Harvard prof addresses leadership in changing business environment

Lynn S. Paine, the John G. McLean Professor and senior associate dean for faculty development at Harvard Business School, discussed the changing global environment and what it means for the next generation of business leaders in a special presentation at the A. B. Freeman School of Business on Thursday, March 20. Paine’s talk, “Leadership and the Future of Capitalism: Getting Serious about Sustainability,” was part of the Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series.

“Lynn’s insights into what business leaders must do to address emerging political and economic challenges was both timely and fascinating," said Ira Solomon, dean of the Freeman School. “It was truly a pleasure to give our students the chance to interact with a scholar of Lynn’s stature.”

Paine is a member and former chair of the General Management unit at Harvard and co-founded the school’s required course on Leadership and Corporate Accountability. She currently co-chairs the Senior Executive Program for China. Her research focuses on the leadership and governance of companies that meld high ethical standards with outstanding financial results. Her publications, including more than 200 case studies, have appeared in a variety of books, periodicals and scholarly journals. Paine is most recently co-author of Capitalism at Risk: Rethinking the Role of Business with HBS colleagues Joe Bower and Dutch Leonard.

Paine’s other books include Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance (McGraw-Hill 2003) and Leadership, Ethics, and Organizational Integrity (McGraw-Hill 1998). Her most recent articles include A Global Leader’s Guide to Managing Business Conduct (with Rohit Deshpandé and Joshua Margolis), Global Capitalism at Risk: What Are You Doing About It? (with Joe Bower and Dutch Leonard), and The China Rules: A Practical Guide for CEOs Managing Multinational Corporations in the People’s Republic—all published in the Harvard Business Review.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa and a summa cum laude graduate of Smith College, Paine holds a doctorate in moral philosophy from Oxford University and a law degree from the Harvard Law School. Before joining the Harvard faculty in 1990, she taught at Georgetown University Business School and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business as well as National Cheng Chi University in Taiwan.