Rodolphe Durand is the holder of the Joly Family Purposeful Leadership Chair at HEC and the founder and academic director of the Society and Organizations Institute, which he launched in 2009. In recent years, he has been a visiting professor at New York University (Stern Business School), London Business School, and Cambridge University (Judge Business School), and in 2012 was visiting scholar at Harvard Business School. Previously, he chaired the Strategy & Business Policy department (2009-2013), served as the academic director of the MSc in Strategic Management’s (2012-2015). Durand’s primary research interests concern the normative and cognitive dimensions of firms’ performance, and especially the consequences for firms of identifying and coping with the current major environmental and social challenges. Why do organizations supersede rivals? Can new norms, interests, and behaviors (such as Corporate Social Responsibility and inclusive business) bring an advantage to firms and diffuse in markets? Should firms and organizations really innovate or rather conform to established logics to be successful?
For his work on these questions that integrate research streams from sociology, philosophy, and management, Rodolphe received the American Sociological Association’s R. Scott Award in 2005, the European Academy of Management/Imagination Lab Award for Innovative Scholarship in 2010, and was inducted Fellow of the Strategic Management Society in 2014.
Beyond his publications in journals including American Journal of Sociology, Academy of Management Review, and Strategic Management Journal, Durand is also a prolific author of books in which he puts in perspective the decline of ideologies, the evolution of capitalism, and the new foundations of management, notably: Organizational Evolution and Strategic Management (Sage, 2006), The Pirate Organization: Lessons from the Fringed of Capitalism (co-authored with JP Vergne, Harvard Press, 2013), and Organizations, Strategy, and Society: The Orgology of Disorganized Worlds (Routledge, 2014). As an advisor, senior advisor, and non-executive board member, he works with numerous organizations on assessing competitive advantage, and developing and implementing new strategies.
