Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management and Co-Unit Head of the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches MBA and Executive Education courses in leadership, service management, and organizational learning and is the Faculty Chair of the HBS World Bank Group program for new leaders.
Professor Edmondson is widely known for her brilliant work around leadership influences on learning, collaboration, and innovation in teams and organizations. Her innovative field-based approach includes research in contexts ranging from health care delivery and manufacturing to space exploration. One stream of her work has shown effects of leadership behavior and a safe psychological climate on patient safety in hospitals while other streams have investigated management team practices that promote effective decision-making and organizational learning.
Amy Edmondson has published over 50 articles in academic journals, management periodicals, and books. In 2003, the Academy of Management’s Organizational Behavior Division selected Professor Edmondson for the Cummings Award for outstanding achievement in early mid-career, and in 2000 selected her article, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” for its annual award for the best published paper in the field. Her article, “Why Hospitals Don’t Learn from Failures: Organizational and Psychological Dynamics That Inhibit System Change” (with Anita Tucker), received the 2004 Accenture Award for a significant contribution to management practice. She is also the author of dozens of HBS teaching cases, including classic leadership studies on The Cleveland Clinic, General Motors Powertrain, Prudential Financial, Simmons Mattress Company, YUM brands, IDEO product design, and NASA’s failed Columbia mission.
Professor Edmondson is a respected and beloved speaker and consultant to corporations, government entities, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. She typically receives the highest audience evaluations with clients often adding that she changed their thinking and was the best speaker they had ever engaged.
Before her academic career, Edmondson was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked closely with founder and CEO Larry Wilson to design and implement organizational change programs in a variety of Fortune 100 companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book, A Fuller Explanation, clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience.
Edmondson received her PhD in organizational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design, all from Harvard University.
