Rakesh Khurana, Professor of Sociology and Organizational Behavior at Harvard University, and Faculty Dean of Cabot House, became dean of Harvard College on July 1, 2014.
A distinguished scholar of organizational behavior and leadership, an award-winning teacher, and a Faculty Dean, Khurana has been deeply involved in undergraduate issues throughout his time at Harvard, having served on a number of important policy committees.
Khurana’s research uses a sociological perspective to focus on the processes by which elites and leaders are selected and developed. He has written extensively about the CEO labor market and business education. In 2000, Khurana was appointed to the HBS faculty, and was named the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership and Development in 2008. He has co-edited “The Handbook for Leadership Theory and Practice” (2010) and “The Handbook for Teaching Leadership” (2012), seminal texts on leadership theory and pedagogical practice. “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession” (2007) received the American Sociological Association’s Max Weber Book Award.
He is currently working on the role of globalization and its impact on American business culture. Khurana received his BS from Cornell University, and began graduate studies at Harvard in 1993, earning his PhD in 1998 through a joint program between Harvard Business School (HBS) and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). He taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1998 and 2000. Prior to graduate school, he worked as a founding team member of Cambridge Technology Partners.
