Should you quit when your values aren't reflected in the dominant culture of your organization? Can you succeed in your professional life yet live by your values, ideals, and identities, even if they are somehow at odds with that of your organization? Rather than assimilate away these differences or leave because of them, some individuals find a middle road between the pulls of conformity and rebellion, where they manage to succeed and nudge the corporate values of their organizations in positive directions.
Professor Debra Meyerson calls such individuals "tempered radicals." In her keynote address at Bridging the Gap, the 2005 Net Impact conference convened by the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Meyerson provides examples of tempered radicals and discusses the range of strategies they use to act on their values and effect positive change. She also talks about the importance of tempered radicals — from the very top to the very bottom of the organizational hierarchy — as important leaders for organizational and social change.
Debra Meyerson is an Associate Professor of Education and Organizational Behavior within Stanford University’s Schools of Education and (by courtesy) Graduate School of Business. Her research focuses on incremental and bottom-up change strategies to advance social justice and social responsibility within organizations. She also conducts research on conditions and change strategies that foster equitable gender and race relations and more recently, has examined the ways in which communication technologies are used by men and women to navigate boundaries between work and non-work spheres of life.
Meyerson currently teaches courses on organizational change, cultural diversity, and the leadership of social change and has given workshops on her research to organizations in the profit, not-for-profit, and public sectors throughout the world. She is author of the book, Tempered Radicals: How Everyday Leaders Inspire Change at Work (2001) and over forty articles and chapters in academic and mainstream publications. Debra’s work has been featured in national media including The Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Business Week, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, and others. She has been repeatedly named by the San Francisco Business Journal as one of the Bay Area’s most influential women in business and was recently honored by the National Organization for Women as “Educator of the Year.”
Meyerson received her B.S. and M.S. from M.I.T. and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford University.
This free podcast is from our Bridging the Gap series.
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