President Richard C. Levin has announced the appointment of Harvard scholar Joel M. Podolny as Dean of the Yale School of Management beginning July 1.
Podolny is Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management and Director of Research at the Harvard Business School and Professor of Sociology in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
“Professor Podolny brings scholarly distinction, administrative experience, and an infectious enthusiasm that will serve us well,” Levin said.
Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 2002, Podolny spent 11 years on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was promoted to a tenured position at age thirty and a chaired professorship in 2000. He also served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and was head of the school’s organizational behavior group. He has been the director of the doctoral programs in organizational behavior at both Stanford and Harvard as well as faculty director or chair of numerous executive education programs.
Podolny, an Ohio native, earned his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard. Podolny is best known for applying the sociological concept of status to the study of market competition. He has examined status dynamics in a wide variety of industries, including investment banking, semiconductors, and venture capital. His research on market status has appeared in the leading sociology and organization journals.
His book, “Status Signals: A Sociological Study of Market Competition,” will be published by Princeton University Press this fall. Podolny is also known for work in which he brings a social network perspective to the study of technological evolution and to the study of individual mobility within organizations. Along with economists Garth Saloner and Andrea Shepard, he co–authored the textbook, “Strategic Management.” He has authored or co–authored more than a dozen business cases.
In 2004, Professor Podolny was invited to deliver the Clarendon Lectures in Management at Oxford University’s Said School of Business. He is currently transforming those lectures into a book on meaning and leadership in organizations, to be published by Oxford University Press. Podolny has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Administrative Science Quarterly and Industrial and Corporate Change.
Podolny succeeds Jeffrey Garten, who has served as dean since 1995.
“He leaves as his legacy a vigorous SOM community, a strong and productive faculty, and an engaged and supportive alumni body,” Levin said of Garten. “It is to Jeff’s leadership that the school owes its expanded and strengthened faculty in finance, accounting marketing, and strategy; a sharpened focus in the change of degree from MPPM to MBA; and the creation of the many programs and centers that now help define the school’s agenda in research and education.”
Following a year’s sabbatical, Garten will return to SOM as the Juan Trippe Professor in the Practice of International Trade, Finance, and Business.
