Gretchen M. Spreitzer's research focuses on employee empowerment and leadership development, particularly within a context of organizational change and decline. Her most recent work is looking at positive deviance and how organizations enable employees to flourish. This work fits within a larger effort at Michigan's Business School to develop a Scholarship of Positive Organizing that is dedicated to understanding how work organizations contribute to the development of human strengths and virtues.

She is the co-author of three books, The Leader's Change Handbook: An Essential Guide to Setting Direction and Taking Action (1999) with Jay Conger and Edward Lawler, The Future of Leadership: Speaking to the Next Generation (2001) with Warren Bennis and Thomas Cummings, and A Company of Leaders: Five Disciplines for Unleashing the Power in Your Workforce (2001) with Robert Quinn.