Randall S. Peterson

Randall S. Peterson is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. He teaches executive and MBA classes on leading teams and organisations, high performance teams, leadership assessment and interpersonal skill development. He has been invited to teach and consult in these areas across the world for companies such as Alcan, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Emirates Bank, IBM, Nestlé and Telenor. He is also faculty director of the High Performance People Skills programme and the leadership week of the Advanced Development Programme, flagship Executive Education programmes at London Business School. He has also taught the HPPS programme at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India.

Randall’s current research activities include editing and writing a book recently released entitled Leading and Managing People in the Dynamic Organisation. In addition to his general interest in leadership in dynamic business environments, Randall’s research includes investigating how personality of members affects group interaction and performance, how CEO personality affects top management team interaction as well as firm performance, and the effects of conflict in groups – including a recent study of the crucial role trust plays in getting the benefits of task conflict without also increasing the damage of relationship conflict in top management teams in the hotel industry. His research has been published in the leading journals in the field including Research in Organisational Behavior, Organisational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Randall holds a Ph.D. in Social and Organisational Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Before coming to London Business School, he was on the faculty of Northwestern University and Cornell University’s S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Sarah Ronson

Sarah Ronson is a Ph.D. candidate in Organisational Behavior at the London Business School. She has worked with Prof. Randall Peterson in applying the Q-Sort to the investment management industry. With interests in groups and team dynamics, she has conducted studies on the effects of conflict, trust, and decision rules in top management teams; how individuals compete versus cooperate with others in their group; and the factors that underlie creative performance in groups.

In addition to her research activities, Sarah also has been an instructor for courses at the London Business School and the London School of Economics. She also has been involved in consulting for organisations such as the BBC. Before coming to the London Business School, she was a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.