Jackson Library

Lifelong Learning Faculty Seminars: Additional Reading

 

At times, all innovative leaders find themselves straddling the tension between fitting into the status quo and shaking it up. In this session, Stanford Professor Debra Meyerson will reveal how sustainable and socially responsible workplaces are built not by revolutionaries but by those she calls “tempered radicals,” a group of people who balance conformity with ingenuity.

While their differences often put them at odds with the mainstream organizational culture, Meyerson argues that these everyday leaders act as crucial sources of new ideas, alternative perspectives, and organizational learning and change. Drawing from the compelling stories of tempered radicals in a variety of organizations, Debra will illustrate a spectrum of innovative ways that individuals use to “rock the boat” without losing their own footing—and steer a course for powerful, positive change.

Selected Articles

Due to contractual arrangements, remote access is only available to the current Stanford community and the subscribers of the "Library Databases" offered through the GSB Alumni's Lifelong Learning Program. Other access is limited to onsite at Jackson Library. Inclusion below does not imply University endorsement of ideas expressed.

Rocking the boat. Business Today, 7/27/08
The article reviews the book "Rocking the Boat," by Debra E. Meyerson.
View article

The Tempered Radicals: How employees push their companies – little by little – to be more socially responsible. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2004
Tempered radicals operate on a fault line. They are organizational
insiders who often succeed in their jobs. They struggle
between their desire to act on their “different” agendas and
the need to fit into the dominant culture.
View paper

Turning an Industry Inside Out: A Conversation with Robert Redford. Harvard Business Review, 5/2002
Award-winning director Robert Redford has been described as the quintessential tempered radical. His Sundance Institute, tucked away in the Utah mountains, was conceived as a haven for writers and directors with promising ideas in their heads but little more than lint in their pockets.
View article

Practical Radicals. Fast Company, 8/2000
You say you want a business revolution? Not so fast.
View article

Selected Books

Tempered radicals : how people use difference to inspire change at work by Debra E. Meyerson. Harvard Business School Press, c2001 HD58.8 .M493 2001

Selected Websites

Tempered radicals speak courageously to inspire change: Interview with Debra Meyerson

 

• Back to Top