---
id: "pisquared:interview/adler-paul"
type: "Pi-Squared interview"
title: "Anita McGahan in conversation with Paul Adler"
url: "https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/adler-paul"
date: "2026-10-19"
people: ["Anita McGahan","Paul Adler"]
summary: "Paul Adler is Harold Quinton Chair Emeritus in Business Policy and Professor Emeritus of Management and Organization, at the University of Southern..."
recording: "https://vimeo.com/1237347688"
source: "Pi-Squared (pisquared.theburnescenter.org), The Burnes Center for Social Change"
licence: "none stated"
---

# Anita McGahan in conversation with Paul Adler

Paul Adler, Harold Quinton Chair Emeritus, University of Southern California · 19 October 2026

## About the guest

Paul Adler is Harold Quinton Chair Emeritus in Business Policy and Professor Emeritus of Management and Organization, at the University of Southern California. He began his education in Australia and moved to France in 1974, where he received his doctorate in Economics and Management while working as a Research Economist for the French government. He came to the USA in 1981, and became affiliated with the Brookings Institution, Barnard College, Harvard Business School, and Stanford's School of Engineering. At USC, he served as the President of the USC Academic Senate in 2020-21. Beyond USC, he has served as chair of the Technology and Innovation Management Division and of the Critical Management Studies Interest Group of the Academy of Management, and served as President of the Academy of Management in 2013-14. He has published widely in academic journals, edited several books, the most recent of which is The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism (2019).

## Reflections from the interview

**Professor Paul Adler **is one of the most distinguished senior scholars in the field of management, but you might not have guessed at the beginning of his career that he would have landed this way.  Paul describes his early work as a Marxist socialist and union organizers in Australia and France, and then his move into academic life in the United States in the 1980s.    What he demonstrates is an extraordinary capacity to stay true to the theoretical principles that motivated him even early on as he became exposed to the power of large corporations to enable worker collaboration through value-rational bureaucracy.   If you stick with Paul, you’ll learn to love working with highly committed colleagues to get important things done through a communal commitment to what’s important.

## Related resources

- [Paul’s webpage at USC](https://faculty.marshall.usc.edu/Paul-Adler/)
- [Paul’s Google Scholar page](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=54plaOQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)
- [Paul’s article defining social capital](https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amr.2002.5922314)
- [Paul’s 2025 paper on system change in the face of climate change](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joms.13192)
- [The 99 percent economy](https://www.abebooks.com/9780190931889/Percent-Economy-Democratic-Socialism-Overcome-0190931884/plp)

## Recording

Video: https://vimeo.com/1237347688

## Category

[Where Do We Go From Here?](https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/category/where-next)

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Original page: https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/adler-paul · Licence: none stated