Schon Beechler

Senior Affiliate Professor of Organisational Behaviour

Schon Beechler is Senior Affiliate Professor of Leadership and Organisational Behavior at INSEAD. She received her undergraduate degree with high honours in Sociology and Anthropology from Oberlin College and earned a joint PhD in Business Administration and Sociology from the University of Michigan. She is a specialist in global leadership and the management of multinational corporations. Schon has lived in Japan for over six years, including eighteen months on a Fulbright Scholarship to study the management of Japanese multinational corporations and one semester as Visiting Associate Professor at the Center for Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi University.

Schon spent seventeen years on the faculty of Columbia Business School, where she held the title of Associate Professor of Management and taught credit courses in the MBA, Executive MBA and PhD programs. She also served as Faculty Director of the Columbia Senior Executive Program, Columbia’s four-week flagship senior executive program, from 1994 until 2006.

Since 1991 Schon has designed, directed, and taught in numerous open enrolment and custom executive education programs for for-profit, not-for-profit, and NGOs in the United States, Austral-Asia, and Europe. She has worked with clients such as Hitachi, Itochu, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Microsoft, Medtronic, Aventis, Iberdrola, Credit Agricole, Kone, Macquarie Group, International Finance Corporation (The World Bank Group), UNICEF, Open Society Foundation, Alston and Bird, the Arts Institute of New York, New York Police Department, and the Fire Department of New York.

She has published articles in academic journals in the fields of global leadership, international human resource management and adult education. She has authored two books on Japanese management and her research has also been published in book chapters and practitioner-oriented journals.

Schon was elected to the Executive Committee of the International Management Division, Academy of Management for five years, serving as Chair of the Division from 2004 until 2005 and has worked as a pro bono consultant with Synergos, Save the Children and Teach For America.

Follow Schon on twitter: @ProfBeechler