Prof. Dr. Marlene Walk
Prof. Dr. Marlene Walk researches the German and US nonprofit sectors. Nonprofit organizations are key players in the provision of public welfare services and also have considerable economic significance (3.7 million employees in Germany, 13.9 million employees in the US). The research focuses on employees in the context of a changing organizational environment. Walk seeks to explain why people work for nonprofit organizations, how they respond to change, and what factors influence their retention behavior. Since employees are conscious of their organizational environment and this perception can affect their attitudes and behavior, she investigates why and how nonprofit organizations respond to external changes and how they implement organizational change. In particular, her interdisciplinary research draws on the overlapping and mutually enriching topics of human resource management, organizational behavior, and organizational change. Her research is characterized by mixed-methods approaches in order to capture the complexity of interactions at multiple levels and to incorporate individual, organizational, and contextual factors into the design and implementation of the research.
Prof. Dr. Marlene Walk received her doctorate from the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. She then worked as an assistant professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.
On January 1, 2023, she moved to the University of Freiburg as a W1 professor in the field of public and nonprofit management. After successfully completing the tenure process at the University of Freiburg, she was appointed university professor (W3) on June 24, 2025.
Prof. Dr. Marlene Walk is the Deputy Equal Opportunities Officer for the Faculty of Economics and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Freiburg.
She holds a Margarete von Wrangell junior professorship funded by the MWK Baden-Württemberg.
Before completing her doctorate, Marlene Walk earned a diploma in social work from HAWK Hildesheim and a Master of Arts in Management of Nonprofit Organizations from Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences.
Further information can be found here.
Focus areas in teaching and research
- Human resource management
- Organizational change
- Organizational behavior
Current publications
- Melville-Holder, J.; Stewart, A.J.; Kuenzi, K.; Walk, M.; Russell, D.; & McGovern, S. (online first): A worthy investment? Investigating alumni perceptions of nonprofit degrees, Teaching PublicAdministration.
- Levine Daniel, J., Curley, C., & Walk, M. (online first): Message (In)Congruence: Tweeting While Competing for Donations, Communication and the Public.
- Walk, M., Stewart, A., & Kuenzi, K. (online first): Investigating Turnover Intentions during Organizational Change – The Role of Negative Appraisals, Psychological Contract Violations, and Resistance to Change, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.
- Kuenzi, K.; Stewart, M. & Walk, M. (2024): Pause don’t panic: Exploring COVID-19 as critical incident for nonprofit workers, Review of Public Personnel Administration 44(2), 353-376.
A complete list of publications can be found here.