Christopher Kayes

D. Christopher Kayes is a professor of Management at the George Washington University, School of Business, and Visiting Professor at The University of Hull, UK. He is the author of Destructive Goal Pursuit: The Mount Everest Disaster (Palgrave-Macmillan) as well as over 35 articles on learning and leadership including Destructive Pursuit of Idealized Goals, which was recognized as the first ever most significant contribution to the practice of management by the Academy of Management, Organizational Behavior Division. His article, The1996 Mt. Everest Climbing Disaster: The Breakdown of Learning in Teams was named best paper in 2004 in the journal Human Relations and is one of its most frequently downloaded articles.

His recent teaching and research efforts focus on leadership, learning, and the limits of loyalty. His current research focuses on learning (and its breakdown) under stressful situations and recovery from crisis.  Conclusions drawn from this research often point to the limits of conventional wisdom and the unintended consequences of action. His paper Experiential Learning and Its Critics: Preserving the Role of Experience in Management Learning and Education was one of three papers nominated for first Academy of Management Learning and Education Award, nominated alongside Henry Mintzberg and Jeffery Pfeiffer. In 2004, the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society named Dr. Kayes with the “New Educator” award for his promise in furthering innovation management education teaching and research.

His second book Leadership, Loyalty and Deception: Lessons from the race to find Weapons of Mass Destruction (Palgrave-Macmillan), was published in early 2009. In 2011, he and his wife, Dr. Anna Kayes, published The Learning Advantage: Six Practices of Learning-Directed Leadership (Palgrave-Macmillan)

Dr. Kayes consults and conducts executive education worldwide. Clients include Oracle, Ericsson Academy, The US Army, Bank of New York Mellon, National Institutes of Health, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Johns Hopkins University – Office of Development, Zagreb School of Management and Economics, Metropolitan Washington Area Council of Governments, Senior Executive Development Program, US Department of Defense, The Romanian Leadership Council, The Hay Group, and the District of Columbia. He is working with a team of researchers to develop practical tools to enhance learning including The Kolb Team Learning Experience, published by the Hay Group.