Joe Raelin

Joe Raelin holds the Asa S. Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern. In this role, he has overall responsibility for the Center for Work and Learning. In particular, his initial interest is to seek common ground among the many disciplines and traditions that support POE, document their effectiveness, and bolster policy initiatives that sustain NU’s commitment to this approach to educational provision.

Joe was formerly Professor of Management at the Boston College Wallace E. Carroll School of Management. He received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research has centered on executive and professional education and development. He is a prolific writer having contributed articles for the foremost management journals, among which are some frame-breaking works that are now heavily cited.

His publications include: The Salaried Professional: How to Make the Most of Your Career (Greenwood/Praeger, 1984); The Clash of Cultures: Managers Managing Professionals (Harvard Business School Press, 1991), considered now to be a classic in the field of managing professionals; the most recent Work-Based Learning: The New Frontier of Management Development (Prentice-Hall, the 'OD' Series, 2000); and Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone (Berrett-Koehler, 2003).

He is also North-American co-editor of the journal, Management Learning. Among his most notable accomplishments were receiving the John Wiley "Best Paper Award in Management Education," at the 1994 Academy of Management Annual Meeting and the Management and Education Development (MED) Division Recognition Award for Contribution to the Field of Management Education at the 2001 Annual Meeting.


Research Interests

Prof. Raelin is currently working in two domains. First is the development of the field of work-based learning. Work-based learning considers how to make learning arise from work itself. Many of us, not only in academe but in our work in continuing education, have become conditioned to a classroom model that separates theory from practice making learning seem impractical or irrelevant. But what if we were to make our worksite an equally acceptable location for learning? In work-based learning, theory is expressly merged with practice, and knowledge is viewed concurrently with experience through reflection on work practices. Hence, it offers managers faced with the relentless pace of pervasive change an opportunity to overcome time pressures by reflecting upon and learning from the artistry of their action.

Prof. Raelin's other interest is in developing a new paradigm for leadership that he calls "leaderful practice." Leaderful practice constitutes a direct challenge to the conventional view of leadership as "being out in front." In the 21st Century organization, we need to establish communities where everyone shares the experience of serving as a collaborative and compassionate leader, not sequentially, but concurrently and collectively. In other words, in leaderful practice, leaders co-exist at the same time and all together.

Prof. Raelin’s present interest is tracing the links between the two aforementioned research domains by applying and studying how work-based learning methods might be used in leadership development to create a more collective, leaderful, and presumably more democratic form of leadership.

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Teaching Interests

Leadership (using work-based learning methods)
Ethics
Organizational Behavior

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Selected Publications

"Emancipatory Discourse and Liberation," Management Learning, 39 (5): 519-540, 2008.

“Refereeing the Game of Peer Review,” Academy of Management Learning and Education, 7 (1): 124-129, 2008.

"Toward an Epistemology of Practice," Exemplary Contribution in Academy of Management Learning and Education, 6 (4): 495-519, 2007. [For a pdf version, click here]

“Developing Managers as Learners and Researchers: Using Action Learning and Action Research” (Joseph A. Raelin and David Coghlan), Journal of Management Education, 30 (5): 670-689, October 2006.

“Does Action Learning Promote Collaborative Leadership?” Lead article in the Academy of Management Learning and Education, 5 (2): 152-168, June 2006. [For a pdf version, click here]

“Taking the Charisma Out: Teaching as Facilitation,” Organization Management Journal, 3 (1): 4-12, 2006. (To view as a pdf file, click here]

“Finding Meaning in the Organization,” Sloan Management Review, 47 (3): 64-68, Spring 2006.

“Developmental Action Learning: Toward Collaborative Change,” (Joseph A. Raelin and Jonathan Raelin), Action Learning: Research and Practice, 3 (1): 45-67, April 2006.
[To view, click here]

"The Role of Facilitation in Practice," Organizational Dynamics, 35 (1): 83-95. [For a copy of the manuscript, click here]

"I Don't Have Time to Think! (vs. The Art of Reflective Practice)," Reflections: The SoL Journal, 4 (1): 66-79, 2002, and summarized in The Action Reflection Learning Newsletter, No. 30, February 2003.

"Public Refection as the Basis for Learning," Management Learning, 32 (1), 11-30, 2001

"A Model of Work-Based Learning," Organization Science, 8 (6): 563-578, 1997

"Action Learning and Action Science: Are They Different?" Organizational Dynamics, 26(1): 21-34, 1997

"The Persean Ethic: Consistency of Belief and Action in Managerial Practice," Human Relations, 46 (5): 575-621, 1993

"An Anatomy of Autonomy: Managing Professionals," Academy of Management Executive, 3 (3): 216-228, August 1989

"Unionization or Deprofessionalization: Which Comes First?" Journal of Organizational Behavior, 10 (2): 101-115, April 1989

"The 60's Kids in the Corporation: More than 'Daydream Believers,'" inaugural issue of the Academy of Management Executive, 1 (1): 21-30, February 1987

"An Examination of Deviant/Adaptive Behavior in the Organizational Careers of Professionals," Academy of Management Review, 9 (3): 423-427, July 1984, and reprinted in the Journal of Library Administration, 6 (1); 71-95, Spring 1985

Complete list of publications

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