Jody Hoffer Gittell awarded first Bill Nobles Fellowship

Rutgers University's School of Management and Labor Relations has awarded the first Bill Nobles Fellowship for the 2011-2012 academic year to Professor Jody Hoffer Gittell of Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The Bill Nobles Fellowship is part of an interdisciplinary fellowship program at the school that examines corporations, the economy and society. It was established this year to support case studies and research about corporations where the goal is to create a work environment that departs from strict hierarchical control and where employees receive the encouragement and authority to grow. The studies explore workplaces where employees are encouraged to take risks and to learn from mistakes as they expand their contributions to enterprise success while managers principally lead and coach. The fellowship was created with a generous contribution by former ExxonMobil Corporation executive Bill Nobles with a matching grant from ExxonMobil.

The first Bill Nobles Fellow, Jody Hoffer Gittell, is an associate professor at the Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management and acting director of the MIT Leadership Center at the Sloan School of Management. She has a doctorate from the Sloan School. She will be conducting several case studies on corporations that rely on coordination and commitment rather than command and control. She is the author of the book, "The Southwest Airlines Way" (McGraw Hill, 2005), in which she analyzes these questions.