Nandini Rajagopalan is the Joseph A. DeBell Chair in Business Administration and Professor of Management and Organization. Her research examines platform-based markets, diversification and strategic alliances, CEO succession, and corporate governance. She has published in the Academy of Management Review, the Academy of Management Journal, the Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Management Studies, the Journal of Management, and Business Horizons among others. She is a Distinguished Faculty Fellow at USC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, and recipient of USC’s Provost’s Mentoring Award. She is past Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Journal.
Nandini Rajagopalan
Affiliate Research Scientist
Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs
Joseph A.DeBell Chair in Business Administration
Joseph A.DeBell Chair in Business Administration
Recent Research
Rigor, Relevance, and Resilience in Management Research
Nandini Rajagopalan I believe there is increasingly a shared understanding among management scholars that research needs to be both rigorous and relevant. The challenge lies in how to conduct such research. Research that is rigorous, accessible, relevant, and enlightening may be rare, but we must conduct such research.
Grooming for the Top Post and Ending the CEO Succession Crisis
Yan Zhang (Rice University) and Nandini Rajagopalan (USC) compare three different types of options and related processes of CEO succession: relay succession, non-relay inside succession, and outside succession.
Strategic Orientations, Incentive Plan Adoptions and Firm Performance: Evidence from Electric Utility Firms
Nadini Rajagopalan addresses the topic of executive compensation, one that has fascinated both academic researchers and the business press for the past several decades.
Towards a Theory of Strategic Change: A Multi-Lens Perspective and Integrative Framework
Nandini Rajagopalan and Gretchen M. Spreitzer provide a comprehensive review of the strategic change literature from three theoretical lenses: the rational, learning, and cognitive lenses.
CEO Compensation Systems in Electric Utility Firms: Strategic and Environmental Effects
This paper by Sydney Finkelstein and Nandini Rajagopalan utilizes an agency theory perspective to study the effects of strategic orientation and environmental change on CEO compensation systems.