IN MEMORIAM

Richard Goodman

Professor of Management

Los Angeles

1939–2004

Richard Alan Goodman, an expert in organization strategy and innovation and professor of management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, died of cancer in Los Angeles on January 22, 2004. He was 65 and had served on the UCLA faculty for the last 37 years.

After training in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology and Antioch College, Dick Goodman went on to earn a master’s degree from the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in organizational behavior from Washington University. He launched his career in the aerospace industry, holding both technical and managerial positions with General Dynamics and Wright Air Development Center, Nuclear Reactor Branch. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1966.

Professor Goodman’s research was wide-ranging and collaborative. A major theme in his work was the quest for the sources of organizational effectiveness and competitive advantage; in his numerous papers, book chapters and seven authored or co-authored volumes, he explored the roles of technology and technological development, as well as the culture and characteristics of organizations and societies.

Professor Goodman was a committed educator and mentor. While teaching a variety of courses in organization and management theory at UCLA and the University of Judaism, he also chaired the doctoral and master’s thesis committees of 16 UCLA Anderson School students, and served on the dissertation committees of 55 other doctoral students enrolled in UCLA graduate programs in education, political science, engineering, economics and public health. He was a founding faculty member of the UCLA Anderson School’s Global Access Program (GAP), an international field study program that provides students with real-world international business experience. Professor Goodman served as an adviser to GAP student teams each year from the program’s establishment in 1998 through December 2003.

Professor Goodman also served as an advisor to industry, focusing on strategic effectiveness through appropriate organizational design, decision processes and implementation programs. His clients included the governments of Spain, Israel, and the United States. He directed or participated in a wide range of strategic international studies for firms such as Unilever, L'Air Liquide, Samsung, CRH Holdings, Suntory, Sony, SGS-Thompson, AVL Scientific, Nokia, Walt Disney, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Hughes Electronics, among dozens of other companies around the world, from well-established firms to entrepreneurial start-ups.

Enormously active in the university community, Professor Goodman served on numerous campus and UC-wide committees and councils, including the Universitywide Council on Planning and Budget, of which he was chair at the time of his death. He also served on the Universitywide Academic Council, President’s Executive Budget Committee, Universitywide Academic Planning Council, Universitywide Council on Research and the Academic Senate’s Council on Planning and Budget, which he previously chaired. He was also a member of the Academic Council Special Committee on the National Laboratories and a member of the board of governors of the UCLA Faculty Center, of which he served as president.

Over the years, Professor Goodman also gave tremendous committee service to the UCLA Anderson School, catalyzing improvements in the curriculum and management education programs. He helped to shape many new programs, including the Fully Employed MBA program and the MBA-Plan A Masters Program, which was cutting-edge for its time.

Professor Goodman created the CIBER Cross Cultural Collegium, known as C4, an affinity group of more than 50 business and social science faculty members from 25 academic institutions who meet regularly to explore methodologies for understanding the role of culture in management and developing teaching materials and methods for students and professionals working in intercultural environments. Shortly before his death, he completed a book on his work in this area, Crossing Cultures: Insights from Master Teachers (London: Routledge). The book, co-authored with two of his former UCLA Anderson School students, Margaret Phillips, associate professor of international business at Pepperdine University, and Nakiye Boyacigiller, professor of management at San Jose State University, will be available shortly.

Professor Goodman is survived by his wife and best friend Ann Pollack, an assistant vice chancellor at UCLA; two daughters, Diane (Jake Daniel) and Karen (Rene Monterroso); a son, Frank (Helaine Thau); two stepsons, Noah and Joshua Pollack (Dalit Baranoff); a brother, Peter; and numerous grandchildren.

 

Philip Little

Elwin V. Svenson