Badaracco, Joseph L., Jr.

views updated

Badaracco, Joseph L., Jr.

PERSONAL:

Married Patricia O'Brien; children: four. Education: Attended St. Louis University and Oxford University; Harvard University, M.B.A., D.B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cambridge, MA. Office— Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, John Shad Professor of Business Ethics, housemaster of Currier House at Harvard College; Nomura School of Advanced Management, Tokyo, Japan, faculty chair; has taught in executive programs in the United States, Japan, and many other countries.

WRITINGS:

Loading the Dice: A Five-Country Study of Vinyl Chloride Regulation, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1985.

(With Richard R. Ellsworth) Leadership and the Quest for Integrity, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1989.

The Knowledge Link: How Firms Compete through Strategic Alliances, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1991.

Business Ethics: Roles and Responsibilities, Irwin (Chicago, IL), 1995.

Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1997.

Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 2002.

Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership through Literature, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Socio Economics: A New Synthesis, edited by P. Lawrence and A. Etzioni, M.E. Sharpe, 1991; and How to Run a Company, edited by Dennis C. Carey and Marie-Caroline von Weichs, Crown Business (New York, NY), 2003. Contributor to periodicals, including Harvard Business Review, Regulatory Affairs Focus, Journal of Organizational Excellence, Ivey Business Journal, California Management Review, and Business Ethics: A European Review. Supervising editor, The Handbook of Effective Business Management, HBJ Newsletters (New York, NY), 1980.

SIDELIGHTS:

Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., a noted business ethicist whose interests have focused primarily on leadership and individual decision making, is the author or coauthor of nuhose interests have focused primarily on leadership and individual decision making, is the author or coauthor of numerous books about business and business ethics. Badaracco collaborated, for example, with Richard R. Ellsworth to write Leadership and the Quest for Integrity, which focuses on successful business managers who create exemplary organizations. The authors discuss both popular management techniques and the five most prominent dilemmas that managers may face. "Badaracco and Ellsworth offer the reader practical advice on the difficult job of managing," reported Ron MacInnes in the Canadian Banker. MacInnes added: "While their book tends toward the textbook side of the subject, Leader-ship and the Quest for Integrity is worth the effort to work through it."

In The Knowledge Link: How Firms Compete through Strategic Alliances, Badaracco discusses the changing and increasingly competitive business world that requires successful companies and their managers to leave behind the strict boundaries of their own business environment to form strategic alliances with everyone from suppliers to competitors. The advantage of these alliances, according to the author, is a new and steady influx of ideas and what the author refers to as "embedded knowledge" that can help both managers and their companies prosper. Brian Dumaine pointed out in a Fortune review that The Knowledge Link "is different from the zillions already written on the subject. Its strength, simply put, is its dazzlingly comprehensive approach."

Badaracco is also the author of Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right. In this book, the author presents complex ethical dilemmas faced by business managers and uses wisdom from a wide range of philosophers, including Aristotle, Nietzsche, and William James, to help illustrate how managers should approach the problems ethically. Dale F. Farris, writing in Library Journal, called the book a "solid, penetrating work." InfoWorld contributor Margaret Steen related that she was drawn into the book partly because Badaracco "does not argue that technology has changed the fundamental choices people make." Steen added that instead the author "draws on old lessons to solve the problems of the modern world." J.W. Weiser further observed in Across the Board: "By sketching the process in readily accessible text, rich in literary and philosophic allusions, he illustrates the struggle to justify close calls and difficult choices."

With his Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership through Literature, the author takes an approach similar to the one in Defining Moments. This time, though, the author uses various stories from literature, such as Death of a Salesman and Antigone, to illustrate eight challenges that contain a true test of character for business managers. Booklist contributor Mary Whaley called Questions of Character an excellent book," adding that it "offers important insight for today's leaders and aspiring leaders."

Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing is based on a four-year study by the author involving middle-management leaders. The resulting book focuses on the behind-the-scenes, middle-level leadership within companies by people with high ethical and moral standards who seek to do what is right for their companies, th various case studies that reflect these principles as examples of quiet, ethical leadership. "The cases ring true because they are neither overly dramatic nor clear-cut," wrote Julie Gable in the Information Management Journal. Gable also noted: "The book is not a whistleblower's guide but a careful examination of techniques common to managers who face complex ethical challenges and find ways to work through them successfully." A Publishers Weekly contributor referred to Leading Quietly as "a useful checklist middle-level managers can put to work immediately." T&D contributor Wendy Mack concluded: "Anyone struggling with a dilemma at work, not just people who view themselves as leaders, should read this book."