Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Jay W. Lorsch Dies at 93
|
BOSTON—Jay W. Lorsch, the Louis E. Kirstein Professor of Human Relations, Emeritus at Harvard Business School (HBS) and a renowned expert on corporate boards who also did seminal early work on the relationship between environment and the organization, passed away on August 5 at the age of 93. In a distinguished career that spanned over five decades, Lorsch influenced generations of students and practitioners through his teaching and scholarship that contributed significantly to the shape of modern corporate governance and the development of new approaches to understanding organizational behavior.  Lorsch’s research, published in more than a dozen books and countless articles, explored the human aspects of management—including boards of directors, governance, leadership, compensation, and organizational behavior. He also examined organizational change, organization design, and the relationship between the structural characteristics of complex organizations and the technical, market, and other conditions of their immediate environment. Lorsch earned his DBA at Harvard, where he was deeply influenced by the late HBS Professor Paul Lawrence, one of the originators of the field of organizations as a domain of study. After Lorsch joined the HBS faculty in 1964, the two collaborated on several important books, most notably Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration. In that seminal work, named the best management book of 1967 by the Academy of Management, the authors challenged conventional wisdom by demonstrating that there is no single recipe for organizational effectiveness. Lorsch’s continued research on organization and environment – his “intellectual roots” – resulted in several more books, including Organizations and Their Members: A Contingency Theory (1974). It also led him to think about the connection between corporate boards and organization design. In 1989, he initiated a major survey of board members, which led to the publication of Pawns or Potentiates. This distinctive examination of "the reality of America's corporate boards," as the book was subtitled, provides a masterful overview of the limited roles of outside directors. Following that landmark work, he wrote extensively about boards of directors, including a spate of articles and Back to the Drawing Board: Designing Corporate Boards for a Complex World, published in 2003. Lorsch also served as editor of The Future of Boards: Meeting the Governance Challenges of the Twenty-First Century (2012), a collection of essays by top-level governance thinkers and practitioners that examined the state of boards, what the future might bring, and what would need to change as a result. His final book, How the Harvard Business School Changed the Way We View Organizations, draws on his more than fifty-year career to make the case for solving real-world, real-time problems through the practices of listening, observing, and testing. “Jay was a giant in the field of organizational behavior and corporate governance,” said former HBS dean Nitin Nohria, George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. “His contributions to contingency theory and the role of boards of directors have profoundly shaped our scholarship, teaching, and practice. We will miss him deeply.” During Lorsch’s tenure at HBS, he served as Senior Associate Dean and Director of Research, Senior Associate Dean and Chair of Executive Education, Chair of the Doctoral Programs, Chair of the Advanced Management Program, and Unit Head for Organizational Behavior. He taught across the School’s educational programs, including Corporate Governance and Boards of Directors in the MBA Program, Making Corporate Boards More Effective and Leading Professional Service Firms in Executive Education, and Management and Markets in the Doctoral Programs. “Jay Lorsch’s commitment to Harvard Business School—the Organizational Behavior unit, Doctoral students, junior faculty colleagues, and more—was deep and constant,” said HBS Dean Srikant Datar. “As a scholar, his insights defined and shaped our understanding of organizations, with immeasurable impact. As a teacher, he inspired and challenged his students. He was a truly remarkable colleague.” Lorsch remained active at HBS until his retirement in 2022. He mentored generations of HBS faculty members. "Jay Lorsch sparked deep introspection and pushed relentlessly for purpose. A single conversation with him could become a soul-searching journey,” said Tsedal Neely, Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program. “He saw potential in us before we could see it ourselves, urging us to think boldly while staying rooted in the realities of lived experience. His scholarship reshaped how we understand organizations, leadership, and human relationships at work. His care was action, his friendship unwavering, and his influence on our thinking, our work, and our lives was profound and enduring." The recipient of many honors, Lorsch was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected to Directorship magazine's Corporate Governance Hall of Fame in 2009 for “outstanding achievements that have had an everlasting influence over corporate governance and the boardroom community.” Lorsch brought a unique perspective to his intellectual enterprises, having served on the boards of public companies on both sides of the Atlantic, including Benckiser NV (now Reckitt Benckiser), Blasland Bouck & Lee Inc., Brunswick Corporation, Sandy Corporation, and CA, Inc. He was on the Advisory Board of U.S. Foodservice and also was a member of the Board of Directors of New Sector Alliance, as well as The Antioch Review National Advisory Board. He served on the Board of Trustees of Antioch College and Cambridge at Home, as well as the Global Advisory Board of the Women's Tennis Association. |
Mark Cautela
mcautela+hbs.edu
617-495-5143
About Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School, located on a 40-acre campus in Boston, was founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University. It is among the world's most trusted sources of management education and thought leadership. For more than a century, the School's faculty has combined a passion for teaching with rigorous research conducted alongside practitioners at world-leading organizations to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Through a dynamic ecosystem of research, learning, and entrepreneurship that includes MBA, Doctoral, Executive Education, and Online programs, as well as numerous initiatives, centers, institutes, and labs, Harvard Business School fosters bold new ideas and collaborative learning networks that shape the future of business.