ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Heskett, Sasser, and Schlesinger were the founding members of the Service Management Interest Group at Harvard Business School, where they partnered on the research that resulted in the publication of The Service Profit Chain: How Leading Companies Link Profit and Growth to Loyalty, Satisfaction, and Value (1997) and The Value Profit Chain: Treat Employees Like Customers and Customers Like Employees (2003) and the production of two video series, Achieving Breakthrough Service and People, Service, Success: The Service Profit Link.

James L. Heskett is UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, where he has taught courses in marketing, business logistics, the management of service operations, business policy, service management, general management, and the entrepreneurial manager at various times since 1965. In addition, he served in several administrative positions at HBS, including that of Senior Associate Dean in charge of the MBA and other academic programs.

Heskett is the recipient of several awards, including the John Drury Sheehan Award for contributions to the field of logistics and the American Marketing Association’s Lovelock Award for lifetime contributions to the field of services marketing.

Heskett has served on a number of for-profit and not-for-profit boards, including Cardinal Health, Office Depot, and Limited Brands and was the founding President of Logistics Systems, Inc. In addition, he has consulted for a number of firms in Europe, Latin America, and Asia as well as the United States.

Earl Sasser Jr. is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and has been a faculty member there since 1969.

Sasser developed the School’s first course on the management of service operations in 1972. Sasser has taught a variety of courses in the MBA program, including Production and Operations Management, Decision Making and Ethical Values, The Operating Manager, and Service Management.

Leonard A. Schlesinger returned to the Harvard Business School as a Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration in July 2013 after concluding a five-year term as the 12th president of Babson College. At HBS he teaches the first-year MBA required courses Leadership and Corporate Accountability, and FIELD 3 (Integrative Intelligence) as well as a second-year elective course, General Management: Processes and Action.

Prior to Babson, Schlesinger was at Limited Brands, now known as L Brands, where he served in executive positions from 1999 to 2007, most recently as Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer. From 1985 to 1988, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Au Bon Pain.

His earlier academic career includes 20 years at Harvard Business School, where he served as the George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration. Courses taught included Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, General Management, and Service Management.