Jo A. Tyler, Ed.D.

Biography

In addition to her teaching and research responsibilities at Penn State Harrisburg, Jo provides organizational and management consulting services to both for-profit and non-profit organizations. She has expertise in learning and change strategies, executive coaching, workshop design and delivery, and group process facilitation for innovation, transcending conflict, and problem solving. Her clients have included the Pennsylvania Technical Training and Assistance Network, Envinity Green Design and Construction, Isaac’s Restaurants, Girl Scouts USA, Armstrong World Industries, The Catholic University of America (Columbus Legal Clinic and the School of Social Work); Pennsylvania State University (Outreach and the Lancaster Center), University of the Arts (Philadelphia), Washington Storytellers Theatre (DC), and the United Way (Pennsylvania). She is particularly interested in the influence and interplay of stories, storytelling and organizational narratives, and has published articles and book chapters on storytelling and other topics related to organizational development. Jo has also taught graduate classes in organizational learning as an adjunct for Columbia University Teachers College, and undergraduate writing courses at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design.

Prior to joining Penn State Harrisburg, Jo held progressive roles as an organization development practitioner for several manufacturing firms in the Fortune 500 including Armstrong World Industries, Pratt & Whitney, Otis Elevator, and Hewlett-Packard. Her most recent role as a “corporate insider” was Vice President of Organization and Management Development for Armstrong World Industries in which she was responsible for balancing the need to sustain critical cultural elements with the need for system-wide shifts both the overall culture and strategy. Within this context, her worldwide responsibilities and areas of innovation included strategy training and development, performance/career management and succession planning, process improvement, including GE-based approaches to process improvement such as Work Out and Six Sigma, organizational redesign, and employee satisfaction measurement.

Jo has travelled extensively for business throughout Europe and the Far East, including a three-year expatriate assignment as the Manager of Training and Development for the UK and Ireland with Otis Plc in London, the honor of being a loaned executive for four years to Otis South Africa to deliver development workshops to NGO leadership and volunteers in a number of townships, and three years as the General Manager for China Training with Pratt & Whitney. She has a deep appreciation for diversity and multicultural inclusion in organizations and in the classroom, and delights in the opportunities it offers. As a storyteller, in her keynotes, workshops, and customized performances, Jo draws deeply on her own diversity of experience, focusing on the details that make the personal universal, and possibilities inherent in taking risks.

Research Interests

Jo conducts research using a variety of qualitative approaches, inquiring and publishing in the following areas:

• Storytelling in Organizations
• Organization Development, Learning, and Change
• Transformative Learning
• Expansive and Reflective Teaching and Facilitation

Publications and Research

• Tyler, J.A. (In press). Can You Hear Me Now? Reclaiming Listening as a Means of Re-enchantment. Journal of Organizational Change Management.
• Tyler, J.A. (In press). Bifurcation and Liberation: Deconstructing the story of a turn-of-the century lesbian (part two). New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development.
• Tyler, J.A. (2009). Charting the course: How storytelling fosters communicative learning in the workplace. In Mezirow, J. & Taylor, E. (Eds.) Transformative Learning in Action: A Practitioner Handbook. 136-147.
• Tyler, J.A. (2009). Moving beyond the binaries: Exploring the liminal possibilities of the scholar-practitioner borderlands. Advances in Developing Human Resources. 11(4)523-535.
• Tyler, J.A. (2009). Bifurcation and Liberation: Deconstructing the story of a turn-of-the century lesbian (part one). New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development. 23(3) 32-50.
• Boje, D.M. & Tyler, J.A. (2009). Story and narrative noticing: Workaholism auto
  ethnographies, Journal of Business Ethics. 8(4). 173-194.
• Tyler, J.A. & Boje, D.M. (2008). Sorting the relationship of tacit knowledge to story and narrative knowing. In Jemielniak, D., Kozminski, L., and Kociatkiewicz, J. (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Knowledge-Intensive Organizations. 81-97
• Tyler, J.A. & Rosen, G. (2008). The story holds its heart: Living story expression in reflexive storytelling. Storytelling, Self, Society. 4(2). 102-121.
• Tyler, J.A. (2007). Incorporating storytelling into practice: How HRD practitioners foster strategic storytelling. Human Resource Development Quarterly. 18(4), 559-587.
• Tyler, J.A. (2007). Cats and turtles, grinches and pachyderms: Mythical inspirations for organizational realities in Dr. Seuss. In Kostera, M. (Ed.), Mythical inspirations for organizational realities. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. 53-62.
• Tyler, J.A. (2006). Only the shadow knows:  Increasing organizational polyphony with liminal storytelling.  Tamara:  Journal of Critical Post-Modern Organizational Science - Sensemaking, Storytelling, and the Power of Relatedness. 5(4), 109-134.
• Tyler, J.A. (2006). Re-searching research models:  What is emergent, elastic, and non-linear all over?  Human Resource Development Review. 5(4) 494-505. 
• Tyler, J.A. (2006).  Introduction to the special issue:  Storytelling in organizations.  Storytelling, Self, Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Storytelling Studies.  2(2),1-4.