BusinessReport.com

Hettie Richardson started college as an architecture major, but she soon realized that “doing creative work for someone else took the joy out of it.”

It was upon reading Men and Women of the Corporation for a sociology class that Richardson discovered her true calling. The book’s research and analysis about corporate power lit a spark.

“I said, ‘I think I want to write books like this.’ That started this whole trajectory to where I am today.”

Where Richardson is today is LSU’s E.J. Ourso College of Business, where she is an associate professor and co-chair of the Rucks Department of Management. Richardson, who’s racking up an impressive publication roster of her own, says management is both an art and a science. In the classroom and in research, it’s mostly science. In actual managing, it’s more of an art, she says.

“One thing I always tell my students: ‘I’m going to give you the tools that will help you be a good manager, but I can’t make you be a good manager.’”

Richardson has discovered a couple of things about management—and business in general. Much of her research has focused on the positive effects of empowering employees by allowing them to participate more in how the organization is run.

More recently, Richardson’s research has found that—while giving employees such opportunities usually results in better performance for the individual and the organization—taking it too far can have unintended negative consequences. Asking for too much input from an employee, for instance, can impede the performance of day-to-day job duties.

Richardson has also learned the value of management skills from the employer’s perspective. Students entering the business college are usually preoccupied with the money aspect like finance and accounting. Just as important, if not more so, is having management skills, she says.

“The thing employers say to me over and over again is that you have to have the people-management side of things,” Richardson says. “If you only focus on the economic side of things, you’re not going to be effective as a manager or a business person.”

Age: 37

What is the one thing Baton Rouge can do to help attract and retain highly educated young people?

“One is attract the industry that can hire those people so they have opportunities. I think maybe a diversity of industry is key to our success—not having all our things in one basket.”

Click here for the complete list of 2008's Forty Under 40 winners.