Stories
Stories
In Memoriam
Topics: Competency and Skills-Experience and ExpertiseEducation-Business EducationEducation-Curriculum and CoursesInnovation-Innovation LeadershipIn recent months, the HBS community has mourned the loss of several prominent and long-serving faculty members whose intellect, character, and humanity shaped generations of students.
Paul Lawrence (MBA 1947, DCS 1950), a renowned sociologist and a member of the HBS faculty for 44 years, died in November at the age of 89. The School’s Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Organizational Behavior, Emeritus, and the author of 26 books, Lawrence was one of the world’s most influential and prolific scholars in the field of organizational behavior.
“Paul, with whom I worked for many years as a colleague, was an extraordinary person in all facets of his life,” said HBS Dean Nitin Nohria. “He was a beloved professor and mentor to generations of students and young scholars. Most important, he was always approachable—even humble—exemplifying in everything he did the true sense of what it means to be a teacher.”
An authority on the management of technology and innovation and an HBS faculty member for 41 years, Richard Rosenbloom (MBA 1956, DBA 1960), the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, passed away in October at the age of 78. His work focused on exploring the strategic uses of technology by corporations and the relationship between technological change and competitive strategy, as well as the social consequences of technological change. Said Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, Emeritus, Tom McCraw, “Dick was a model for how to live both the life of the mind and the human spirit: the rare combination of a tough, critical intellect and an upbeat temperament.”
The George Gund Professor of Commercial Banking, Emeritus, Charles Williams (MBA 1939, DCS 1952), an expert on commercial banking and a master of case-method teaching, died in November at the age of 94. Williams’s influence on American banking in the post–World War II decades is difficult to overstate. Throughout his 39-year teaching career, his inspired students would go forth from his classroom and rise, seemingly inevitably, to the loftiest positions in the industry. As alumni, those former students continued to honor Williams by establishing various funds, awards, and a professorship at the School in his honor. As former HBS Dean John McArthur observed, “As a teacher, researcher, author, wise counsel, and good friend, Charlie had an enormous impact on all of us at HBS.”
The Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, Abraham Zaleznik (MBA 1947, DCS 1951) died in November after 44 years on the HBS faculty. He was 87. Almost single-handedly, Zaleznik created a new understanding among subsequent generations about the nature of leadership in theory and practice.
Despite having no medical degree, Zaleznik was certified—and went on to maintain a 20-year practice—as a clinical psychoanalyst, applying the profession’s insights to business and executives. First with his 1977 Harvard Business Review article “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” and then with his 1989 book, The Managerial Mystique, Zaleznik questioned a longstanding corporate paradigm. His assertion that managers are dedicated to maintaining order and efficiency— while leaders are change agents who act instead of react—sparked a reevaluation of the dynamics of institutions and organizations that continues to this day.
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