Harvard Business Review Announces 2003 McKinsey Award Winners

Business Wire,  April 2, 2004  

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Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 2, 2004

Harvard Business Review today announced that a team of public health researchers is the first-place winner of the prestigious McKinsey Award for the 2003 article "AIDS Is Your Business." The annual awards, judged by an independent panel of business and academic leaders, commend outstanding articles published each year in the Harvard Business Review. The announcement appears in the April issue of the magazine.

Published in the February 2003 issue, "AIDS is Your Business" detailed the staggering costs of the AIDS epidemic to global companies and urged executives to aggressively fight the epidemic. The authors demonstrated that when companies adopt a comprehensive anti-AIDS strategy--creating treatment and prevention programs for employees--it pays off not just in terms of goodwill and but also in cost savings and improved productivity.

"AIDS Is Your Business" was written by a team of six researchers, five of them from the Boston University School of Public Health's Center for International Health: Sydney Rosen, an assistant professor; Jonathon Simon, the director; William MacLeod, an assistant professor; Matthew Fox, a statistical programmer; and Donald M. Thea, a professor. The sixth author, Jeffrey R. Vincent, is a professor at the University of California's Graduate School of International Relations & Pacific Studies in San Diego.

Thomas A. Stewart, editor of Harvard Business Review, said, "In making a persuasive business case for fighting the AIDS epidemic in developing countries, the article demonstrated that companies don't have to choose between doing the right thing and doing the profitable thing. This award commends the authors' significant intellectual achievement and the major influence the article will likely have on how managers around the world respond to this global health crisis."

The second-place winner of the McKinsey Award is Roderick M. Kramer for his article "The Harder They Fall," published in October 2003. Kramer, a social psychologist at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, shed a timely light on the "genius-to-folly syndrome" -the tendency of savvy leaders to engage in remarkable bouts of folly that lead to their abrupt downfall. Kramer identified the combination of psychological and behavioral traits that keep executives from making reckless mistakes that can kill their careers--and bring companies down with them.

The 2003 award winners were selected by a diverse and distinguished panel of leaders from business, finance, academia, and the nonprofit world:

William W. George
Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School
Former Chairman and CEO
Medtronic

Raymond V. Gilmartin
Chairman, President, and CEO
Merck & Company

Bill Gurley
General Partner
Benchmark Capital

Allen U. Lenzmeier
President and COO
Best Buy

Michael J. Mauboussin
Managing Director and Chief U.S. Investment Strategist
Credit Suisse First Boston

Andrew Pettigrew
Dean
School of Management
University of Bath

Judith Samuelson
Executive Director
Business and Society Program
The Aspen Institute

Thomas G. Stemberg
Chairman and Founder
Staples

Since 1959, the McKinsey Foundation for Management Research has presented awards recognizing the two best articles published each year in the Harvard Business Review. Past winners include such notables as Peter Drucker, Michael Porter, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and George Stalk.

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