Dr. Costanza earned his Bachelor's in Psychology from the University of Virginia. After working for Contel Corporation and then GTE for five years as a telecommunications manager, he returned to school at George Mason University where he earned his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. He started at The George Washington University in 1995, with a joint appointment in both the Organizational Sciences Program and the Department of Psychology. He was recently elected Chair of the new Department of Organizational Sciences and Communication. Since 1999, he has worked with the Army Research Institute's Research and Advanced Concepts office, via the Consortium of Research Universities, as Senior Research Fellow. He has done consulting and project work in the areas of job analysis, selection test validation, and performance appraisal development. He was on the project team that developed the prototype for the Department of Labor's initiative to update the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), creating the Knowledges content domain.

Dr. Costanza's research interests fall into several general areas: leadership, and organizational growth and decline process, and industrial/personnel psychology. He has also recently taken an interest in educational and training issues associated with the teaching of I/O Psychology and currently serves as the Co-Editor of the Education and Training column in TIP.

   Leadership and Organizational Growth and Decline
The primary focus of this stream of research is the intersection between leadership and organizational processes, specifically the negative or destructive impact that leaders may have on organizational outcomes. He originally explored this topic in his dissertation and continues to investigate it in several ongoing projects. A specific focus of this work is the intersection between leadership and organizational outcomes.

   Industrial/Personnel Psychology
His primary work in this area has been two projects. The first was a major initiative by the Department of Labor to re-evaluate its standard for job specific information (The Dictionary of Occupational Titles). As a result of this assessment, DOL determined that the Dictionary was out of date and needed to be revised and expanded. Dr Costanza worked with the project team to develop a new job information system: O*NET: The Occupational Information Network. O*NET incorporated both existing job analysis descriptors and information as well as several new descriptors (including his contribution: job-relevant knowledges) to describe every job in the US economy. Second, he has done work with the Department of Defense on the development and refinement of various personnel systems, including performance appraisals (PA) and selection testing.  

Publications