About Mike
Mike Beer Is an accomplished practitioner and scholar in the field of Strategic Organizational Change and Development: He is Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, co-founder and Director of TruePoint Partners, a management consultancy that works with senior executives to develop effective high performance and commitment organizations, and the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, a not for profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of companies and leaders committed to creating economic and social value.
For 45 years, Mike has consulted to senior management across industries—manufacturing, services (hospitality, professional and financial), consumer packaging, high tech., pharmaceutical and medical technology. Among others he has worked with Becton Dickinson, Hewlett Packard, Ernst & Young, Agilent Technologies, Merck and Whitbread PLC.
Mike holds a B.A. from Queens College, a BA from Harvard University (honorary), an M.S. from North Carolina State University, and a Ph.D. in organizational psychology and business from Ohio State University.
Amongst many professional honors and awards, he is a Fellow of the Academy of Management and the recipient of its Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award, a Fellow of the Academy of Human Resource Management, a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and recipient of its Distinguished Professional Contributions Award, and recipient of the Harry and Miriam Levinson Award for outstanding contributions to organizational consulting psychology from the American Psychological Foundation. He is the 2007 recipient of the Society for Human Resource Management’s prestigious Michael R. Losey Research Award and the 2013 recipient of the Herbert Heneman Jr. Career Achievement Award from the Human Resource Division of the Academy of Management. Mike and Russ Eisenstat received the 1998 Organizational Development Institute Award for the most outstanding contribution to the field for the development of the Strategic Fitness Process at Becton Dickinson and its application there and in numerous other corporations around the world.
Mike has researched and written widely about organization effectiveness, organizational change, high commitment, high performance organizations, leadership, as well as human resource management. In addition to numerous book chapters and articles in academic and business journals, Mike is author or co-author of twelve books, including his most recent, Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company’s Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy (Harvard Business Press, Spring 2020).
