old daughter, Luci. The family has two cats, Mochi and Mango, and they love traveling, Marvel movies, and trying new foods.

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Howard, M. C., Boudreaux, M., Cogswell, J., Manix, K. G., & Oglesby, M. T. (2025). A literature review of model fit and model comparisons with confirmatory factor analysis: Formalizing the informal in organizational science. Applied Psychology, 74(1), e12592. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12592

Serviss, E. R., Manix, K. G., Oglesby, M. T., Howard, M. C., & Gleim, M. R. (2024). Ethical leadership in a remote working context: implications for salesperson well-being and performance. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/08853134.2024.2415081

Manix, K. G. (2022). Educating Future Researchers with an Eye Toward Intellectual Humility. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 15(1), 135-136. https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2021.135  

Manix, K. G. (2022). Why and When Do Leaders Express Humility? Leader Expressed Humility as Psycho-Social Signaling. American Business Review, 25(1), 36-49. https://digitalcommons.newhaven.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1565&context=americanbusinessreview

Howard, M. C. & Manix, K. G. (2022). Assessing the Shared Facets of Honesty-Humility and Machiavellianism: Implications for the Common Conceptual Core of Honesty-Humility and the Dark Triad. Journal of Individual Differences. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000384

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Oglesby, M., Boudreaux, M., & Manix, K. G., Serviss, E., Hair, J. (2024, May) AI in HR: Perception is Reality [Conference presentation]. Association for Computing Machinery SIGMIS-CPR Conference, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632634.3655879

Boudreaux, M. & Manix, K.G (2023, July) Flex It at Work: Leader’s Tolerance of Ambiguity, Humility, Openness to Experience, Organizational Empowerment, Flexible Work, and the Effects on Employee Motivation Academy of Business Research, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/ABR/FMfcgzGtwMkDgVcfpSQhgsRqhQWkLLSK?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1     *Awarded Best Session Paper

Serviss, E., Manix, K. G., & Oglesby, M. (2022, November) Ethical Leadership in a Remote Sales Context: Implications for Salesperson Wellbeing and Performance. [Conference presentation]. Society of Marketing Advances, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States.  

Manix, K. G. (2022, October). Is Humility Enough? The Impact of Leader Humility on Follower Moral Disengagement and Unethical Behavior [Conference presentation]. SMA 2022 Conference, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States.

Manix, K. G. (2021, November 6). I Get by With a Little Help from My Boss: Leader-Member Exchange as Moderator Between Surface Acting and Moral Disengagement [Conference presentation]. SMA 2021 Conference, New Orleans, LA, United States. https://d1keuthy5s86c8.cloudfront.net/static/ems/upload/files/embed_agenda_sma_202110_mccaf.pdf *Awarded SMA 2021 Best Doctoral Student Paper – Track 5 – Careers/Diversity/Ethics   ·        

Manix, K. G. & Abston, K. (2021, November 6). Using Monroe's Motivated Sequence to Facilitate Engagement and Social Innovation [Conference presentation]. SMA 2021 Conference, New Orleans, LA, United States. https://d1keuthy5s86c8.cloudfront.net/static/ems/upload/files/embed_agenda_sma_202110_mccaf.pdf *Awarded SMA 2021 Best Doctoral Student Paper – Track 8 - Innovative Teaching/Management Education Track  

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