Joshua Margolis (vitae, pdf)
Harvard Business School

Joshua Margolis is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School.  He teaches Leadership and Organizational Behavior in the MBA program and previously taught the introductory ethics course, Leadership, Values, and Decision Making. He is an Academic Advisor for the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics.

Professor Margolis received his B.A. from Yale University and his A.M. (Sociology) and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University, where he has also been a Fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions.  Joshua joined the HBS faculty in 2000 after spending three years on the faculty at the University of Michigan Business School as a Fellow in the Society of Scholars. 

Professor Margolis's research focuses on the distinctive ethical challenges that arise in organizations and how managers can navigate these challenges with practical effectiveness and moral integrity, especially in perform-or-else settings.   Professor Margolis has published his work in Administrative Science Quarterly, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Journal of Management, and along with James P. Walsh, he authored the book, People and Profits: The Search for a Link between a Company’s Social and Financial Performance.  Professor Margolis’s current research focuses on how professionals in a variety of settings perform “necessary evils,” difficult and often unsettling tasks that require harming other human beings in order to advance a worthy purpose.