Mason A. Carpenter University of Wisconsin-Madison
Mason Carpenter (PhD University of Texas at Austin) was the M. Keith Weikel professor of leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business. His research in strategic management concerned corporate governance, top management teams, social networks, and the strategic management of global startups and was published widely in leading management and strategy journals. He was also author of numerous books used in leading undergraduate, MBA, and education courses around the world, including Principles of Management published by Flat World Knowledge. He was associate editor of the Academy of Management Review and served on the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal. At the University of Wisconsin, he was responsible for the undergraduate, MBA, and ExecMBA courses in business, corporate, and global strategy. With others, he had also advised the top management teams and business unit leaders of Fiskars, SABMiller, GE, Harley Davidson, Rockwell International, Vivendi, Kerry Ingredients, Covance, Danisco, Badger Meter, and Banta in the areas of strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategic change. His teaching accomplishments included MBA Professor of the Year, notoriety as one of the two most popular professors in several BusinessWeek MBA program polls, the Larson Excellence in Teaching award from the Wisconsin School of Business, and, most recently, a Distinguished Teaching award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also worked to integrate experiential and behavioral perspectives of strategic management into the classroom through positions on the BPS and SMS Executive Committees, Doctoral and New Faculty BPS consortia, and the widely-used BPS Strategy Teaching Toolkit. He passed away in 2011 and is survived by his wife and two sons.