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Mark de Rond

Reader in Strategy & Organisation
Fellow of Darwin College

DPhil (Univ. of Oxford)

Professional experience

Mark's unique fieldwork and teaching approach have fostered an eclectic portfolio of executive education clients, including IBM, McKinsey, KPMG, PWC, Shell, OfCom, several 'magic circle' law firms, Stephenson Harwood, Herbert Smith, Lloyds-TSB, Diageo, Rolls Royce, BT, and many others. He received training in mediation and negotiation at Harvard Law School, and is part of the University mediation team. His research has featured widely in the press, including in The Economist, TIME magazine, The Financial Times, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Week, Der Spiegel, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and on the BBC. His photographs have been published in The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and on the BBC News.

Previous appointments

Prior to joining Cambridge Judge Business School, Mark was an assistant professor in strategy at ESSEC Business School, Paris, a college lecturer at University College and Trinity College (University of Oxford), a research fellow at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (2001), and a Fulbright visiting scholar at Stanford University (2008).

Awards and scholarships

• Cambridge Judge Business School Teaching Award, 2012
• Imagination Lab Award for Innovative Scholarship, awarded annually by the Swiss-based Imagination Lab Foundation and the European Academy of Management for work that is both highly scholarly and very innovative, 2009
• JP Morgan 2009 Summer Reading List (The Last Amateurs)
• Financial Times Best Business Books of 2008 (The Last Amateurs)
• BBC Sport Best Sporting Reads of 2008 (The Last Amateurs)
• Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award, 2007/8
• Ascendant Scholar Award by the Western Academy of Management, awarded annually to up to four young scholars who have shown exceptional promise in their early research careers, 2007
• George R. Terry Award for the book, published in the last two years, judged to have made the most outstanding contribution to the advancement of management knowledge, Academy of Management, 2005
• Past Presidents' Best Paper Award, Western Academy of Management, 2004
• Best Doctoral Student Paper Award, Research Methods Division, Academy of Management, 2001
• Shortlisted for the William H. Newman Award for Outstanding Paper based on PhD dissertation, Academy of Management, 2001
• American Friends of Christ Church Scholar, 1998-1999

Research interests

Studying people by living with them under similar conditions, to try and understand how and why their world makes sense (to them). Mark's fieldwork has included combat surgeons in Afghanistan, elite rowers, and comedians. Subject-wise, his research focuses specifically on: (1) The experience of being human in collaborative high-performance environments; (2) the human imagination of human importance in strategy; (3) the possibility and scope of strategic choice; and (4) causal explanations of why things are as they are and not otherwise in a world of (mostly) unique events.

Mark de Rond is a member of the Organisational Behaviour & Information Systems subject group.

Selected publications

de Rond, M. (2003) Strategic alliances as social facts: business, biotechnology, and intellectual history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Winner of the 2005 George R. Terry Award)

de Rond, M. and Bouchikhi, H. (2004) "On the dialectics of strategic alliances." Organization Science, 15(1): pp.56-69

de Rond, M. and Thietart, R.A. (2007) "Choice, chance and inevitability in strategy." Strategic Management Journal, 28(5): 535-551 (DOI: 10.1002/smj.602)

de Rond, M. (2008) The last amateurs: to hell and back with the Cambridge Boat Race crew. London: Icon Books
Read Mark's blog on The Last Amateurs »
Watch Mark talk about what makes the perfect crew »
Watch "From Nausea to Method in Ethnography" »

de Rond, M. (2012) There is an I in team: what elite athletes and coaches really know about high performance. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press
No.1 Business Bestseller in India (Business Standard, New Delhi, 27 Aug 2012) »

Lok, J. and de Rond, M. (2013) "On the plasticity of institutions: containing and restoring practice breakdowns at the Cambridge University Boat Club." Academy of Management Journal (DOI: 10.5465/amj.2010.0688) (published online Jul 2012; forthcoming in print)

More publications »