Robert Hurley

Robert Hurley has earned national attention for his expertise in the areas of effective leadership and management. He has been teaching, consulting and writing on these topics for more than 20 years, focusing in particular on the value of trust in business: how it is earned, how it is maintained, and why it matters. In recognition of this work, Dr. Hurley was named one of the top 100 thought leaders on trust in 2012, and The Washington Post selected his book, The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Create High-Trust Organizations, as one of the best leadership books of 2011. Dr. Hurley established and continues to lead Fordham's Consortium for Trustworthy Organizations.

Dr. Hurley's work on innovation, market orientation and trust has been translated into many languages and is widely cited by other scholars around the world. He has published academic research in the Harvard Business Review, Oxford University Press, California Management Review, Journal of Marketing and Decision Sciences. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times as well as on MSNBC, CNBC and TheStreet.com.

In addition to winning teaching awards at Fordham, Dr. Hurley has more than two decades of experience as a core faculty member in Columbia Business School's High Impact Leadership Program for executives, where his lectures on trust, leadership styles, emotional intelligence, self-management and managing change receive top ratings. He also has been one of the most sought-after presenters for Duke Corporate Education, having designed, taught and facilitated more than 50 well-received programs around the world.

Before becoming an educator, Dr. Hurley was a successful executive in marketing and brand management at General Foods, where he had general management responsibility for some of the company's flagship brands. Before that, he worked as an organizational consultant at W. Warner Burke Associates and as a general management consultant at the Wharton Entrepreneurial Center at the University of Pennsylvania. These experiences built upon his early-career CPA positions at Ernst and Whiney and Arthur Andersen.

Dr. Hurley remains an active management consultant. His consulting practice focuses on trust-building, leadership and team development, coaching, facilitating strategic planning, managing transformational change, and developing and implementing strategies to maximize customer value. He has applied his experience in countries from Argentina to Poland to South Africa, and he has worked with organizations such as the U.S. defense and treasury departments, NASA, Avon, IBM, Herrick Feinstein LLP, Mercedes Benz, Ingersoll Rand, Merck, Raytheon, The Home Depot, CIT Financial, Citibank, Merrill Lynch, UBS, The Nature Conservancy, BAE Systems, AIG, First Tennessee Bank, General Electric, QuikTrip Convenience Stores, State Farm Insurance, Kraft Foods and Kinko's. Dr. Hurley holds a BS from Fordham, an MBA from the Wharton School and a doctorate from Columbia University.

Education

• PhD: Columbia University
• Master's: MBA, University of Pennsylvania
• Bachelor's: BS, Fordham University

Research interests

• Managing Trust
• Organizational Change
• Customer Focus
• Market Orientation
• Innovation & Leadership

Publications

• Hurley, Robert F. (Management Systems), Hurley, R. The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Create High Trust Organizations. (Jossey Bass, 2011).
• Hurley, Robert F. (Management Systems), Hurley, R., N. Gillespie, G. Dietz, R. Bachmann. "Restoring Institutional Trust after the Global Financial Crisis: A Systemic Approach." In Kramer and Pittinsky (eds.) Restoring Trust in Leaders and Organizations. (Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Hurley, R (2006), "The Decision to Trust" Harvard Business Review, September.
• Hurley, R (2003), “Putting People Back into Organizational Learning,” Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Issue 4, Volume 17, 105 – 120.