Faculty and Research

Julie Battilana is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School. She currently teaches the first-year Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD) course in the MBA program.  She also teaches in executive education offerings, including Colloquium on Participant-Centered Learning and High Potentials Leadership Program.

Professor Battilana's research examines the process of institutional entrepreneurship. Institutional entrepreneurs, whether organizations or individuals are change agents who initiate and actively participate in the implementation of divergent changes, that is, changes that break with existing institutions in a field of activity. Her work aims to better understand the process of institutional entrepreneurship from the emergence of institutional entrepreneurs to their implementation of divergent change. Her most recent projects focus on the influence of individuals' social position on their likelihood to initiate different types of divergent changes in the healthcare sector in the United Kingdom. Professor Battilana's research received an honorable mention for best paper out of a dissertation from the OMT division of the Academy of Management in 2007.  She has published or has articles forthcoming in Strategic Organization, Organization, Research in Organizational Behavior and The Academy of Management Annals, as well as in handbooks of organizational behavior and strategy.

 

A native of France, Professor Battilana earned a BA in sociology and economics, an MA in political sociology and an M.Sc. in organizational sociology and public policy from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, an M.Sc. in management and economics from HEC Business School, and a joint PhD in organizational behavior from INSEAD and in management and economics from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan.

Curriculum Vitae