Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, where he teaches courses on Leadership, Top Management Teams, and Managing Mergers and Acquisitions. He joined the Tuck School in January 1994, after having been on the faculty at the Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Southern California. He has taught executive education at the Tuck School (where he serves as the Faculty Director of the flagship Tuck Executive Program), Northwestern, Wharton, Duke, Bocconi, London Business School, Australian Graduate School of Management, Melbourne Business School, and the Helsinki School of Economics. He holds a B.Commerce from Concordia University, a Masters degree in economics and industrial relations from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in strategic management.
Professor Sydney Finkelstein is the author of Why Smart Executives Fail (New York: Portfolio, 2003). Based on a six-year study of 51 companies and 197 interviews of business leaders, the book identifies the fundamental reasons why major mistakes happen, points out the early warning signals that are critical for investors and managers alike, and offers ideas on how organizations can develop a capability of learning from corporate mistakes. The book was one of Fortune's Best Business Books for Summer 2003 and was an Amazon bestseller, #2 in Business and Investing. The Wall Street Journal called it a marvel — a jargon-free business book based on serious research that offers genuine insights with clarity and sometimes even wit… It should be required reading not just for executives but for investors as well." It has also been featured in such media as the Financial Times, Business Week, the London Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Fast Company, Across the Board, and Entrepreneurship, among others.
Sydney Finkelstein has conducted extensive research on strategic leadership, and published numerous articles in the major journals in his field. He is an expert on mergers and acquisitions, executive compensation, and corporate governance, and is an experienced executive coach. His book, Strategic Leadership: Top Executives and Their Effects on Organizations, was a finalist for the Academy of Management's Terry Book Award in 1998. His article on power dynamics within top management teams was ranked as the number one publication by academicians in strategic leadership in the first half of the 1990s.
Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes