Hurricane Katrina not only devastated the city of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast of the U.S., it initiated a bitter debate about the leadership -- or lack thereof -- exhibited by government officials before, during and after the storm. Called into question have been the actions of an array of leaders: President Bush, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown. To identify some of the leadership challenges raised by the New Orleans disaster, Knowledge@Wharton interviewed two Wharton faculty members and a former Wharton official who is now dean of the business school at Arizona State University, which publishes Knowledge@WPCarey.
Morris A. Cohen, professor of operations and information management and co-director of the Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and Operations Management, has conducted research on global operations strategy and supply chain strategy. Management professor Lawrence G. Hrebiniak recently wrote a book entitled, Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change. Robert E. Mittelstaedt Jr. is dean of the W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU, former vice dean and director of Wharton Executive Education, and author of Will Your Next Mistake be Fatal? Avoiding the Chain of Mistakes that Can Destroy Your Organization. Mittelstaedt grew up in New Orleans, graduated from Tulane University, and has strong personal ties to the Big Easy.
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