The Organization Man

w18_NR04RubenBrent6048_inline.jpg

Photography: 

Nick Romanenko

When the Baldrige Foundation—known for modeling organizational performance excellence in business—chose to extend its best practices into health care and education in the 1990s, it turned to Brent Ruben. A professor at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, Ruben saw the necessity of modifying Baldrige’s assessment criteria so that professionals in higher education would use it—and they did. For his contributions, Ruben, who also directs Rutgers’ Center for Organizational Leadership, was honored in April as an inaugural winner of the Baldrige Foundation Leadership Excellence Award.