Summary
The paragraphs below sum up a brief overview of my academic labors. Further details can be accessed from my vita and/or other links on my website.
I received a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the University of Michigan where I was also a researcher at the Institute of Social Research (ISR). I have been a consultant with global consulting firms, such as Arthur D. Little, Inc. and Rensis Likert Associates. Visiting scholar experiences include work for the International Institute for Labor Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and the University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I have also been a visiting professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, BYU-Hawaii, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Major corporate clients I have advised include Clark Equipment, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, PPG, Exxon, Signetics, and Westinghouse. I have also worked with a number of unions such as the UAW, steelworkers, rubberworkers, and UFCW. Public sector consulting includes several large hospitals, U.S. Forest Service, city and state governments in Iowa, Michigan, New York, Florida and Utah. Technical assistance has also been rendered to peasant groups in Latin America, the Navajo Tribal Council in the southwest, and native cooperatives in Hawaii. I have been involved in action research for years with the kibbutz communal system of Israel and the Mondragon worker-owned cooperatives of the Basque country in Northern Spain.
As a professor, I am on the faculty of the Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy, Marriott School, Brigham Young University. I teach MBA level courses in ethics, organizational change, international economic development, social entrepreneurship, and civil society. I received the Corporate Teaching Award at BYU in 1984, was voted Outstanding Teacher by graduating students in 1986, received the Marriott School of Management’s Outstanding Faculty award in 1989, and was chosen for BYU’s Karl G. Maeser Excellence in Teaching Award in 1995. In 2005 I was voted outstanding teacher by MBA track students. I also received the American Society for Quality Distinguished Lecture Award in 1998 and the university-wide Circle of Honor Award at BYU in 1999. I have written over 150 articles, a number of chapters in edited books, and have made presentations at numerous universities including Harvard, Yale, the University of Virginia, the London School of Economics, Berkeley, Oxford, Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, as well as in three dozen other nations. My published articles are quite eclectic and include those such as the Journal of Management, Labor Law Journal, Human Relations, Organizational Dynamics, National Productivity Review, Social Policy, Labour and Society, Personnel Administrator, The Social Science Journal, Journal of Engineering Technology, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Policy Studies Review, Managerial Finance, and the Harvard International Review, among others.
As an expert on employee ownership, I have advised various groups on the transition to worker buyouts. Clients include family firms, high tech, and a number of industrial buyouts such as Jeanette Sheet Glass, Rath Packing, and several steel companies. I served on the board of directors at Hyatt Clark Industries, a $100 million company in New Jersey for five years. I was elected to the board of the National Center for Employee Ownership, Washington, D.C., and I have also served as director of the SBA’s Small Business Development Center. During the 1980s-90s, I assisted several organizations in the ex-USSR create more effective economic systems through privatization strategies, served on the International Advisory Board in Warsaw, Poland, and have extensive experience consulting with government officials, trade unions, companies and universities in Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland.
In 1989 I became a founder and director of Enterprise Mentors International (EMI), a non-profit foundation headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. We raised millions of dollars in private funds and began to work with a team of Filipinos in Manila to provide consulting and management training for the poor of the informal economy, helping to launch workers’ cooperatives and small business startups. EMI also offers microenterprise training, provides microcredit loans, creates jobs, and builds self-reliance. Since 1993 six other technical assistance centers in the Philippines have also been established and EMI now has similar projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and El Salvador (in 20 offices), resulting in the creation of thousands of new jobs annually within poverty-stricken communities.
In more recent years, I have been on the board of directors and board chairman of the Ouelessebougou Alliance, a non-governmental organization (NGO) doing village development in Mali, West Africa. Early efforts consisted of working with villagers in digging wells, planting gardens, constructing schools for children, creating a literacy program for adults, and establishing a paramedic process for village health care workers and a regional pharmacy. I put together a team from BYU, the University of Utah and Harvard to establish a village banking strategy that would enable the poor to access credit. The microlending program was implemented in 1996 and is now spreading to other villages in Mali, annually providing credit to thousands of impoverished peasant families.
I next founded, co-founded, and/or advised a number of new Third World development organizations including the Humanitarian Action Research Team (HART) in Ghana; the Salt Lake City Community Services Council; H.E.L.P. Honduras; Humanitarian Link; Accion Contra La Pobreza; International Development Network; Chasqui Humanitarian of the Andes in Peru and Bolivia; H.E.L.P. International in El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala and Venezuela; Liahona Economic Development Foundation in Nigeria; UNITUS, a strategy for accelerating microfinance in India, Kenya, and Mexico; SOAR-China (Service Outreach Alliance for Rural China) in Sichuan Province; Empowering Nations in Thailand, and Eagle Condor Foundation in northern Peru. Over the past two decades, I have labored to build economic justice and family self-reliance in the Third World. These efforts culminated in a $3 million grant to BYU in order to establish the new Center for Economic Self-Reliance (CESR). During 2003-2005, CESR began to facilitate more faculty and student research, fund conferences and symposia, and help to synergize our impacts in the fight against global poverty.
Working with others around the world, a major focus of my professional labors during the past decade has centered on a global ‘Microcredit Summit’ strategy to empower a hundred million of the world’s poorest families through the creation of new village banking systems. These innovative grassroots programs channel tiny loans to the poorest of the poor, thus enabling them to improve their quality of life, and move them toward genuine self-reliance. For my global dedication to serve those in poverty, I received the first Lowell Bennion Humanitarian Award in Salt Lake City (1999) and Utah Valley State College’s Award for Humanitarian Service (2000). I also received BYU’s Humanitarian Award in 1997, and was honored with the Distinguished Service Award by the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in 2000. I was recognized in 2001 with the Senator Reed Smoot Award as Entrepreneur of the Year in Utah Valley by the Chamber of Commerce. At the 4th Annual BYU Microenterprise Conference held in 2001 it was announced that the Marriott School and microcredit organizations around the world had joined together to create the Warner P. Woodworth Social Entrepreneurship Award to recognize outstanding leadership in the field of social enterprise. It is an annual award that includes a Third World craft product as recognition, as well as a several thousand dollar cash prize to be donated in the winner’s name to any NGO of his or her choice. In the spirit of becoming a global change agent, the Woodworth Prize designates individuals who have truly transformed the world by their personal sacrifice, radical strategies, and long-term vision.
I am author or co-author of ten books: Microfinance: Third Sector Tools for Strengthening Civil Society (2003); Economic Democracy (2002); United for Zion (2000); Small Really is Beautiful: Micro Approaches to Third World Development — Microentrepreneurship, Microenterprise, and Microfinance (Third World Think Tank, 1997); Creating Labor-Management Partnerships (Addison-Wesley, 1995); Organizational Change (McGraw Hill, 1995); Managing by the Numbers (Addison-Wesley, 1988); Working Toward Zion (Aspen, 1996); Industrial Democracy (Sage, 1985); and Desteeling: Structural Disinvestment of U.S. Steel and its Implications for Regional Economics (Alexander, 1984). Many of the projects I have worked on have been featured in extensive media coverage: The Today Show, CNN Business, and 60 Minutes on national television; newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times; and virtually all major business magazines — Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, etc. Several commercially-produced videotapes have featured my work, as have films for public television. I have also participated on a number of TV/radio talk shows, testified at congressional hearings on the U.S. economy, and two cases on my work have been used at the Harvard Business School.
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.
Ralph Waldo Emerson