Rakesh Khurana
2011 Ranking: #41
Rakesh Khurana is the Marvin Bower professor of leadership development at the Harvard Business School. Khurana's main areas of interest are concerned with macro-organizational theory and the dynamics of executive labor markets, and he is particularly well known for his work on leadership and CEOs.
The author and editor of four books, and many articles on the executive labor markets and management education, Khurana is probably best known for Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs (2002) and his related academic and managerial articles on the problems associated with charismatic leadership.
His second book published in 2007 From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession addresses the development of American business education and the profession of management raised fundamental questions about the effectiveness of business education and the types of business leaders and managers they have been educating. Khurana is also the co-author with Nitin Nohria, now Dean of Harvard Business School, of the management oath that puts primacy for creating value for society as the purpose of management.
