HENDERSON: After two decades at MIT, she brings her interest in “green business” to HBS.

Photo by Russ Campbell

Major technological shifts always pose a challenge to organizations, and Rebecca Henderson (MBA ’85, PhDBE ’88) has spent the last two decades exploring why some firms barely survive those changes, while others more than thrive. Now she’s bringing that exper-tise to bear on a new shift in business: the “greening” of the global economy.

After 21 years as a management professor at MIT’s Sloan School, Henderson arrived on the HBS campus this fall to take on her new role as the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management, which, she says, is not incongruous to what she’s been researching and teaching for years.

“To me, the move into the environment seems like a relatively smooth one,” she says. “If we think about removing something like 80 percent of the carbon from the economy in fifty years, that’s an enormous technological transition. So the questions of how firms can organize themselves to do it, and what kinds of governance mechanisms will support and encourage them to do that, seem to me a natural extension of what I’ve been working on. It’s an organizational and cultural shift, which all technological shifts are.”

During the winter term, Henderson will coteach the first-year course Leadership and Corporate Account-ability, which she says has broad relevance to her work.

“LCA really looks at the responsibilities of managers — the legal, ethical, economic, and institutional responsibilities,” she explains. “So to say to students ‘We have a carbon crisis, what can managers do about it?’ will be interesting.”

“I’m delighted to be at Harvard. There’s a great deal of interest in these issues, and the question of what students can do as future business leaders is absolutely essential.”

Along with Henderson, eight others joined the HBS faculty this year.

José Alvarez, senior lecturer in the Marketing unit, was a top executive with Ahold, a Dutch supermarket company, and Stop & Shop/Giant-Landover, its U.S. subsidiary. Alvarez has almost twenty years of leadership experience in the supermarket industry and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Bruce Harreld (MBA ’75) is applying his considerable experience as a strategic and marketing leader at IBM and as a speaker and writer on corporate transformation to his new role as a senior lecturer in entrepreneurial management and strategy.

Anette Mikes came to HBS in 2007 as a postdoctoral fellow after earning her Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. She’s now an assistant professor in the Accounting & Management unit with a focus on risk management.

Senior lecturer Juan Arena de la Mora (AMP 156, 1999), who also joins the Accounting & Management unit, came to HBS after 37 years at Bankinter, one of Spain’s most successful banks and noted for its innovations in technology and online banking. Arena, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering, was widely acclaimed for his leadership role (he became CEO in 1985) in getting the bank online.

With a deep interest in information technologies and how organizations differ in management practices and structure, Assistant Professor Raffaella Sadun joins the Strategy unit. She earned a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics.

Assistant Professor Albert Sheen will draw on his expertise in corporate finance to teach the MBA required course Finance I. A former McKinsey management consultant and Beecher analyst, Sheen holds a Ph.D. in finance from UCLA.

Assistant Professor Eugene Soltes arrived at HBS this year after earning his Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Chicago. He’ll tap his interests in corporate accountability and disclosure to help him teach the first-year required course Financial Reporting and Control.

Assistant Professor Thales Teixeira, a member of the Marketing unit, received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Michigan last spring. His continuing research focuses on maximizing television and Internet video advertising.

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