Richard Tanner Pascale, who was born on June 14, 1938 and died on May 24, 2024 in Washington, D.C. [1] [2], remains famous as an academic, management theorist and business advisor.[3] He earned his MBA at Harvard.
He was based at Stanford Business School for 20 years and was named an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford in 2020. The Economist magazine has named him "one of the leading management gurus of the past 50 years".[4]
| Richard T. Pascale | |
| Birth Name: | Richard Tanner Pascale |
| Birth Date: | 14 June 1938 |
| Death Place: | USA |
| Birth Place: | USA |
Pascale's management works include:
In Managing on the Edge (1990), Pascale noted that "few of the top 500 companies in the US 10 years ago" (i.e. 1980) were still leading companies and looked for explanations for why companies decline.[7]
Pascale also catalogued management fads (or business fads), enumerating 37 different new management ideas which emerged between 1950 and 2000.[10]
One of Pascale's most notable articles – on Honda's success in breaking into the US motorcycle market in the 1960's – is often referenced in the Lean, Agile and strategy communities.[11] The 1984 California Management Review article has come to be known as "Honda B," or "The Honda Effect," and was declared a classic business study by Henry Mintzberg in the Harvard Business Review. [12] [13] It is considered notable for describing close customer observation as you experiment and learn your way toward finding your business strategy.
In the article Pascale coins the phrase “adaptive persistence,” meaning that many priorities become clear only as you strive to move toward something rather than through advance planning. You find the path along the way based on what is being learned along the way. In hindsight, then, what seems to be strategy emerges. "In sum, 'strategy' is defined as 'all the things necessary for the successful functioning of organization as an adaptive mechanism.'"
Several of Pascale's works were co-authored. In The Power of Positive Deviance, he took the lead in writing up observations and reflections based on the work of his co-authors Jerry and Monique Sternin, fieldworkers and Positive Deviance practitioners who had undertaken Peace Corps child development work in Vietnam, observed by Pascale.
The work of the Sternins was also observed in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, Uganda, Argentina and the Pittsburgh VA Hospital and incorporated into the book.[14]