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. She currently serves as the Tolbert Faculty Fellow of Ethical Leadership and as faculty advisor for the Middle Tennessee Leadership Society at MTSU.

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 several prestigious outlets, including American Business Review, Applied Psychology: An International Review, and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, among others. In 2021, her research won Best Doctoral Student Ethics Paper and Best Doctoral Student Innovative Teaching Paper at the annual Southern Management Association conference. She is also a regular contributor at Psychology Today with her Humble Habits blog series. 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 18 years, and they have a 13-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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Serviss, E. R., Shoreibah, R. A., Davis, M. M., & Manix, K. G. (2026). An Analysis Of Sales Ethics Instruction In Undergraduate Business Programs. Marketing Education Review, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10528008.2026.2669378

Manix, K. G., Williams, R. I., & Morrell, D. (2025). Financial Gain or Ethical Erosion? A Case Study in Entrepreneurial Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics Education, 22, 145-154.

Gilbert, J. A., Manix, K. G., & Abston, K. A. (2025). Transforming Online Courses: Practical Strategies for Educators. Journal of Excellence in College Teaching and Learning, 21(1), 73-85. https://encompass.eku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1109&context=kjectl

Oglesby, M. T., Boudreaux, M., & Manix, K. G. (2025). Reputation Matters: How HR Personnel Reputation and Organizational Trust Influence the Reporting of Sexual Harassment. Corporate Reputation Review, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41299-025-00228-3

Manix, K. G., & Abston, K. A. (2025). Humility as Personal Resource: A Conservation of Resources Perspective. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.70036

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

Howard, M. C., & Manix, K. G. (2023). Assessing the Shared Facets of Honesty-Humility and Machiavellianism. Journal of Individual Differences, 44(2), 109-114.. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000384

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

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Manix, K.G. (2025, June). Intellectual Humility and Workplace Incivility in the Hybrid Workplace. [Conference presentation]. Gulf South Research Symposium, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama, United States.

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

Abston, E. A., & Manix, K. G. (2024, March). High School Research: Experiential Learning Insights from a Scholar and a Mentor. In Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the Annual ABSEL conference (Vol. 51). https://absel-ojs-ttu.tdl.org/absel/article/view/3404  *Best Paper Nominee

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.    *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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Contributor to Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/humble-habits

Tennessee Companies Make Changes to Recruit, Retain Employees: Embracing the Four-day Workweek in The Tennessean (August 29, 2024) https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2024/08/29/four-day-workweek-tennessee-companies-respond/74504239007/

Ethical Leadership Can Boost Well-being and Performance in Remote Work Environments in The Conversation. (April 17, 2025) https://theconversation.com/ethical-leadership-can-boost-well-being-and-performance-in-remote-work-environments-253201

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