William Pasmore

Senior Vice President — Advisor to CEOs, Boards, and Senior Teams, Americas Americas at Center for Creative Leadership

Professor of Practice of Social Organizational Psychology at Columbia Business School

Biography

Center for Creative Leadership

An international authority in organizational leadership, Bill joined CCL in 2008 in the newly created role of Organizational Practice Leader. He leads CCL’s efforts to help clients develop the larger organizational leadership systems that increase their overall performance and enable their individual leaders to thrive.

Before joining CCL, Bill had served as a partner since 1997 in the Corporate Learning & Organizational Development Practice of the consulting firm Oliver Wyman Delta.

While there, he headed the global research practice and worked personally with top executives of Fortune 500 companies on organizational architecture and development as well as succession planning, talent management, and strategic planning. His global clients, spanning numerous business sectors, included Bristol-Myers Squibb, Compuware, United Airlines, Hewlett Packard, Kimberly Clark, Unilever, and The New York Times.

Previously, Bill was a tenured full professor from 1976-1997 in the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, where he taught courses in the school’s MBA, Executive MBA, Ph.D., and Executive Ph.D. programs. He directed the school’s master’s degree program in organization development and served as a visiting professor at INSEAD and Stanford University.

He also headed his own consulting firm, Pasmore & Associates, which offered public workshops on organization design and supported efforts in organizations to bring about large-scale change. He co-founded the SIGMA program (Social Innovations in Global Management), which provides leadership and managerial training to socially responsible not-for-profit organizations around the world.

As a thought leader in the field of organization development, he has published 21 books and numerous articles, including Leading Continuous Change, The Board’s New Roles in Succession Planning, How to Make Sure Your Next CEO is a Winner, Choosing the Best Next CEO, Designing Effective Organizations, Creating Strategic Change, Research in Organization Change and Development, and Relationships that Enable Enterprise Change.

He holds a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering/Industrial Management and a Ph.D. in Administrative Sciences, both from Purdue University.

Columbia Business School

An internationally-recognized authority in Organization Development, Bill Pasmore joined the Social-Organizational Psychology Program Faculty in September of 2010 as Professor of Practice. Bill’s research, teaching and practice focuses on issues related to complex organizational change, leadership development and digital transformation.

As a practitioner, Bill has been Senior Vice President of Organizational Leadership at the top-ranked Center for Creative Leadership since 2008, and prior to that, a partner at Oliver Wyman Delta consulting. He heads his own consulting firm, Pasmore Advisors, and works with both for profit and not for profit CEOs on change, organization design, and succession planning.

As a scholar, Bill was a tenured full professor in the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University from 1976-1997, where he taught courses in the school’s Master of Science in Organization Development, MBA, Executive MBA, Ph.D. and Executive Ph.D. programs. He was a visiting professor at INSEAD and Stanford and a faculty member in the executive education programs there. Along with David Cooperrider, he founded the Social Innovations in Global Management program at Case, funded by USAID with a focus on enhancing the leadership of global non-governmental organizations (NGOs). He is a co-founder of STARLabs, a consortium of researchers and organizations such as Google, Microsoft, Shell, BASF, Deutsche Bank, Lowe’s, Amgen, and Magellan Health studying digital transformation.

He has written or edited numerous books and articles, including Organization Design for a Digitally Connected World, The Palgrave Handbook of Great Change Thinkers, Leading Continuous Change, Creating Strategic Change, Designing Effective Organizations, Collaborative Management Research, and Relationships that Enable Enterprise Change. From 1987-2014 he and Richard Woodman co-edited the annual series, Research in Organizational Change and Development. Bill is a former editor of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, a frequent keynote speaker, and was recognized multiple times as one of HR’s most influential thinkers by the European HRM association. Recently, the Academy of Management established an award in his name and that of Richard Woodman (Texas A&M) to honor scholars who have engaged in sustained collaborative research efforts.

He holds a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering/Industrial Management and a Ph.D. in Administrative Sciences, both from Purdue University.

Educational Background

  • Ph.D., Purdue University
  • B.S.I.M., Purdue University

Scholarly Interests

  • Organizational change
  • Digital transformationn
  • Organizational design
  • Leadership development
  • Team dynamics
  • The Future of Organizations
  • Collaborative action research
  • Board Effectiveness and CEO succession

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