Jack Denfeld Wood
Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IMD
Jack Denfeld Wood is Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Organizational Behavior. His publications and areas of special interest include the role of unconscious processes in leadership and followership, group and inter-group dynamics, and ideology.
Along with his academic work and organizational consultation, Wood was Professor of Management Practice at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in China, and a visiting professor at the Moscow School of Management (Skolkovo), Russia. He is a practicing analyst with a diploma from the CG Jung Institute, Zürich, and is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Academy of Management (AOM), the AK Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems (AKRI), International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA), and the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP), and has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Transactional Analysis Journal, the Financial Times, Forbes, and elsewhere.
Wood’s view of leadership is multilevel, multidimensional, and social-psychological, i.e., he considers leadership not simply an individual collection of traits, nor a series of interpersonal transactions, but leadership is then a social and psychological process that is fundamentally exercised in the small group. Organizational behavior is consequently an expression of conscious cognitive and largely unconscious emotional group and intergroup dynamics. The primary task of leadership development, then, is then to provide the opportunity for individuals to develop their capacity to exercise leadership responsibly.
Wood majored in Government at Colby College in the United States and was an active duty US Air Force officer and pilot following graduation. Following active duty, he continued to fly aircraft for the Air National Guard while earning an MA in social psychology at Syracuse University, and an MA, MPhil, and PhD in organizational behavior at Yale University. His doctoral dissertation was A Theory of Small Group Structure, and combined field and multivariate quantitative research, developing methods for conceptualizing ideology and its influence on the structure, dynamics, and leadership decision making of small groups.
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