Lynn S. Paine

Lynn Sharp Paine is a John G. McLean Professor and Senior Associate Dean, Director of Faculty Development, at Harvard Business School. A member and former chair of the General Management unit, she currently co-chairs the Senior Executive Program for China. She co-founded and served for five years as course head for the required course on Leadership and Corporate Accountability, which she has taught in the MBA program as well as the Advanced Management Program. Over the years, her teaching assignments have also included the required General Management course for MBAs, elective courses on ethics in the MBA and Executive Programs, and the MBA elective on Managing Across Cultures.

Ms. Paine's research focuses on the leadership and governance of companies that meld high ethical standards with outstanding financial results. Her book Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance (McGraw‐Hill 2003) was named one of the year's Best Business Books by Library Journal and a top‐10 business book by Soundview Executive Book Summaries. Ms. Paine's publications include more than 200 case studies, and her articles have appeared in various books and journals including the Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Philosophy and Public Affairs. Her text and casebook Leadership, Ethics, and Organizational Integrity (Irwin 1997) has been translated into Japanese (2000) and Chinese (2001). Her most recent book is Capitalism at Risk: Rethinking the Role of Business, with HBS colleagues Joe Bower and Dutch Leonard (Harvard Business Review Press, October 2011). Other recent publications include “A Global Leader’s Guide to Managing Business Conduct” (with Rohit Deshpandé and Joshua Margolis), “Global Capitalism at Risk: What Are You Doing About It?” (with Joe Bower and Dutch Leonard), and “The China Rules: A Practical Guide for CEOs Managing Multinational Corporations in the People’s Republic.”

A member of Phi Beta Kappa and a summa cum laude graduate of Smith College, Ms. Paine holds a doctorate in moral philosophy from Oxford University and a law degree from the Harvard Law School. She is a member of the Massachusetts bar and practiced law with the Boston firm of Hill & Barlow early in her career. She has provided executive education and advisory services to numerous firms and industry groups. In 2002, she served on the Conference Board’s Blue‐Ribbon Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise and, in 2009, she was a member of the Conference Board's Task Force on Executive Compensation. She is currently a member of the academic council of the Hills Program on Governance at CSIS and the Advisory Board for the Conference Board's Governance Center. In addition, Ms. Paine is a public member of the Governing Board of the Center for Audit Quality and a former director of RiskMetrics Group, which became part of MSCI Inc. in June 2010.

Before joining the Harvard faculty in 1990, Ms. Paine taught at Georgetown University Business School and the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business as well as National Cheng Chi University in Taiwan, where she was a Luce Scholar in 1976-77. Since 1987 she has been a permanent member of the Henry Luce Foundation's Luce Scholar Selection Panel. She and her husband, Tom Paine, have three adult children and live in Wellesley, Massachusetts.