Rakesh Khurana

Rakesh Khurana is an professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School. Rakesh received his degrees in organizational behavior from Harvard's Ph.D. program in 1998, A.M (Sociology) from Harvard in 1997, and his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1990. 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, Rakesh accepted an appointment at the Harvard Business School. His research focuses on managerial labor markets.

He has researched and written articles on executive labor markets. He is probably best known for his book, "Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs" and related academic and managerial articles on the pitfalls of charismatic leadership. His work in this area is regularly featured by the general media, and he has also published opinion-editorials in some of these outlets.

In 2007 he published second book "From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession" (Princeton University Press). It addresses development of American business education.

He is known for interviewing GE CEO Jack Welch at a Harvard Business School forum. [http://media.www.harbus.org/media/storage/paper343/news/2005/04/19/News/A.Lively.Discourse.Jack.Welch.Visits.Hbs.Student.Reactions.Mixed-927512.shtml]