Homa Bahrami
Management of Organizations
Expert on organizational flexibility and dynamic leadership
Homa Bahrami is an international educator, advisor, board member, and author, specializing in organizational flexibility, team alignment, and dynamic leadership in global, knowledge-based industries. She is a senior lecturer at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley and a faculty director at the Haas Center for Executive Education, and has served on the Board of the Haas Center for Teaching Excellence.
She is the co-author of a major textbook (with Harold Leavitt, Stanford University), "Managerial Psychology: Managing Behavior in Organizations," published by the University of Chicago Press, and translated into many languages. Her latest book, "Super-Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises," (second edition published by Springer and co-authored with Stuart Evans, Carnegie Mellon) focuses on practical approaches for strategizing, organizing, and leading knowledge workers based on their collective experience and field research in Silicon Valley during the past 30 years.
Bahrami has served on the boards of directors of three public technology companies and has been a member of all three board committees: audit, compensation, and governance. She is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and is active in executive education and executive development in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Expertise and Research Interests
Dynamic Leadership
Organizational Flexibility
Leading Multi-cultural Knowledge Workers
Orchestrating Geo-distributed Teams
Impact of Technology on Organizational Design
Organizational Innovation for Globalization
Enterprise Adaptation & Flexibility
Lessons from the Silicon Valley | UC Berkeley Executive Education
Ways Leaders Can Improve Team Performance | UC Berkeley Executive Education
3 Modes of Adaptation | UC Berkeley Executive Education
Boot Camp for Experienced Leaders | UC Berkeley Executive Education
InterMune Case Study Trailer
Advice to Leaders | UC Berkeley Executive Education
Accelerating Change Readiness & Agility with UC Berkeley
Selected Papers and Publications
Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans. Flexibility at Genentech: Developing Versatile Domain Experts and Deploying Flexible Resources at One U.S. Medical Affairs Unit. Berkeley Haas Case Series.
Homa Bahrami. People Operations at Mozilla Corporation: Scaling a Peer-to-Peer Global Community. California Management Review.
Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans. Super-Flexibility for Real-Time Adaptation: Perspectives from Silicon Valley. California Management Review.
Homa Bahrami. Super-Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises: A Toolkit for Dynamic Adaptation. Springer.
Homa Bahrami. Nurturing Learning Partnerships. Learning Journeys Re-Visited.
Homa Bahrami. Leading Global Knowledge Workers. Global Talent: An Anthology of Human Capital Strategies for Today's Borderless Enterprise.
Homa Bahrami. Leading High Tech Knowledge Workers. PKU Business Review (Beijing University).
Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans. Super-Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises. Springer.
Homa Bahrami. Organizing for Strategic Flexibility. The Leadership Frontiers, Financial Times.
Homa Bahrami, Stuart Evans. Nodal Organizational Designs in Silicon Valley. Business Engineering.
Noma Bahrami. Flexible Recycling & High Technology Entrepreneurship. Understanding Silicon Valley.
Homa Bahrami. Nurturing Learning Partnerships. Learning Journeys.
Homa Bahrami, Stuart Evans. Flexible Re-Cycling and High-Technology Entrepreneurship. California Management Review.
Homa Bahrami. The Emerging Flexible Organization: Perspectives from Silicon Valley. California Management Review.
Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans. Emerging Organizational Regimes in High Technology Firms: The Bi‐modal Form. Human Resource Management.
Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans. Strategy Making in High-Technology Firms: The Empiricist Mode. California Management Review.
Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans. Stratocracy in High-Technology Firms. California Management Review.
Home Bahrami. Strategic Management in High-Technology Firms: An Exploratory Study. Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Positions Held
At Haas since 1986
1995 – present, Senior Lecturer, Haas School of Business
2006 – present, Faculty Director, Berkeley Executive Education, Haas School of Business
2009 – 2014, Advisory Board, Center for Teaching Excellence, Haas School of Business
2003-2004 & 2017 Guest Professor, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
1999-2000, Guest Professor, University of Witten-Herdecke, Germany
1986 – 1995, Lecturer, Haas School of Business
1984 – 1988, Research Associate, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
1982 – 1984, Postdoctoral Fellow & Visiting Scholar, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
External Service and Affiliations
Member of the Board of Directors, Fabrinet (2012-present)
Member of the Board of Directors, FEI Inc. (2012-2016)
Member of the Board of Directors, FormFactor, Inc.
Director, Pedagogy, Inc.
Advisory Director, Securitas Capital
Member, Advisory Board: Institute for Growth & Innovation, Icarian, Kadiri, Green Border, Mercer Tech
Member, Advisory Board: HEAL, UCSF
Advisor and executive educator for global and high tech companies in the US and Europe
How to Lead When the Pace of Change Feels Relentless, From Day One, 11/05/2021
Pandemic keeps disrupting Sonoma County employers' on-site work plans, North Bay Business Journal, 08/13/2021
How to re-invent yourself and your career during the 'great resignation', experts weigh-in, ABC15 Arizona, 07/27/2021
In post-pandemic workplace reshuffle, some in Sonoma County switch career paths, The Press Democrat, 06/25/2021
How SF companies can defend against hackers as workforce returns to the office, The San Francisco Examiner, 06/14/2021
What the Air Force Can Teach American Business, Fortune, 07/03/2016
The pandemic is driving disruption, innovation and 'a new reality' at work, Berkeley News, 07/06/2021
International Business: Organizational Innovation for Global Companies, EWMBA 258A
Accelerating Change Readiness and Agility, EWMBA 258
Creating Effective Organizations, XMBA 205
Statoil Project Executive Program, Berkeley Executive Education
New Manager Boot Camp for Scientists and Engineers, Berkeley Executive Education
Top Tech Program, Berkeley Executive Education
The CIO Institute, Berkeley Executive Education
Product Management Program, Berkeley Executive Education
Berkeley Executive Education profile
PhD, Organizational Behavior, Aston University
MSc, Industrial Administration, Aston University
BA with Honors, Sociology & Social Administration, Hull University