Professor, USC Marshall School of Business
A distinguished professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business, Edward Lawler III joined USC in 1978. Soon after, he founded and became director of the university’s Center for Effective Organizations. He has written and cowritten more than 450 articles and 52 books, including “Human Resource Excellence: An Assessment of Strategies and Trends” published last year by Stanford University Press.
How many hours a week do you work?
About 45 to 50 a week.
Why not retire?
I guess partly because I enjoy work and partly because many of the things that people talk about doing in retirement, I’ve managed to do during my work life. One of the advantages of being in academia is that you got a lot of flexibility. There’s a lot of opportunity to do things on your own, and I’ve taken advantage of that.
What is the one thing people often get wrong about retirement?
I get the impression that sometimes people have a bunch of things they want to do, and they do those over the first year or two of the retirement — and then they run out of things to do, and they get bored. I’ve seen it here a couple of times — faculty members who want to come back and start teaching again even though they retired.
Do co-workers seek out your experience and knowledge?
For sure, although I don’t know that is so much because of my age versus the status and progression within the career. I’ve published a lot of things, I’ve written a lot of things, consulted a lot, and I always try to help people along.
How do you keep the work you do fresh and interesting?
I stopped going to the classroom, and that is somewhat age-related. I still work with students occasionally on projects. I spend most of my time working on projects that are part of the (Center for Effective Organizations) and trying to build the center through relationships with corporations and donors. I’ve always been more of a researcher, related to the external, corporate world, and trying to get projects going and do studies at corporations.
What are the biggest changes you’ve observed in your workplace environment across your career, and what are the key aspects that have not changed?
Since I’ve been at USC, I’ve seen a lot of changes in what the university is about, (how it) improved its academic standards (and) its research productivity tremendously.
What hasn’t changed, in academia at least, is that there’s still the issue of tension between doing research and teaching. There’s still pressure to produce research, to write, to create knowledge.
How has working in Los Angeles changed over the years?
It has changed a lot — it’s become a lot more of a center of business and, therefore, in many ways a better place to be in a business school. (There are) more big corporations and more activity than there was certainly when I arrived. It was not quite a small, quiet, sleepy city by any means, but it truly didn’t have the diversity of businesses.
What’s next on your agenda?
All the same — I’ll continue to spend my time between running my research center and doing research.
What do you do for fun?
I’m a big sports fan, so I go to games. I also watch a lot of sports on TV and do a lot of reading. I played sports in college — football, and track and field at Brown (University). I also like going to movies and working in the yard.
If you could go back in time, what advice would you have for your 50-year-old self?
I feel like sticking with academia and continuing my career was the right decision. I have been very fortunate not only to have a good career but be at the university, which has improved enormously. I remember when I was a graduate student, I was at (UC Berkeley). They looked down their noses at USC, and would say, “That’s just a football school. That’s all they have.” Obviously, that has changed — the football team has gotten worse, and the academics have gotten enormously better.
