Michael Jebsen Professor of Business and Dean, School of Business and Management at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong
Jitendra Singh is currently Michael Jebsen Professor of Business and Dean, School of Business and Management at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong and a member of the university senior leadership team. He moved to Hong Kong in fall 2014 after a distinguished career at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA, USA.
HKUST Business School is widely regarded as the #1 business school in all Asia-Pacific. In the authoritative Financial Times rakings, in the last eleven years, the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA program was ranked #1 in the world six times, #2 four times, and #3 one time. In the FT Global MBA rankings, the HKUST MBA program was ranked #14 in the world for the last three years but had earlier been as high as #6. In the University of Texas, Dallas research rankings of business schools for the period 2011-2015, HKUST was ranked #2 in the world outside North America, and #24 overall.
From 2007-2009, he was Dean of the Nanyang Business School (NBS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, one of the leading science and technology universities in Asia Pacific. During this period, he was Shaw Foundation Chair and Professor of Strategy, Management and Organization at Nanyang Business School. In addition, at the university level, he was a member of the University Cabinet of NTU, and Chief Adviser, India Strategy to the President of NTU. At the end of his term as Dean of Nanyang Business School (NBS), their MBA program was ranked #24 in the 2009 Financial Times rankings, and was rated as one of the leaders in the Asia Pacific region.
He was a faculty member at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he was most recently the Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management before moving to HKUST. During 1998-2001, he was Vice Dean, International Academic Affairs. In his Vice Dean role, he was a member of Wharton’s core administrative leadership team and was charged with shaping and implementing the global strategy of Wharton. These efforts culminated, in part, in the worldwide alliance between Wharton and INSEAD, the foundation of Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India and the creation of Singapore Management University in Singapore. Earlier, he was Director of the Emerging Economies Program at Wharton from 1996-98. From 1991-1995, he was Research Director, Entrepreneurship at the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Center at Wharton, the leading research center in entrepreneurship at any US business school.
He moved to Wharton in 1987 from University of Toronto, Canada where he was an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the (now) Rotman School of Business. In 1991, he received an M.A. (honoris causa) from University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford Business School in 1983. His earliest education was in natural and mathematical sciences and he received his B.Sc. (Physics, Mathematics, and Statistics) from Lucknow University, India. Subsequently, he received his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. He worked as a line manager at Voltas Ltd., a Tata group company, in India for three years before coming to the US for his Ph.D.
His research and teaching interests focus on strategy and organization, with a specific current interest in emerging multinationals and business leadership in India. He has published about fifty papers, many in the leading management and social science journals and has earlier served on the editorial boards of Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Organization!, Academy of Management Journal and Administrative Science Quarterly. He has edited three books - Organizational Evolution: New Directions (Sage Publications, 1990), and Evolutionary Dynamics of Organizations (co-authored with Joel Baum, Oxford University Press, 1994) and a more recent book, Emerging Multinationals from Emerging Economies (co-authored with Ravi Ramamurti, Cambridge University Press, 2009). The most recent book, The India Way: How India’s Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management (co-authored with Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh and Michael Useem, Harvard Business Press, 2010), focuses on Indian management practices. The India Way has also been translated into Portuguese and Japanese.
At Wharton/Penn, he was a member of the Core Team of faculty leaders for the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, now a university wide institute. He was also a member of the Research Committee of the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management. He is currently a Senior Fellow of the Mack Institute. He is currently also Distinguished Visiting Researcher, Asian Business Services Research Institute at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
Jitendra Singh has lectured worldwide (N. America, Europe, Asia, and S. America) to both executive and academic audiences. He has also been active in advising both private and public sector organizations and has served as a director or adviser for several startups, established firms, and non-profit organizations.
He is currently a member of the Asia Pacific Advisory Council of AACSB International, the Global Network Asia Advisory Board, EFMD Global Network, and the Advisory Board, Institute of Emerging Markets Studies, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, among other positions. Earlier, from 2000-2003, he was an independent director on the Board of Directors of Bangalore, India based Infosys Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: INFY) a global leader in the business of software and IT services. He also served earlier on the Boards of Directors of Fedders Corporation, a global American firm in the air treatment business and Emcure Pharmaceuticals, a privately owned biopharmaceuticals company based in Pune, India which was the first private equity investment made in any Indian firm by Blackstone, the leading private equity firm. He also served as an adviser to EurIndia, a London, U.K. based venture capital firm which made investments in several software and business process outsourcing companies with back ends in India. More recently, he served on the Board of Governors of SAFTI Military Institute, Singapore and the Board of Directors of SPRING Singapore, which is a government linked organization responsible for all small and medium enterprises in Singapore. On the SPRING board, he was Chairman of the Management Policy Advisory Committee. In 2009, he was invited by then Finance Minister (now Deputy Prime Minister) Tharman Shanmugharatnam to serve on the Committee for the Advancement of the Accounting Sector in Singapore. He also served as the Chairman of the Education Working Group of this committee. During 2009-2010, he was a member of the Global Agenda Council on Emerging Multinationals of the World Economic Forum.
Jitendra Singh was earlier elected to membership in two leading professional organizations-- MOBS, a society of leading scholars in organization design and theory, and MESO, a society of scholars engaged in research linking individual and organizational issues. During 1994-96, he served an elected two-year term on the Senate Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate, University of Pennsylvania.
He currently lives on HKUST campus in Hong Kong. He is married to his wife, Marlies, a German national, and they have two daughters. His wife spends much of her time on charitable pursuits. His older daughter graduated from Penn (C ’14) with a degree in East Asian Studies, and his younger daughter is pursuing an undergraduate degree at Bryn Mawr College.