IITian named Harvard dean

Nitin Nohria, a specialist in leadership and ethics, was named dean of Harvard Business School and charged with transforming management education after financial catastrophes and scandals shook public faith in business.

Nohria (48) a professor of management at the school,u00a0 will begin his tenure in June. Nohria, who will be the 10th dean of the business school, said that he will emphasise responsibility and the positive role companies can play in society.

"Business itself is at an inflection point. Society's trust in business has certainly been shaken," Nohria said, who has taught in Harvard since 1988u00a0 "And as a result some of society's trust in business education has been shaken."

Nohria earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology-Powaiu00a0 in 1984, and his Ph.D in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, also in Cambridge, in 1988. He has co-written 12 books, most recently the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice which he wrote with Rakesh Khurana, a colleague at the school.

Harvard was hurt as its endowment, the world's biggest academic fund, lost about one-third of its value in the economy.

Business Image

Students are "very concerned about the image of business and its place in American life and the world in general," Faust said.

Harvard has a tradition of selecting deans from within the faculty. Nohria, the Richard P. Chapman professor of business administration and a senior associate dean and director of faculty development at the business school, is a naturalized U.S. citizen, born in Mumbai. He is married and has two daughters.

Nohria earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1984, and his Ph.D. in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, also in Cambridge, in 1988. He has co-written 12 books, most recently the "Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice" (Harvard Business School Press, 2010), which he wrote with Rakesh Khurana, a colleague at the school.

Professional Oath

Nohria was one of the earliest management professors to suggest that students take a professional oath of conduct. He first began thinking about it during a year of teaching at the London Business School, in 1996, he said in the interview. His sister, a physician, had taken the Hippocratic Oath, and he asked students what a similar code for managers would contain.

Nohria continued to build this question into his courses after returning to Harvard. In an October 2008 Harvard Business Review article, Nohria and Khurana said that managers had "lost legitimacy" during the past decade, which saw the collapse of Enron and widespread losses in technology stocks. Management needed a code of ethics, similar to those used in law and medicine, to become a "true profession," Nohria and Khurana said.

"Through these codes, professional institutions forge an implicit social contract with other members of society: Trust us to control and exercise jurisdiction over this important occupational category," Nohria and Khurana wrote.

Recovering Honor

Leadership in business is built on trust that comes from the benefits of trade, along with an expectation of ethical behavior, Nohria said in the interview. While that leadership bond with employees and the public has been lost as business scandals and bubbles have multiplied, it can be reestablished, he said.

"Throughout history, there has been this notion of the honorable business person," he said. "Business people have taken pride that they can do business on a handshake. I don't know where we lost that, and I don't see why it isn't recoverable. I still think business can be done with honor."

Business students need new approaches to instruction to promote ethical behavior and restore the financial world's relationship with the public, he said. Nohria promised new approaches to business education that he said would complement the so-called case method, pioneered by Harvard, that has spread around the world. In case studies, students immerse themselves in facts that were faced by decision makers and reach their own conclusions.

The school is experimenting with immersion programs and small learning teams, and looking to add more instruction initiatives, Nohria said.

'Remaking' Education

"What we have to do as a school is usher in what I think of as a new century of innovation, to really remake business education," Nohria said. "To restore confidence that we can continue to educate leaders with the competence and character to fulfill their positions of power and privilege."

The business school shouldn't rest because of the success of the case method, Nohria said.

"We're in an period of very active experimentation with other approaches, that we have think could have as much power and be important complements to the case method," he said. "The case method will always be part of our distinctive identity. My hope is that in the years to come we will develop another method that will be a complement to the case method that will have just as much power and be embraced just as widely."