Dean of Havard Business School Nitin Nohria resigns from Tata Sons board

Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School (HBS), has quit the Tata Sons board as director. 

A top Tata group executive said Nohria's term was to end next month and he had not sought reappointment in the forthcoming annual general meeting of shareholders of Tata Sons. Nohria sent his resignation letter, which was accepted by the holding company, said the executive.

Nohria, one of the most respected leaders of US academia, joined the Tata Sons board in September 2013 as a representative of Tata Trusts. 

According to the filings with the National Company Law Tribunal, Nohria, along with Ratan Tata, had asked Mistry to resign from the board of Tata Sons in October 2016, just before the board meeting where Mistry was ousted. But as Mistry had refused to resign, Nohria and other directors, barring two, had voted to remove Mistry. 

E-mails sent to Nohria and Tata Sons did not elicit any response till going to press. HBS declined to comment. 
 

Before he became a dean of HBS, Nohria had served as co-chair of the Harvard Business School leadership initiative, and was senior associate dean of faculty development and head of the organisational behaviour unit of Harvard Business School.

A doctorate in management from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nohria holds a BTech degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.