Top 40 Bestselling Case Authors 2019/20

Robert Simons is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School. For over 35 years, Simons has taught accounting, management control, and strategy execution courses in both the Harvard MBA and Executive Education Programs. For 2020/21, he is teaching two MBA courses: Executing Strategy and Changing the World—a new course that looks at the life choices made by influential leaders.

Simons recently published a 15-module series for classroom teaching on Strategy Execution available through Harvard Business School Publishing. Simons has also developed a new, online app called the Job Design Optimization Tool (JDOT) which is available free-of-charge from Harvard Business School Publishing. This tool can be used to design, or test the design, of any job in any organization.

Simons’ books include Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution (2010) and Levers of Organization Design: How Managers Use Accountability Systems for Greater Performance and Commitment (2005). In addition, he has written Levers of Control (1995) that describes how effective top managers balance innovation and control. This book won the Notable Contribution to Management Accounting Literature award.

In addition to his books, Simons' ongoing research into the relationship between business strategy, organization design, and management control systems has been published in journals such as Harvard Business Review, Capitalism and Society, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Journal of Accounting Literature.

His most recent academic paper, co-authored with Antonio Dávila, is “How Top Managers Use the Entrepreneurial Gap to Drive Strategic Change,” European Accounting Review, 2020.

Simons has served as a consultant to many companies on topics related to strategy execution, organization design, performance measurement, and strategic control. He has testified as an expert witness in U.S. Federal Court and before State Public Utility Commissions.