I arrived late to the Center, because I was active in Senator Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. Once settled in, I worked at writing Social Character in a Mexican Village, sending drafts to the senior author, Erich Fromm. I had returned to the USA for the campaign and the Center after eight years in Mexico. As I was finishing the writing, I began to think about the next project, to study the character and behavior of the managers and engineers who were creating the new information technology that would change the way people would work in the future. What were their values? Did they care about the impact their products would have on society? Whas there a particular type of personality that was necessary for success in these companies? After giving a talk at a local church, I met a manager from HP who introduced me to his manager who introduced me to the VP of Personnel who introduced me to a VP and general manager who was interested in the idea and helped me to develop the study. He introduced me to the leaders of other high tech companies. With the support of David Riesman who was also at the Center, I received a grant from the Harvard Program on Technology and Society that helped fund the study (I later received a grant from the Mellon Foundation). The study was published in 1977 in a book titled The Gamesman, The New Corporate Leaders. It became a best seller and launched me on a new career.
—Michael Maccoby
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The Leaders We Need: And What Makes Us Follow
By Michael Maccoby
Harvard Business School Press, November 6, 2007
Transforming Health Care Leadership
By Michael Maccoby, Clifford L. Norman, C. Jane Norman, and Richard Margolies
Jossey-Bass Public Health, Summer, 2013.
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