Women at MIT Sloan

Janice Klein

Senior Lecturer, Operations Management

Teaching at MIT Sloan since: 1995

Where the ideas come from

My work focuses on the interface between operations management and behavioral science. Together, the Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) Program and the System Design and Management (SDM) program provide a wonderful lab for my research. I've been able to look at the operations aspects of organizational change and ground it in a very tactical framework

A key theme in my book, True Change: How Outsiders on the Inside Make Things Happen in Organizations, is the idea of “push change” versus “pull change”; it's on the analogy of “push” versus “pull” inventory. The parallel came to me because I work in this LFM/SDM framework, with this amazing group of students and colleagues who share my deep interest in operations.

Simply meritocratic

One of the things that has always struck me about MIT Sloan is the level at which the students really enjoy learning. You hear laughter in the classrooms — not just to relieve tension, but real laughter, because they're really excited to be learning. MIT Sloan students also respond to an amazing level of give-and-take in class. When they hear something that doesn't make sense, they're not afraid to push back — and that creates this terrific creativity in the classroom. At the same time, they are wonderfully down-to-earth, grounded, and not full of themselves. And women are certainly respected here. If you can do the work, if you can show your competence, everyone takes you seriously. It's simply meritocratic.

-Janice Klein's faculty biography

<< Back to list of faculty profiles