No organization works if the toilets don't work, but I don't believe that finding solutions to business problems is my job.
On artistic sensibility.
... we sometimes find that such heresies have been the foundation for bold and necessary change, but heresy is usually just crazy. Most daring new ideas are foolish or dangerous and appropriately rejected or ignored. So while it may be true that great geniuses are usually heretics, heretics are rarely great geniuses.
On leadership and the relation between madness, heresy, and genius.
I am not now, nor I have ever been, relevant.
Said each year during the beginning of classes at Stanford.
James Gardner March is Jack Steele Parker professor emeritus at
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
and the
Stanford University School of EducationThe Stanford University School of Education , is one of the seven schools of Stanford University. It is the second-oldest school of education in the United States, after NYU...
, best known for his research on organizations and organizational decision making.
Biography
March is highly respected for his broad theoretical perspective which combined theories from
psychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and other
behavioural sciencesThe term behavioural sciences encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behaviour through controlled and naturalistic observation, and disciplined...
. As a core member of the
Carnegie SchoolThe "Carnegie School" was a so-called "Freshwater" economics intellectual movement in the 1950s and 1960s based at Carnegie Mellon University and led by Herbert Simon, James March, and Richard Cyert....
, he collaborated with the
cognitive psychologistCognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
Herbert SimonHerbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...
on several works on organization theory. March is also known for his seminal work on the behavioural perspective on the
theory of the firmThe theory of the firm consists of a number of economic theories that describe the nature of the firm, company, or corporation, including its existence, behavior, structure, and relationship to the market.-Overview:...
along with
Richard CyertRichard Michael Cyert was an American economist and statistician who served as the sixth President of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.-Early life:...
(1963). In 1972, March worked together with
OlsenJohan P. Olsen is a Norwegian political scientist. He was a professor at the University of Bergen and member of the Norwegian Research Council. He established ARENA in 1994...
and
CohenMichael D. Cohen is the William D. Hamilton Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, Information and Public Policy at The University of Michigan.-Early life and Education:...
on the systemic-anarchic perspective of organizational decision making known as the Garbage Can Model.
March received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and his M.A. and Ph.D. from
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
.
The scope of his academic work is broad, but focused on understanding how decisions happen in individuals, groups, organizations, companies and society. He explores factors that influences decision making, such as risk orientation, leadership and the ambiguity of the present and the past; politics and vested interests by stakeholders; the challenges of giving and receiving advice; the challenges of organizational and individual learning and the challenges of balancing exploration and exploitation in organizations. As being a very reflected educator and teacher himself his research also has been on different aspects of leadership of universities and pedagogical challenges. He has received numerous teaching awards. He interacts and communicates in many different forms as books, articles, interactive seminars, films and poetry.
James March is the father of four children and is a grandfather. Since 1953, he has served on the faculties of the
Carnegie Institute of TechnologyThe Carnegie Institute of Technology , is the name for Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering. It was first called the Carnegie Technical Schools, or Carnegie Tech, when it was founded in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie who intended to build a “first class technical school” in Pittsburgh,...
, the
University of California, IrvineThe University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
, and, since 1970,
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. He has been elected to the National Academy of Science, the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
, and the National Academy of Education, and has been a member of the
National Science BoardThe National Science Board of the United States is composed of 25 members appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate, representing the broad U.S. science and engineering community. The Board establishes the policies of the National Science Foundation within the framework...
. He is a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of SciencesThe Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
and the
Norwegian Academy of Science and LettersThe Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway.-History:The University of Oslo was established in 1811. The idea of a learned society in Christiania surfaced for the first time in 1841. The city of Throndhjem had no university, but had a learned...
.
James March is an honorary doctor at numerous universities and among those: Copenhagen Business School (then: Copenhagen School of Economics), 1978; Swedish School of Economics (Helsinki), 1979; University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1980; University of Bergen, 1980; (Economics), Uppsala University, 1987; (Economics), Helsinki School of Economics, 1991; Dublin City University, 1994; (Economics), Göteborg University, 1998; University of Poitiers, 2001; University of Trento, 2002; University of Southern Denmark, 2003; Budapest University of Economics, 2003; York University (Toronto), 2007; Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC Paris), 2007; Ramon Llull University (Barcelona), 2007; Lappeenranta (Finland) University of Technology, 2008; Stockholm (Sweden) Stockholm School of Economics, 2009
Sources