About the Authors
Danna Greenberg
Danna Greenberg is an associate professor of management at Babson College, where she holds the Mandell Family Term Chair. Her field of expertise is organizational behavior, where she teaches core and elective courses at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels.
Professor Greenberg’s primary area of research focuses on the intersection between organizations, family, and community. Currently, she is involved in two large research studies related to pregnancy in the workplace and the negotiation of flexible work arrangements. She is also actively engaged with research on the scholarship of teaching and learning. She has published more than 30 articles and book chapters, with writings in such journals as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management Education, and Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.
Professor Greenberg serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Learning and Education and the Journal of Organizational Behavior and as an ad hoc reviewer for Human Resources Management. In the community she serves as a consultant and a board member to a number of nonprofits focused on education and the social and emotional development of children.
Kate McKone-Sweet
Kate McKone-Sweet is an associate professor of operations management and the chair of the Technology, Operations, and Information Management Division at Babson. She teaches operations management and supply-chain management courses to both undergraduate and graduate students.
Professor McKone-Sweet’s current research focuses on supply-chain management. The results from her research have been published in numerous academic books and journals, including the Journal of Operations Management, Production Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, and Supply Chain Management Review. She has also published numerous operations management cases and management education papers. She has a strong interest in teaching materials that consider social, environmental, and economic value creation as well as hands-on simulations and exercises that engage students in the learning process.
Professor McKone-Sweet holds BS and MEng degrees from Cornell University and MBA and PhD degrees from the Darden Business School, University of Virginia.
H. James Wilson
H. James Wilson is senior researcher and senior writer at Babson Executive Education. His research appears regularly on Harvard Business Review Online and focuses on knowledge worker performance, strategy, and managerial innovation. In the past year, he has led research projects, on such topics as business model innovation, social media strategy, leadership in uncertain times, and how global firms focus their collaboration strategies. Prior to joining Babson, he led thought leadership and research initiatives at Bain and Company and at Accenture’s Institute for High Performance Business.
Wilson has authored articles for the Wall Street Journal, MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, and numerous other business publications. He is co-author of What’s the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking (Harvard Business Press, 2003), which Fortune magazine described as one of the best business books of the season. He has also edited and contributed to more than 10 other leadership and management books.
Babson Faculty Contributors
Janice Bell
Jan Bell is a professor of accounting and holds the Weiner Family Term Chair for Accounting. Her expertise is in strategic management accounting and financial reporting. She is the co-author of a modular series, Management Accounting: A Strategic Focus, which won the American Accounting Association and the Institute of Management Accountants’ award for innovation in management accounting education. Professor Bell hosted the Global Accounting and Organizational Change Conference held on the Babson campus in July 2010. The theme of the conference was “accounting’s role in promoting social change,” and academics from 16 countries presented research papers.
Richard Bliss
Richard Bliss is an associate professor of finance at Babson College. He teaches at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels, specializing in corporate financial strategy and entrepreneurial finance. Prior to coming to Babson, Dr. Bliss was on the faculty at Indiana University; he also taught extensively in central and eastern Europe, including at the Warsaw School of Economics at Warsaw University and at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. He has developed and delivered customized corporate training programs for Lucent Technologies; the Slovak American Enterprise Fund in Bratislava, Slovakia; the Foundation for the Establishment of the Futures Exchange in Warsaw; and Bright China Management Institute in Beijing.
Tom Davenport
Tom Davenport holds the President’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He has taught at Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and the University of Texas at Austin. He has directed research centers at Accenture, Ernst and Young, McKinsey and Company, and CSC Index.
Professor Davenport has written, co-authored, or edited 13 books, including the first books on business process reengineering, knowledge management, the business use of enterprise systems, and analytical competition. He has written hundreds of articles and columns for such publications as Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, Financial Times, Information Week, CIO, and many others. His most recent book is Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results (Harvard Business Press, 2010). In 2003 he was named one of the top 25 consultants in the world by Consulting magazine, in 2005 he was rated the third most influential business and technology analyst in the world (after Peter Drucker and Tom Friedman), and in 2007 he was the highest-ranking business academic in Ziff-Davis’s list of the 100 most influential people in the IT industry.
Stephen Deets
Stephen Deets is an associate professor of politics at Babson College, where he teaches courses on international and comparative politics, ethnic conflict, Soviet/post-Soviet politics, and society and entrepreneurship in Ghana. He has published more than a dozen articles on various issues concerning post-communist democratization, including electoral reform, minority rights, healthcare, and environmental politics. Currently, he is finishing a book on new models of minority governance across Europe, and he is starting a project on social welfare reform in Lebanon.
Prior to becoming a professor, he spent a decade at the National Academy of Sciences, where he organized cooperative programs with the academies in eastern Europe on a wide variety of topics, including environmental issues, energy efficiency, higher-education reform, and commercializing university research.
Lisa DiCarlo
Lisa DiCarlo is an assistant professor of anthropology in the Entrepreneurship Division at Babson College. Her research areas include transnational migration, consumption and sustainability, entrepreneurship and creative economy, and the intersection of ethnographic research and social entrepreneurship. She is the recipient of two Fulbright Research Fellowships and the author of Migrating to America: Transnational Social Networks and Regional Identity among Turkish Migrants (I.B.Tauris, 2008). Her current projects include social impact assessment of environmental initiatives in Turkey and examining state support of, and public reactions to, Attila Durak’s book Ebru: Reflections of Cultural Diversity in Turkey.
Sebastian K. Fixson
Sebastian Fixson is an assistant professor in the Technology, Operations, and Information Management Division at Babson College. His research, teaching, and consulting focus on innovation management. In recent work he has studied the impact of product and process characteristics on product development performance. His research has appeared in books and journals, including Journal of Operations Management, Research Policy, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Concurrent Engineering, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and he has worked with various corporations, such as Boeing, Ford, General Motors, Harley-Davidson, Alcoa, Raytheon, and others. Dr. Fixson teaches in both the undergraduate and graduate programs at Babson and has also taught at both business and engineering schools, including MIT’s Sloan School of Management, the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering, and Northeastern University’s School of Technological Entrepreneurship.
Mary C. Gentile
Mary C. Gentile, PhD, is a senior research scholar at Babson College; a senior adviser, the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program; and an independent consultant based in Arlington, Massachusetts. Previously, she was a faculty member and the manager of case research at Harvard Business School.
Currently, Dr. Gentile is director of Giving Voice to Values (http://www.GivingVoiceToValues.org), a business curriculum launched by the Aspen Institute and the Yale School of Management, with ongoing support from Babson College. GVV is a pioneering approach to values-driven leadership that has been featured in the Financial Times (twice), Harvard Business Review (twice), strategy+business, Businessweek Online, Change magazine, Business Ethics magazine, and BizEd and is being piloted in more than 100 business schools and organizations globally. She is the author of Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right (Yale University Press, 2010). As an independent consultant (http://www.MaryGentile.com), Dr. Gentile works with corporate, nonprofit, and academic institutions on leadership development, social impact management, ethics, business education, and diversity.
PJ Guinan
Patricia J. Guinan is an associate professor in the Information Technology Management Division and teaches in the Management Division. She teaches multidisciplinary courses in information technology, cross-functional teamwork, organization design, organization change, and management strategy.
She is the author of the international award-winning book Patterns of Excellence for IS Professionals: An Analysis of Communication Behavior (International Center for Information, 1988). Dr. Guinan received two awards for teaching excellence from Boston University, where she taught prior to joining Babson’s faculty. In her executive education career, she has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies on topics related to technology and innovation.
Karen Hebert-Maccaro
Karen Hebert-Maccaro is a visiting assistant professor of management at Babson College. She is also the former associate dean of the F. W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson. In this capacity she served as the chief operating officer of the graduate school, with overall responsibility for admissions, program management, and career development. She has held several positions at Babson since joining the college in 1997, including director of strategic initiatives and assistant dean and administrative director of the MBA programs. Prior to her career in higher education, she worked in the financial services industry.
James Hunt
James Hunt is an associate professor of management at Babson College. He teaches management, talent management, talent development, and leadership at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels. He was a co-founder of Babson’s Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork Program and Babson Executive Education’s Coaching Inside the Organization: The Certification Program for Internal Coaches.
Professor Hunt is the co-author (with Professor Joseph Weintraub, also of Babson) of two books on coaching, the best-selling The Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in Business, second edition (Sage, 2010) and The Coaching Organization: A Strategy for Developing Leaders (Sage, 2006). He is also the author or co-author of numerous articles on developmental coaching and leadership development. He has consulted with numerous corporations and healthcare organizations throughout the United States.
Julian Lange
Julian Lange is the Governor Craig R. Benson Professor of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy at Babson College. He is also founder and president of Chatham Associates, a management consulting firm that assists businesses in building competitive advantage. He was president and CEO of Software Arts Inc., creators of the first electronic spreadsheet (VisiCalc), and was a founding trustee of the Massachusetts Software Council. He has taught in numerous executive education programs and has served as assistant professor of finance at Harvard Business School.
Dr. Lange has been a management consultant to startup, midsized, and Fortune 500 companies and has developed and implemented training programs for companies in computer hardware and software, financial services, and the healthcare industry. His research is concerned with the financing of high-growth entrepreneurial ventures and the challenges and the opportunities for entrepreneurial firms presented by the Internet.
Nan S. Langowitz
Nan Langowitz is a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Babson College and served as the founding director of Babson’s Center for Women’s Leadership, the first comprehensive center dedicated to advancing women in business and entrepreneurship at a leading school of management. Her research is focused on the entrepreneurial leadership of women as well as the challenges and the opportunities that organizations and managers face when developing and leveraging talent.
In the classroom Professor Langowitz teaches professional development and leadership through courses in Babson’s MBA program as well as at Babson Executive Education. She was awarded the Dean’s Teaching Award for the graduate program in 2009. Professor Langowitz has more than 20 years of experience in executive development design and delivery, having worked as a consultant, a researcher, and an educator with organizations ranging from complex global corporations to new startup ventures. She has also served on corporate and nonprofit boards.
Toni Lester
Toni Lester is a professor of law, culture, and society and holds the Kelly Lynch Term Chair at Babson. She chairs the Teaching and Curriculum Development Initiative on Environmental Sustainability at Babson, which promotes the development of faculty teaching and research on sustainability issues. This has included introducing faculty to companies and nonprofit organizations with programs designed to promote greater environmental awareness and approaches to developing best business practices that reduce global warming and the negative impacts of climate change. The initiative also hosts a discussion series featuring cross-disciplinary teams of faculty members who present cutting-edge environmental topics to their peers.
Professor Lester also co-designed and teaches a course with science colleague Vikki Rodgers called Eco-tourism, Biodiversity, and Conservation Policy in Costa Rica, and she designed the first advanced elective at Babson on animal rights, called The Role of Animals in Law, Technology, and Society. She has also served on the steering committee that helped shape a new and exciting cross-disciplinary, collaborative certificate program on environmental sustainability offered by Babson College, Wellesley College, and the Olin College of Engineering, which commences in the fall of 2011.
Heidi Neck
Heidi Neck is the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Babson College. As faculty director of the Babson Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators, she passionately works to improve the pedagogy of entrepreneurship education because new-venture creation is the engine of society. In addition to entrepreneurship education, Professor Neck’s research interests include social entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, and creativity.
Recognized for her contributions to innovative teaching and curriculum developments, she’s received numerous awards, including Babson’s Deans’ Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Gloria Appel Prize for entrepreneurial vitality in academe, the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) Outstanding Entrepreneurship Course, USASBE’s Best Practice Pedagogy for theatrical improvisation, and USASBE’s Best Workshops for Social Entrepreneurship Development and Entrepreneurship Pedagogy.
Salvatore Parise
Salvatore Parise is an associate professor in the Technology, Operations, and Information Management Division at Babson College. His research focuses primarily on using social network analysis to understand innovation, talent management, technology-mediated networks, and worker performance. His other research work focuses on how organizations are using social media applications both internally among employees and externally among customers and business partners.
Professor Parise has worked directly with managers and executives across a wide range of industries, including management consulting, technology, consumer products, healthcare, financial services, petroleum, and government. He teaches multidisciplinary courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels on information systems, knowledge management, and social network analysis. He also teaches executive education on such topics as social media applications and social networks.
Jay Rao
Jay Rao is a professor of operations management at Babson. His research and consulting focus is in the areas of innovation, implementation of innovation programs within firms, and customer experience innovation. He teaches at the graduate and executive education levels. Prior to Babson, Dr. Rao taught at the University of Kentucky and at the University of California, Los Angeles.
His research has appeared in MIT Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Innovative Management, Production and Operations Management Journal, Quality Management in Health Care, and the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly. He has written more than a dozen business cases that range in topics from innovation, customer service, and operations strategy to strategic alignment, supply-chain management, and quality management. He has extensive consulting and executive education experience with complex global organizations as well as new startup ventures on topics related to operations management, innovation, and new-product development.
Vikki L. Rodgers
Vikki L. Rodgers is an assistant professor of environmental science in the Math and Science Division of Babson College. She received her BS degree in biology, ecology, and evolution from the University of New Hampshire in 1999 and her PhD in forest ecology from Boston University in 2007, studying the impacts of invasive plants on soil nutrient cycling and native plant diversity in the forests of New England. Her main areas of interest include ecology, botany, climate change, and biogeochemistry. Professor Rodgers has published articles in the Journal of Ecology, Bioscience, Biogeochemistry, Oecologia, and Canadian Journal of Forest Research.
Keith Rollag
Keith Rollag is an associate professor of management and the chair of the Management Division at Babson College. His teaching focuses on organizational behavior, teamwork, and leadership, and his research focuses primarily on newcomer socialization and training, organizational culture, social networks, and leadership development.
Professor Rollag has published articles in MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, and Journal of Management Education. His research has also been featured in Harvard Management Update, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Wired News, and Boston Business Journal.
In 2005 he received the New Educator Award from the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, a national organization focused on management education. He currently serves on the organization’s board of directors. Prior to obtaining his PhD in industrial engineering from Stanford University, Professor Rollag was a product development manager at Procter and Gamble.
Virginia Soybel
Virginia Earll Soybel teaches financial accounting and financial statement analysis at the F. W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College. She has participated in multiple curriculum design initiatives there, focused primarily on integrating functional disciplines so that students learn how to combine concepts and tools most effectively to solve complex business problems.
Professor Soybel earned her MBA and PhD degrees at Columbia University and her BA degree in American history at Williams College. Before joining the Babson College faculty, she taught at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Professor Soybel’s research focuses on the effects of alternative reporting methods on corporate financial statements and ratios, the time series behavior of financial ratios, and the political process of accounting standard setting.
Robert Turner
Robert Turner, associate dean of MBA Programs, is an associate professor of accounting at Babson College. He previously taught at Boston College, Boston University, and LeMoyne College. His teaching interests are in the area of corporate and nonprofit financial reporting. He has taught financial accounting at the undergraduate and graduate levels and in the Intermediate Management Core. Professor Turner has published numerous articles on financial reporting, primarily in the area of reporting by nonprofit organizations, and on teaching accounting.