Know Rakesh Khurana, the new Dean of Harvard College

New Delhi: Indian origin professor Rakesh Khurana has been appointed dean of the Harvard College. Presently Khurana is serving as Bower professor of leadership development at Harvard Business School (HBS) and master of Cabot House since 2010. Kurana will take over as dean from July 1. The news of Khurana's appointment was announced by Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) dean Michael D. Smith yesterday. in an e-mail to the community. So who is Rakesh Khurana? Born on November 22, 1967, Rakesh Khurana is an American organizational theorist, and the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School. He is also a professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the co-Master of Cabot House at Harvard University along with his wife, Stephanie. Khurana received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1990, his A.M (Sociology) from Harvard in 1997 and his PhD in organizational behavior from Harvard's Ph.D. program in 1998. He worked for three years as a founding team member of Cambridge Technology Partners before starting graduate school in 1994. After finishing his doctorate, Rakesh taught at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In 2000, Khurana accepted an appointment at the Harvard Business School. His research focuses on managerial labor markets and the processes by which elites are selected and socialized. The author and editor of four books and many articles, 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, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession (2007) raised fundamental questions about the effectiveness of business education. The book received the Max Weber prize from the American Sociological Association's Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section. It also was the Winner of the 2009 Gold Medal Axiom Business Book Award in Career, Jenkins Group, Inc. and the Winner of the 2007 Best Professional/Scholarly Publishing Book in Business, Finance and Management, Association of American Publishers and the Finalist for the George R. Terry Award from the Academy of Management. He is known for interviewing GE CEO Jack Welch at a Harvard Business School forum. He is working with the World Economic Forum and the Aspen Institute to create a business oath, like the MBA Oath, that might be used globally. In an Harvard Business Review piece published in October 2008, Khurana and Nohria linked the connection between professionalism of a profession and the profession's ability to deliver value to society. Nohria and Khurana also are the co-editors of the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice (2010), and the The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing and Being, (2011), published by Harvard Business School Press.