How to Fix a Broken Hierarchy

In 2025, Americans spent more than 400 billion hours inside work organizations. Nir Halevy's argument is that what happens in those hours, how people are ranked, rewarded, promoted, and treated, is one of the most consequential ways corporations shape society, even when it never reaches the headlines. Drawing on his new book Level Up: Why Hierarchies Are Broken and How to Fix Them, Halevy explains why hierarchies break, why the damage lands first on employees and then on customers, communities, and the public, and what it would take to repair them.

Nir Halevy is the Jagdeep and Roshni Singh Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the author of Level Up: Why Hierarchies Are Broken and How to Fix Them. An expert in organizational hierarchy, power, status, leadership, negotiation, conflict management, and cooperation, Halevy examines how individuals and groups make decisions, exercise influence, compete, collaborate, and resolve conflict. He has taught courses and executive workshops at Stanford GSB since 2010. His research has appeared in leading academic journals and has been featured by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, Businessweek, CNN, and MSNBC. He holds a PhD in Social Psychology and Management, an MA in Social and Organizational Psychology, and a BA in Psychology and International Relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Moderator: Andrea Puig, MSx ’27