Elsbeth Johnson

Senior Lecturer in Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at Sloan School of Management

Visiting Fellow at the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at The London School of Economics and Political Science

Biography

Sloan School of Management

Elsbeth Johnson is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an expert on leadership, strategy and change. The main focus for her research is on what leaders need to do to help their organizations execute strategy, or deliver long-term, strategic change, without the need for the leader’s ongoing, personal involvement.

At MIT, she teaches the Leading Organizations course (15.716) on the School’s EMBA Program, as well as sessions on two open programs, the Advanced Management Program and Leading Change in Complex Organizations. Prior to joining MIT, Johnson was an Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, where she taught on its EMBA and Sloan Programmes. She remains a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics where she teaches Strategy and Organisational Theory.

Prior to academia, Johnson worked as an investment banker (at BZW/Barclays Capital in London), a sell-side equity analyst (at Deutsche Bank in London), and a corporate strategist (at Prudential’s Asian business, based in Hong Kong). She also spent three years as a special adviser to the first Blair Government in the UK, working in three different Departments of State, including the No. 10 Policy Unit.

As a consultant and executive educator, Johnson has worked with a range of companies, helping them develop their strategy and the capabilities and culture that will deliver it. Examples of her clients include American Express, Arm, Baringa Partners LLP, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Google, Linklaters LLP, Merck, Oxford Instruments, QBE and Swiss Re.

Johnson is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and the author of ‘Step Up, Step Back: How to Really Deliver Strategic Change in Your Organization’ (Bloomsbury, 2020). She was educated at Cambridge and London universities. She holds a first degree in Law from Queens’ College, Cambridge; and a postgraduate degree in Economics and a PhD in Management Science from Birkbeck College, London. She lives most of the year in London.

Education

  • University of Cambridge - MA, Law 1989 - 1992
  • Birkbeck, University of London - Economics 1998 - 2000
  • Birkbeck, University of London - PhD, Management / Org Science 2009 - 2015

Academic Area

  • Behavioral and Policy Sciences

Research Interest

Global Economics, Management, Managerial Communication, Management Science, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, Technological Innovation, System Dynamics, Finance

The London School of Economics and Political Science

Dr. Elsbeth Johnson is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE where she teaches leadership, change and culture on the Issues in Organisational Life course (PS446) in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science; and Strategy on the Masters in Management programme (MG488) in the Department of Management. She supervises dissertations on the topics of leadership and change, using a range of qualitative methodologies.

Her research interests include how leadership and followership interact to co-create the environment that either constrains or enables both leaders and followers to realise the full potential of their roles. She considers leadership part of the organisational system, rather than a function of an individual or group of individuals.

Expertise Details

Leadership; strategy; change; culture

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