Leadership

Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stevan Tian name five corporate leaders whose accomplishments stood out this year—and five who led their enterprises into rough waters.

Yale SOM leadership expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld provides an insider’s perspective on the move.

Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld remembers Ashton Carter, the scholar and diplomat who served as secretary of defense in the Obama administration.

Yale SOM leadership expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld remembers George Weyerhaeuser, who led his family’s timber business for decades. He died earlier this year at 95.

Stakeholder capitalism is not new, argues Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. Despite political backlash against “woke” CEOS, today’s leaders need to account for the broad strategic environment in which their companies operate.

In some cases, those pledges have not been fully honored, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld’s team has found. He writes that boards play a key oversight role in ensuring that companies genuinely end their exposure.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his team have been tracking which companies have withdrawn from Russia, which are making partial moves, and which are staying put.

Tesla has resisted unionization in the United States. But in Germany, where the electric car maker launched a new Gigafactory this week, unions are powerful and anxious to maintain jobs in an electric future.

Yale SOM's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld writes that putting off a leadership transition is usually the consequence of governance failures—and can have negative repercussions long after a permanent leader is installed.