Faculty & Research
Anthony Mayo

Anthony Mayo

C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator
Thomas S. Murphy Senior Lecturer of Business Administration

C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator
Thomas S. Murphy Senior Lecturer of Business Administration

Organizational Behavior
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Anthony Mayo
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Tony Mayo is the Thomas S. Murphy Senior Lecturer of Business Administration and C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator in the Organizational Behavior Unit of Harvard Business School (HBS).  He currently teaches Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Authentic Leader Development in the MBA Program.  He recently co-created the HBS Online course, Leadership Principles, designed to help new and aspiring leaders unleash the potential in themselves and others. Previously, he was the course head of FIELD, Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development, a required experiential, field-based course in the first year of the MBA Program focused on leadership, globalization, and integration.  Prior to his work on FIELD, he co-created and taught the elective course, “Great Business Leaders:  The Importance of Contextual Intelligence.”  In addition, Tony teaches extensively in leadership-based executive education programs

He is a co-editor of the edited volume, Race, Work, and Leadership:  New Perspectives on the Black Experience (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019) for which he also co-authored three chapters including “Pathways to Leadership:  Black Graduates of Harvard Business School” (see www.raceworkleadership.com).   Race, Work and Leadership received the Gold Medal Award for the best book on Women and Minorities in Business by Axiom in 2020.  In addition, Tony co-authored the textbook Management, which features a new approach for teaching the core principles of management course to undergraduate students based on the integration and dynamic interaction of strategic management, organizational design, and individual leadership.  His previous co-authored works include In Their Time:  The Greatest Business Leaders of the 20th Century, which has been translated into 6 languages, Paths to Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership, and Entrepreneurs, Managers and Leaders:  What the Airline Industry Can Teach Us About Leadership.  These three books were derived from the development of the Great American Business Leaders database that Dean Nitin Nohria and Tony created (see https://www.hbs.edu/leadership/Pages/default.aspx).

Tony served as the Director of the Leadership Initiative from 2002 to 2018, and in this capacity, he oversaw several comprehensive research projects and managed a number of executive education programs.  He was a co-creator of the High Potentials Leadership, Leadership for Senior Executives, Maximizing Your Leadership Potential, and Leadership Best Practices programs and has been a principal contributor to a number of custom leadership development initiatives.  He currently serves at the Faculty Chair of the Leadership for Senior Executives program.  As part of his work in executive education, he launched the executive coaching component for the Program for Leadership Development.

Prior to his current role, Tony pursued a career in database marketing where he held senior general management positions at advertising agency - Hill Holliday, database management firm - Epsilon, and full-service direct marketing company - DIMAC Marketing Corporation.  At Epsilon, he served as Acting Chief Executive Officer where he had full responsibility for the delivery and management of strategic and database marketing services for Fortune 1000 companies and national not-for-profit organizations.  He also held senior management positions in Epsilon's sales and account management departments. 

Tony completed his MBA from Harvard Business School and received his Bachelor's Degree, summa cum laude, from Boston College.

Featured Work
Race, Work, and Leadership
New Perspectives on the Black Experience

Race, Work, and Leadership is a rare and important compilation of essays that examines how race matters in people’s experience of work and leadership. What does it mean to be black in corporate America today? How are racial dynamics in organizations changing? How do we build inclusive organizations?

Inspired by and developed in conjunction with the research and programming for Harvard Business School’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the HBS African American Student Union, this groundbreaking book shines new light on these and other timely questions and illuminates the present-day dynamics of race in the workplace. Contributions from top scholars, researchers, and practitioners in leadership, organizational behavior, psychology, sociology, and education test the relevance of long-held assumptions and reconsider the research approaches and interventions needed to understand and advance African Americans in work settings and leadership roles.  

At a time when there are fewer African American men and women in corporate leadership roles, Race, Work, and Leadership will stimulate new scholarship and dialogue on the organizational and leadership challenges of African Americans and become the indispensable reference for anyone committed to understanding, studying, and acting on the challenges facing leaders who are building inclusive organizations. 

Management
An Integrated Approach
The goal of MANAGEMENT: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH, 2nd Edition, is to prepare students for leadership positions in 21st century companies by addressing the many facets involved in answering one key question: How are leaders successfully managing competitive companies in the 21st century? Today's constantly changing business environment presents challenges and opportunities that are more dynamic and complex than ever before, requiring a clear understanding of the interactive nature of strategy, organizational design, and leadership. MANAGEMENT: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH, is the only introductory management text on the market to address this challenge by taking an integrated and holistic approach to management, as opposed to a functional approach, making it more relevant to how today's organizations run. By demonstrating the interconnectivity among the three key pillars of management, students see how decisions impact strategic choices, organizational alignment, and leadership approaches, ultimately leading to the overall performance of the company.
In Their Time
The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century
Great business leaders possess more than celebrated traits like charisma and an appetite for risk. They have "contextual intelligence"—a profound ability to understand the Zeitgeist of their times and harness it to create successful organizations. Based on a comprehensive Harvard Business School Leadership Initiative study, Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria present a fascinating collection of stories of the 20th century's greatest leaders, from unsung heroes to legends like Sam Walton and Bill Gates. The book identifies three distinct paths these individuals followed to greatness: entrepreneurial innovation, savvy management, and transformational leadership. Through engaging stories of leaders in each category, the authors show how, by "reading" the context they operated in and embracing the opportunities their times presented, these individuals created, grew, or revitalized outstanding American enterprises. A canon of leadership success from the last century, In Their Time reveals insights for contemporary leaders hoping to build lasting legacies.
Paths to Power
How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership
Who made it to the top of Corporate America in the twentieth century? And what do their experiences mean for the next generation of business leaders? In Paths to Power, Anthony J. Mayo, Nitin Nohria, and Laura G. Singleton answer these questions. The authors explore access to business leadership opportunities - showing how a small group of "insiders" possess advantages that facilitate a smooth journey to the top while a larger group of "outsiders" face disadvantages that make their path to leadership positions more difficult.Yet throughout the history of American business, the composition of insiders and outsiders has shifted. Examining data on leader birthplaces, religious affiliation, education, socioeconomic status, race, and gender, Paths to Power explains how the demographics of leadership have changed over the 20th century and how they're changing now. Further, they discuss the mechanisms of advancement for insiders and outsiders, and show how these mechanisms have also evolved. Though white men still hold most power positions in business, the authors assert that the gates of access aren't as static as they seem.
Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Leaders
What the Airline Industry Can Teach Us About Leadership

Entrepreneurs, Managers and Leaders examines the role that business leaders play in shaping industries and how evolving industries shape leaders.  This co-evolutionary process of leadership and industry development is told through the dynamic story of the growth of the American airline industry.  Entrepreneurs, who explored a variety of airline concepts in search of a viable business model, define the industry's early history.  As the industry evolved, a new breed of managers emerged who built a dominant business model that enabled their companies to grow dramatically.  Later, after the industry matured, leaders took center-stage as agents of change to develop new business models in an effort to rebuild and revitalize the industry. The lessons to be drawn from the experience of the airlines and their executives will be of interest to business leaders in industries across a wide spectrum. Despite the indelible mark that many individuals have made on their industry, writers on industry evolution-concerning the airlines or any other industry-have rarely factored in leadership as a way of explaining or understanding that evolution. Entrepreneurs, Managers and Leaders seeks to paint a fuller picture of the interdependent relationship between the actions of leaders, the context of their times, and the evolution of an industry.

 

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Awards & Honors
Received the 2011 Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching.
Winner of the 2006–2007 Robert F. Greenhill Award for Outstanding Service to the HBS Community.
Winner of the 2020 Axiom Business Book Award Gold Medal in the Women and Minorities in Business category for Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019) with Laura Morgan Roberts and David A. Thomas.
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