Honorary
Doctorates |
Rosabeth Moss Kanter receives Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Leeds Metropolitan University
View images of Professor Rosabeth Kanter and Peter Blackburn receiving their Honorary Awards
Rosabeth
Moss Kanter, the Ernest L Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration
at Harvard Business School, received an
Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Leeds Metropolitan
University on Tuesday 12 July at 5pm.
Professor Kanter said: "Congratulations to the new graduates of your and now my university. I’m very happy to be with you at your commencement [graduation]. My heart is saddened by events in London, we want to create a better world that all you graduates today will benefit from. You are living in a world that is troubled, and with numerous challenges including how to sustain the life we’ve come to enjoy. I don’t know of any generation that hasn’t faced troubles. The big difference is identifying the winners and losers. The secret of winning is trying not to lose twice in a row and learn to be resilient.
Accountability comes from our own internal sense, looking at what it takes to win and succeed. Don’t give up, instead say what can I do about it to make a difference. Winners believe that there is always a solution. My baseball team, the Boston Redsox, were said to be cursed for 80 years, when they won the world series they finally understood the difference between knowing there’s a team behind you to support you. I wish you a life of winning streaks that are full of confidence."
Rosabeth Moss Kanter advises major corporations and governments worldwide and is the author or co-author of sixteen books, including her newest book, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End and Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow. Other award-winning bestsellers include Men & Women of the Corporation, The Change Masters, When Giants Learn to Dance, World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the Frontiers of Management. In 2001 she received the Academy of Management’s Distinguished Career Award, its highest award for scholarly contributions, for her impact on management thought, and in 2002 she received the World Teleport Association’s Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year Award.
Professor Kanter’s current work focuses on leadership of turnarounds – how winning streaks and losing streaks begin and end – which she is examining in businesses across a variety of industries, major league sports, inner-city schools, and countries whose economic fortunes have changed. She is also interested in the development of new leadership for the digital age – how to guide the transformation of large corporations, small and mid-sized businesses, health care, government, and education, as they incorporate new technology, create new kinds of alliances and partnerships, work across boundaries and borders, respond to accountability demands, and take on new social responsibilities.
She served as a senior adviser to IBM’s award-winning Reinventing Education initiative. In 1997-1998 she conceived and led the Business Leadership in the Social Sector project at Harvard Business School which engaged executives, Senators and Governors in dialogue and stood as a call to action about public-private partnerships for change. From 1989-1992 she also served as Editor of the Harvard Business Review, which was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1991. She joined the Harvard Business School in 1986 from Yale University, where she held a tenured professorship from 1977 to 1986; previously, she was a Fellow in Law and Social Science at Harvard Law School.
Professor Kanter has received many academic and leadership awards, and has been named in lists of the “50 most influential business thinkers in the world” (ranked in the top ten), the “100 most important women in America” and the “50 most powerful women in the world.”
Her public service activities span local and global interests. She has been a judge for the Ron Brown Award for Corporate Leadership given at the White House, a member of the Board of Overseers for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. She is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and has served on the United States Secretary of Labor’s Committee on Skills Gap of the Twenty-First Century Work Force Council and the Massachusetts Governor’s Economic Council. She led the effort to establish a Year 2000 Commission for legacy projects for Boston, and currently serves on the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority Board. She has been a corporate and pension fund director and sits on many civic and non-profit boards.
She co-founded Goodmeasure Inc., a consulting group, and also serves as a director or adviser for other companies. Her consulting clients include some of the world’s most prominent companies, and she has delivered keynote addresses for major events in the United States and many other countries, sharing the platform with Prime Ministers and Presidents.
