Yale Sociology Prof Picked for B-School Entrepreneur Chair

A Yale professor of sociology has been picked to fill a new Business School chair devoted to entrepreneurship, officials said yesterday.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, 42, will become the first Class of 1960 Professor of Business Administration, a chair endowed with a gift of $1.75 million by alumni last October. Kanter, who with her husband runs Good-measure, Inc., a Cambridge management consulting firm, will join the faculty July 1.

Kanter will be the second woman among the school's 86 senior faculty. She is known for her two books, "Men and Women of the Corporation" and "The Change Masters: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the American Corporation."

While many faculty members at the Business School focus on entrepreneurship in "start-up companies," Kanter is more interested in large companies working to develop new ideas and technologies, said B-School spokesman James E. Aisner.

"I think entrepreneurship is not just limited to starting a new business. It is the organizing to pursue opportunity instead of managing the resources you currently control," said Howard H. Stevenson, Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration, who teaches a course called "Entreprenuerial Management."

Stevenson said Kanter has been devoted to studying innovation within well-established organizations and was the top choice for the newly endowed professorship. "She is both a widely reputed scholar and highly respected in the business community," Stevenson said.

Kanter said that "American industry, like that of other nations, is undergoing a profound restructuring as a result of worldwide economic pressures." She said she feels the B-School is taking "a leadership position in helping organizations respond to this time of change."

Although the specific courses which Kanter will teach next fall have not yet been decided, Stevenson said he expects Kanter will offer a courses on entrepreneurship in large organizations and hopes she will be involved with a doctoral course as well.

A Yale faculty member since 1977, Kanter was a charter member of the Graduate School of Organization and Management there. Before coming to Yale, she taught at Brandeis University and the Graduate School of Education