ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries brings a different view to the muchstudied subjects of leadership and the dynamics of individual and organizational change. Applying his knowledge and experience of economics (Econ. Drs., University of Amsterdam), management (ITP, MBA, and DBA, Harvard Business School), and psychoanalysis (member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association), Kets de Vries scrutinizes the interface between international management, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and dynamic psychiatry. His specific areas of interest are leadership, career dynamics, executive stress, entrepreneurship, family business, succession planning, cross-cultural management, teambuilding, coaching, and the dynamics of corporate transformation and change.

A clinical professor of leadership development, he holds the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chair of Leadership Development at INSEAD, France and Singapore, and is director of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Center. In addition, he is program director of INSEAD’s top-management seminar, “The Challenge of Leadership: Creating Reflective Leaders” and scientific director of the program “Consulting and Coaching for Change.” In addition to having received the International Leadership Association’s prestigious annual leadership scholar award for his “contribution to the classroom and the boardroom,” he has also five times received INSEAD’s distinguished teacher award. He has also held professorships at McGill University, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (Montreal), and the Harvard Business School, and he has lectured at management institutions around the world. He is a founding member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations. The Financial Times, Le Capital, Wirtschaftswoche, and The Economist have judged Manfred Kets de Vries among the world’s top 50 management thinkers and among the top 100 most influential people in human resource management.

Kets de Vries is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than twenty books, including Power and the Corporate Mind (1975, new edition 1985, with Abraham Zaleznik), Organizational Paradoxes: Clinical Approaches to Management (1980, new edition 1994), The Irrational Executive: Psychoanalytic Explorations in Management (1984, editor), The Neurotic Organization: Diagnosing and Changing CounterProductive Styles of Management (1984, new edition 1990, with Danny Miller), Unstable at the Top (1988, with Danny Miller), Prisoners of Leadership (1989), Handbook of Character Studies (1991, with Sidney Perzow), Organizations on the Couch (1991), Leaders, Fools and Impostors (1993), the prize-winning Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane: Essays on Organizations and Leadership (1995, the Critics’ Choice Award 1995-96), Family Business: Human Dilemmas in the Family Firm (1996), The New Global Leaders: Percy Barnevik, Richard Branson, and David Simon (1999, with Elizabeth Florent-Treacy), Struggling with the Demon: Perspectives on Individual and Organizational Irrationality (2001), The Leadership Mystique (2001, new edition 2006), The Happiness Equation (2002), The Global Executive Leadership Inventory (2003), The New Russian Business Leaders (2004), Are Leaders Born or Are They Made? The Case of Alexander the Great (2004) and Lessons on Leadership by Terror: Finding Shaka Zulu in the Attic (2004). He has also developed a number of multi-rater feedback instruments: Global Executive Leadership Inventory (2005), The Personality Audit (in press) and The Leadership Archetype Questionnaire.

In addition, Kets de Vries has published over 250 scientific papers as chapters in books and as articles in such journals as Behavioral Science, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Administration & Society, Organizational Dynamics, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Forecasting, California Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Psychoanalytic Review, Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, European Management Journal, International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, Harper’s, and Psychology Today. He has also written over 150 case studies, including eight that received the Best Case of the Year award. He is a regular writer for a number of magazines. His work has been featured in such publications as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Business Week, the Economist, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune. His books and articles have been translated into over twenty-five languages. He is a member of seventeen editorial boards. He is one of the few Europeans who have been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management.

Kets de Vries is a consultant on organizational design/transformation and strategic human resource management to leading US, Canadian, European, African, and Asian companies. As a global consultant in executive development, he has worked with clients such as ABB, Aegon, Air Liquide, Alcan, Alcatel, Accenture, Bain Consulting, Bang & Olufsen, Bonnier, BP, Ericsson, GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, HypoVereinsbank, Investec, KPMG, Lego, Lufthansa, Lundbeck, McKinsey, Novartis, Nokia, Novo-Nordisk, Rank Xerox, Shell, SHV, SABMiller, Standard Bank of South Africa, Unilever, and Volvo Car Corporation. As an educator and consultant, he has worked in more than forty countries.

The Dutch government made Kets de Vries an officer in the Order of Oranje Nassau in 1997. He was the first fly fisherman in Outer Mongolia and is a member of New York’s Explorers Club. In his spare time he can be found in the rainforests or savannas of Central Africa, in the Siberian taiga, in the Pamir mountains, in Arnhemland or within the Arctic Circle.