Maxim Sytch

Maxim Sytch is a Professor in the Department of Management and Organizations, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Previously, he was a lecturer in the Department of Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Selected as one the 40 Best Business Professors under 40 in the World by Poets & Quants, Maxim Sytch is an expert on leadership and organizational issues within firms. His research focuses on how managers can execute without formal authority. He examines how managers can effectively manage and leverage relationships within and across organizational boundaries to enhance performance. In his recent work, he studies how companies influence their legal environments by leveraging social relationships between lawyers and judges.

This research has been published in leading journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, California Law Review, California Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Managerial and Decision Economics, Organization Science, Sloan Management Review, and The Wall Street Journal. His work has also been covered by AsiaOne.com, BBC, BusinessWeek, The Brunei Times, Phys.org, Human Resources Online, Reuters, and Yahoo News. In addition, his essays appeared in Huffington Post, Inc.com, and the Observer. In 2010, his study examining dynamics of influence in patent infringement litigation won the Best Paper Award from the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. In 2012, another study, which examined the relationship between network communities and firms’ invention productivity, was a finalist for the Best Paper Award at the Israel Strategy Conference. In 2016, his paper on social structures interconnecting lawyers and federal judges in litigation was the finalist for the Best Paper on Entrepreneurship Award from the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. In 2019, his paper on networks among disadvantaged inventors was the finalist for the Knowledge and Innovation Best Paper Award at the Strategic Management Society Annual Conference and won the 2022 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research Award from the Ross School of Business.

In 2009–2010, Maxim Sytch moderated an online Leadership Seminar in collaboration with the Washington Post. He serves as an Associate Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly and is a member of the Academy of Management, the American Sociological Association, and the Strategic Management Society. He won the Outstanding Reviewer Awards from the Academy of Management Journal and Organization Science in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Maxim Sytch won the McNeary Teaching Excellence award given to the best instructor in the Ross full-time MBA program in 2022 and the Ross Executive Education Teaching Impact Award for open enrollment programs in 2014. His online specialization on Leading People and Teams (coursera.org), launched in 2015, is the leading online leadership course in the world with over 500,000 students. He also advises and speaks to corporations worldwide. Some of his recent engagements include clients such as Amazon, Bank of America, Bank Mandiri, BASF, BPKP Indonesia, Banque Saudi Fransi, Bosch, BrightView, Chicago Public Schools, Caterpillar, Chrysler-Fiat, ConvaTec, ExxonMobil, Epsilon, Genus, Grainger, Google, ICBC, Inforum, KPMG, Masco, Morgan Stanley, M&T Bank, Michigan Medicine, National Football League, National Intelligence Community, NextGen, Novartis, Oracle, Qualcomm, Rio Tinto, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Saudi Telecom, Schneider Electric, SCL Health, Toyoda Gosei, Toyota, UNUM, US Air Force, and TRW.

Prior to entering academia, Maxim Sytch worked in the financial sector for Merrill Lynch and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. He holds a Ph.D. from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Areas of Expertise

Organization Theory, Economic Sociology, Complex Systems, Law, Collaboration, Conflict, Networks, Interorganizational Relations, Intellectual Property, Organizational Design

Education:

• Ph.D. Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2009
• M.B.A. (High Honors) 2002, Oklahoma City University; Distinguished alumnus, 2017
• B.S.B. 2000, Oklahoma City University – Moscow State University (Ulyanovsk Branch)

Selected publications

• Leading a Business in Ukraine During the War
  Maxim Sytch and Dagny Dukach
  02/2023

• How Supplier-Selection Practices Can Encourage the Emergence of Robust Global Supply Chain Networks: A Simulation of the Global Auto Industry
  Sytch, Maxim, Yong Hyun Kim, and Scott Page 02/2022

• 5 Ways a Crisis Can Help You Cultivate a Growth Mindset. Harvard Business Review
  Ashford, Susan, Maxim Sytch, and Lindred Greer 2020

• Are Your Influence Skills Ready for Remote Work?
  Sytch, Maxim 2020

• Balancing Competing Loyalties
  Sytch, Maxim, Jose Uribe and Yong Hyun Kim. 2020

• Expanding HR Sphere of Influence to Revolutionalise Work
  Sytch, Maxim 2020

• How to Figure Out How Much Influence You Have at Work
  Sytch, Maxim 2020

• Is Your Organization Ready for Permanent WFH?
  Sytch, Maxim and Lindred Greer 2020

• Want to Win Someone Over? Talk Like They Do.
  Sytch, Maxim and Yong Kim 2020

• How to Figure Out How Much Influence You Have at Work
  Sytch, Maxim 2019

• Collaborative by Design? How Matrix Organizations See/Do Alliances
  Sytch, M., F. Wohlgezogen, and E. Zajac 2018

• Environmental demands and the emergence of social structure: Technological dynamism and interorganizational network forms
  Tatarynowicz, Adam, Maxim Sytch, and Ranjay Gulati 2016

• Exploring the locus of invention: The Structure and Dynamics of Network Communities and a Firm¿s Invention Performance
  Sytch, Maxim and Adam Tatarynowicz 2014

• Friends and Foes: The Dynamics of Dual Social Structures
  Sytch, Maxim and Adam Tatarynowicz 2014

• The Rise and Fall of Small Worlds: Exploring the Dynamics of Social Structure
  Gulati, Ranjay, Sytch, Maxim, and Tatarynowicz, Adam 2012

• Toward a Theory of Extended Contact: The Incentives and Opportunities for Bridging Across Network Communities
  Sytch, Maxim, Tatarynowicz, Adam, and Gulati, Ranjay 2012

• The Rise and Fall of Small Worlds: Exploring the Dynamics of Social Structure
  Maxim Sytch 2010

• Exploring the Notion of IP Exceptionalism
  Sag, Matthew, Jacobidi, Tonja, and Sytch, Maxim 2009