Rotman professor honoured at Sumantra Ghoshal Conference

Anita M. McGahan, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, is the 2023 recipient of the Sumantra Ghoshal Award for Rigour and Relevance in the Study of Management.

The Ghoshal Award recognises scholars who have distinguished themselves by demonstrating both rigorous and impactful scholarship, and by engaging with the world of practice. The award is presented annually at the The Sumantra Ghoshal Strategy Conference, held in in the memory of Professor Ghoshal, who was a professor at London Business School (LBS) and whose research focused on leadership and change management.

McGahan was presented the award during a ceremony in London by Keyvan Vakili, a graduate of the Rotman Ph.D. program, and who is an associate professor at LBS. In presenting the Ghoshal Award, Associate Professor Vakili said, “I cannot think of anyone more deserving than Anita to receive the Sumantra Ghoshal award. She has made remarkable contributions through her impactful academic research as well as engagement with the world of practice across management, policy, and healthcare domains. Not only that, through her kind and passionate guidance, she has nurtured a new generation of researchers who now emulate her dedication to produce rigorous research that contributes to the betterment of society and the world.”

McGahan is University Professor and George E. Connell Chair in Organizations and Society at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School. She holds cross-appointments with the University’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and is affiliated with the Munk School’s Innovation Policy Lab, the School of Cities, the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre (WHO CC) at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, Massey College, and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Prof. McGahan is also a faculty member and Senior Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University; Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University; and a past President of the Academy of Management. Previously she was the director of the PhD program and Associate Dean of Research at the Rotman School.

Her credits include five books and over 200 articles, case studies, notes and other published material on competitive advantage, industry evolution, and innovation in the public interest. In 2010, she was awarded the Academy of Management BPS Division’s Irwin Distinguished Educator Award. In 2012, she received from the Academy its Career Distinguished Educator Award for her championship of reform in the core curriculum of Business Schools, and in 2021, she received the Academy’s Career Distinguished Service Award for leadership in the Academy and other organizations. In 2018, she was awarded both the Inaugural Educational Impact Award and, with Michael E. Porter, the Dan and Mary Lou Schendel Best Paper Prize from the Strategic Management Society. In 2012 she was elected a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society, and in 2015 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management.

The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society.

McGahan earned both her PhD and AM at Harvard University in two years. She holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where she received highest academic honors as a Baker Scholar, and a BA from Northwestern University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She also spent several years at both McKinsey & Company and Morgan Stanley & Company and was previously on the faculties of both Harvard Business School and Boston University. She has visited the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the London Business School, the Australian Graduate School of Management, the University of Cambridge, and the Division of Social Medicine and Global Health at Harvard Medical School.

Speaking about the award, Professor McGahan said that it was a tremendous honour, “particularly because it is in the name of LBS’s Sumantra Ghoshal, who wrote so persuasively about the importance of good management theory in shaping good management practice.”

Sumantra Ghoshal

The late Sumantra Ghoshal, Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School, research focused on leadership and change management in the context of large, global organisations. He co-authored 11 books and more than 60 articles, and served on the editorial boards of several journals including the Academy of Management Review, the Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Sloan Management Review and the European Management Journal. He chaired the Supervisory Board of Duncan-Goenka, a major diversified company in India, and served on the Boards of Mahindra-British Telecom, Swiss Re at Rüschlikon and the Lufthansa School of Business. He was also a fellow of the Academy of Management and the Academy of International Business, served as a member of the Committee of Overseers of the Harvard Business School and was the Founding Dean of the Indian School of Business.